cleopatra 'the syrian' and a couple of rebels- their images, iconography, and propaganda

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Cleopatra "the Syrian" and a Couple of Rebels: Their Images, Iconography, and PropagandaAuthor(s): Wendy CheshireSource: Journal of the American Research Center in Egypt, Vol. 45 (2009), pp. 349-391

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Cleopatra "the Syrian" and a Couple of Rebels:Their

Images, Iconography,and

Propaganda

Wendy Cheshire

Abstract

Following upon the cme ofPtolemaic political domination, economicprosperity ndcultural development in the third century, a seven-year-old child inherited the Egyptianthrone n 204 BC,opening theway or several ambitious outsiders toviefor defacto power

in the and. It shall be attempted n thefollowing to identify hefaces and monuments ofa few of the lead players inEgypt's unstable regime during the reign ofPtolemy V andhis Syrian bride, Cleopatra I, and todemonstrate he worth of theseobjects s political propaganda in a society increasingly fraught with ethnic tensions.

The political landscape into which Ptolemy V was born in 212 was already sown with the seeds of asocial uprising. The boy's father, Ptolemy IV, had designated him in infancy as his successor, but thesudden death of the king in the summer of 2041 and the mysterious murder of Queen Arsinoe III

shortly thereafter left the young throne heir as an orphan with no capability to rule.2 The boy cameunder the guardianship of two scheming courtiers, Sosibius and Agathocles, according to Polybius at

the behest of a fictive testament of their own making.3 After the death of Philopator, with a childnominally on the throne, the two guardians paid the throng of Greco-Macedonian mercenaries stationed inAlexandria two months advance wages to reassure them and keep them in place as the transition regime became established. Scorched-earth tactics of governing were implemented. Previouslyprominent officials were deployed abroad, and suspected opponents to the interim leaders were executed.4 The aging Sosibius died shortly thereafter, and the brutality and ineptness of the remainingco-ruler, coupled with widespread suspicion that, in particular, the late queen had been murdered,led to an organized mob lynching of Agathocles along with his family and close allies in 203. The

eight-year-old Ptolemy was then transferred to the guardianship of two other courtiers, Tlepolemusand Sosibius (the son of the recently deceased guardian, Sosibius), and, from 201 until his attainmentof

majorityand his coronation in

197/6,of the illustrious

militaryleader Aristomenes.5

1Werner HuB, Agypten in hellenistischer Zeit, 332-30 v.Chr. (Munich, 2001), 470, on the date of Philopator's death between

mid-July and mid-August of 204; cf. Gunther Holbl, A History of the tolemaic Empire (London, 2001), 149f., n. 38. All dates in

this study are BC unless otherwise noted.2RE 23 (1959), cols. 1691-1702 s.v. "Ptolemaios (23)" (Hans Volkmann).3

Polybius 15. 25; HuB, Agypten, 450, 474f.; Holbl, History, 127ff., 134.4HuB, Agypten, 476.

5The entire scandal-ridden episode is related in great detail by Polybius, 15. 25. Giinter Grimm, "Verbrannte Pharaonen?"

AntWelt 28 (1997), 233-49, esp. 233-35, gives an analysis of the events alongside illustrative archaeological material. The

version of the events given by Polybius is clearly biased against Ptolemy IV and his clique; cf. Holbl, History, 133. HuB, Agypten,

474f.,also

regarding Polybius'account

skeptically,offers a reconstruction of the

sequenceof events.



350 JARCE 45 (2009)

Fig. 1. Silver Tetradrachm, PtolemyV. New York, American Numismatics

Society 1961.152.655. Courtesy ofthe American Numismatic

Society.

In the interim period of his nominal rule as a child, Ptolemy V was

presented to the populace through imposing gold octadrachms andsilver tetradrachms bearing his portrait on the obverse and an eagleon the reverse, encircled by the legend PTOLEMAIOU BASILEOS

(fig. I).6 The portrait's clear, simple lines, outlining a domed forehead, onto which fall thin locks of fine, straight hair, a narrow,

pointed nose, a huge round eye and a tiny mouth, communicate the

image of a frail, little boy, clad in the regalia of a monarch?chiton,

chlamys and the Hellenistic royal fillet. On some issues the diadem isdecorated with grain (fig. 1), while on other issues the boy wears aradiate diadem that appears to be interlaced with sprigs of wheat.7 At

approximately the same time were minted, evidently for a short period only, gold octadrachms and silver tetradrachms with the portraits of his recently deceased parents, Ptolemy Philopator and

Arsinoe Philopator.8 Thus, whether or not one or both of the Philopatores had been murdered, they were commemorated in grand styleonly a few years later.

Kyrieleis9 advanced the theory that the splendid gold and silver coins were first issued by Sosibiusand Agathocles in 204/3 as payment for the troops' loyalty. Grimm10 objected that these emissionscould not possibly have been minted before the demise of the two scheming opportunists in power,

who had no loyalist intentions whatsoever and quite possibly had murdered Ptolemy IV andArsinoe III. Destined primarily for members of the Alexandrian court and mercenaries in service tothe crown, with an explicit propagandistic message in support of the continuity of the Ptolemaic line,the coins must have been minted after the execution of Agathocles in late 203 to assure the populace

that the monarchy was not in jeopardy.11 These imposing coins were, then, intended by one of thesucceeding interim leaders to make a statement of a fresh beginning after the disastrous tyranny ofSosibius and Agathocles.

Not only was the survival of the Ptolemaic dynasty in Alexandria threatened upon the death of

Ptolemy Philopator, but serious social unrest sparked by anti-Greek factions plagued the countrysideas well. No doubt Polybius accurately assessed the situation, recognizing that domestic troubles had

begun when Ptolemy IV recruited, for the first time in significant numbers, Egyptian soldiers to aidthe Greco-Macedonian forces in defeating Antiochus III at Raphia in 217.12 The Ptolemaic victory

was due in major part to the effort of the Egyptians, but the ensuing political developments must

b Ioannes Nikolaos Svoronos, Ta nomismata ton kratous ton Ptolemaion (Athenai, 1904-1908) II, 175-83; III, pis. 41, 19.21.23

25; 42, 7.9-43; 43, 3.6.8.13; Helmut Kyrieleis, "Die Portratmunzen Ptolemaios' V. und seiner Eltern/'/ZM/ 88 (1973), 213-46, esp.218, figs. 3, 5-6, 8-11; idem, Bildnisse der Ptolemaer (Berlin, 1975), 52, pi. 40; Grimm, "Verbrannte Pharaonen?" fig. 3a.

'Svoronos, Ta nomismata, II, 176f.; Ill, pi. 41, nn. 15-18. Some issues on which the king's portrait is a bit plumper (pi. 41,

nos. 15, 17) might show him a few years older, but the sequence of the coins is not, to date, entirely certain. The conclusions ofSvoronos in his monumental work, despite all his important insights, contain numerous inaccuracies for this period and continueto be revised inmore recent publications.8

Kyrieleis, "Portratmunzen," 230-43, figs. 20-27, 30-34; Grimm, "Verbrannte Pharaonen?" 233, 246, figs, la, 2a.9

"Portratmunzen," 213ff., figs. Iff., esp. 236-38, 242-43; idem, Bildnisse, 52; Hu6, Agypten, 476, n. 23, disagrees for reasons of

chronology; see further his n. 9.10 "Verbrannte Pharaonen?" 245f., 249, n. 79; idem, "Der Ring des Aristomenes," AntWelt 28 (1977), 453-59, esp. 458f.11

Polybius (15. 25-31) states explicitly the mistrust that Tlepolemos had regarding Agathocles's concern for the youngking's welfare and the honorable intentions of Aristomenes towards the crown. As this is the only detailed source for the

period, caution must be used regarding some of the author's prejudicial accounts; see n. 5.12

Polybius 5.107, 2-3; HuG, Agypten,



CHESHIRE 351

have appeared to the native populace as crass ingratitude. After the war, all significant governingpower was immediately returned to the Greco-Macedonian military aristocracy. R W. Pestman,13 re

constructing the sequence of events leading up to and during the native revolts, cited incidents of

sporadic internal unrest as early as 213. A rebellion of significant proportions erupted in 207/6 that,

according to an inscription at Edfu,14 forced work on the decoration of the temple there to be halted.In 215/4, as part of a program to make his great-grandparents, Ptolemy I and Berenice I, dynastic

gods at the head of what was, essentially, the Thirty-First Egyptian Dynasty, Ptolemy IV installed asecond college of eponymous priests of the Ptolemies, parallel to the priesthood inAlexandria, in the

Upper Egyptian town of Ptolemais.15 There, Ptolemy I Soter already received cultic honors as thefounder?hews ktistes?of the city,16 which had a polls structure with an autonomous Greek system ofadministration.17 Philopator also transferred there from Thebes all the top administration of UpperEgypt: the strategos (who later became epistrategos of the Thebaid), oikonomos, basilikos grammateus,sitologos, trapezites, and the epistates ton hierdn.18 The addition of eponymous priests of the Ptolemiesdrew prestige to that minor locality as a pro-Alexandrian foil to the Amun priests of Thebes. Resis

tance in Thebes is revealed in the dating formula in contracts drawn up by scribes of the local Amunpriests omitting a clause mentioning the "eponymous priests of the Ptolemies in Ptolemais."19 Thebeshad broken away from the Macedonian rule, but there is no evidence that the Ptolemies ever relin

quished control over Ptolemais during the period of the Upper Egyptian rebellion.20 SuperficiallyThebes kept its venerable tradition in the integrity of the Thebaid as a topographical entity (pi ts n

Nw.t)21 but in reality most of its governing and fiscal powers had been stripped away.There were undoubtedly various causes for the social unrest in the Thebaid, and Polybius is not

likely to have been informed about all of them. Vandorpe22 suggested that the revolt was primarilytriggered by a "decline in living conditions," while Holbl23 cited the taxes imposed on the populaceas a cause. Clearly the reason for the success of the native revolt in Upper Egypt was recognized by

Polybius?the growing self-confidence of the Egyptian population, who had so effectively contributedto defeat the army of Antiochus III at Raphia.24 Not only had the native Egyptians been empoweredat that time to fight the enemy, but they had gained training, weapons and experience in fightingagainst the army of another Hellenistic kingdom. Had they had any serious grievances before against

13"Haronnophris and Chaonnophris," in Sven P. Vleeming, ed., Hundred-Gated Thebes. Acts of a Colloquium on Thebes and

the Theban Area in the Graeco-Roman Period. PLBat 27 (Leiden, 1995), 101-37, with reference to earlier literature; also HuB,

Agypten, 445-49, 504-13, on the conflict.14

Eddy Lanciers, "Die agyptischen Tempelbauten zur Zeit Ptolemaios' V. Epiphanes, Teil I,"MDAIK 42 (1986), 81-98, esp.94; idem, "Tempelbauten, Teil II,"MDAIK 43 (1987), 173-82, esp. 180; HuB, Agypten, 444f.; Anne-Emanuelle Veisse, Les "revoltes egyptiennes": Recherches sur les troubles interieurs en Egypte du regne de Ptolemee IIIEvergete a la conquete romaine. StudHell 41

(Leuven, 2004), 14f., 22-26.15Gerhard Plaumann, Ptolemais in Oberdgypten. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte des Hellenismus in Agypten. AAWL 18 (1910), 160;

W. Clarysse and G. Van der Veken, The Eponymous Priests of tolemaic Egypt. PLBat 24 (Leiden, 1983), 40-52.16W. Otto, Priesterund Tempel im hellenistischen Agypten I (Leipzig?Berlin, 1905), 160ff.: Plaumann, Ptolemais, 39-54. Accord

ing to Plaumann, Ptolemais, 51-53, Ptolemy Soter is never called a god in these sources.17

Plaumann, Ptolemais, 4-24.18These administrative changes are presented and analyzed by Katelijn Vandorpe, "City of Many a Gate, Harbour for Many

a Rebel," in Vleeming, ed., Hundred-Gated Thebes, 203-39, esp. 210.19

Veisse, Les revokes, 230f.20

Veisse, Les revokes, 18.21

Vandorpe, "City of Many a Gate," 210.22

"City of Many a Gate," 232.23

H6M, History, 131, 153f.24

Polybius 5. 82, 6; 85, 8; 65, 9; 107, 1-3; K. Goudriaan, Ethnicity inPtolemaic Egypt (Amsterdam, 1988), 121-25; Jan K. Win

nicki, "Das ptolemaische und das hellenistische Heerwesen," Egitto (1988), 213-30; Holbl, History, 129ff., esp. 131; Veisse, Lesrevokes, 5f.,



352 JARCE 45 (2009)

Hg. 2. Bronze Pancratiasts'

group. Athens, National Muse

um, Dimitriou Collection ANE

2547. Courtesy of theNationalArcheological Museum Athens.

the regime inAlexandria, they were inadvertently already mobilized, ina sense, to collectively show their displeasure.25

The native revolt was already fully underway when the public learnedthat Ptolemy IV and Arsinoe III had died, both under unrevealed cir

cumstances, and the two non-royal courtiers publicly displayed the ashurns with the presumed cremated remains of both rulers.26 Grimm27drew attention to the fact that the cremation of the dead, while an honored practice even among royalty in Macedonian religious tradition,would have been a horrifying concept to the Egyptians, in particularwhen it involved their king. The well-being of their own country de

pended on the proper mummification and burial of their pharaoh ac

cording to the most elaborate funerary rituals in their repertoire.Complete destruction of the king's corpse by fire was a horror to Egyptian religious sensibility; only hard criminals and enemies were occa

sionally sentenced to death by burning.28 The cremation of the king'scorpse thus demonstrated the interim regime's lack of respect or interest in the customs of the vast majority of the population they ruled.

Nothing can more directly visualize the enormity of the situation intowhich the young Ptolemy V was thrust after the death of his father thana bronze statuette in Athens (fig. 2) representing a small child as a victorious fighter versus a fallen enemy in the brutal sport of pankration.29

Its significance can perhaps be best appreciated through the eyes of an art historian. The Athens statuette belongs to a specifically Greco-Egyptian type of small bronzes of two competing athletes, inwhich the standing, victorious combatant is always either a king or one of the patron gods of the gym

nasium,Heracles or

Hermes.30The defeated

athlete,who has fallen to his knees and is

pinneddown

by his opponent, is generally portrayed with coarse or barbaric features. The earliest known replicaof the type, a bronze statuette in Istanbul, was created around mid-third century BC and was supposed by Kyrieleis to be a copy of amonumental scale original that commemorated Ptolemy Ill's vie

25A parallel can be drawn to the rampant outbreak of violent crime in the United States after the end of the Civil War,in which virtually every able-bodied male citizen had participated. Once the war was over, a previously unimagined number

of social outcasts and disenfranchised veterans took to the streets, using the weapons and martial skills they had acquired inthe army to loot and murder, soon giving birth to the reputation of the "Wild West." On the problems raised by anachoresis

beginning in the late third century in Egypt, see Winnicki, "Heerwesen."26

Possibly only the king's corpse was cremated. Polybius (15.25) relates that the silver urn of Arsinoe III was filled only with

spices (ardmata).27 "Verbrannte Pharaonen?" 235, 239-45, 248; idem, "Der Ring," 454, 462.28Renate Muller-Wollermann, Vergehen und Strafen. Zur Sanktionierung abweichenden Verhaltens im alten Agypten, PA 21

(Leiden-Boston, 2004), 60, 74, 97; Giinter Vittmann,"

'Feinde' in den ptolemaischen Synodaldekreten," in Heinz Felber, ed.,Feinde und Aufruhr. Konzepte von Gegnerschaft in dgyptischen Texten besonders desMittleren Reiches (Leipzig, 2005), 206 with n. 45.

29Athens, National Museum, Dimitriou Collection ANE 2547: Helmut Kyrieleis, "Kathaper Hermes kai Hows" AntPlas 12

(1973), 133ff., no. 3, figs. 4-9,15; idem, Bildnisse, 54f., 173, cat. no. E6, pi. 43; Brigitte Frohlich, "Die statuarischen Darstellun

gen der hellenistischen Herrscher," Antiquitates 14 (1998), 107ff., 260, cat. no. 2 (bibliog.), fig. 3. The brutal sport of pankrationcomprised techniques of wrestling while allowing more savage moves such as biting, kicking, and wrenching the limbs back in

painful positions, the latter of which is illustrated in Greco-Egyptian bronze groups; see E. N. Gardiner, Athletics of the AncientWorld (Oxford, 1930 = 2nd ed. Chicago, 1980), 212-21; John Arvanitis, Pankration. The Traditional Greek Combat Sport andModern Mixed Martial Art (Boulder, Colorado, 2003).

30Kyrieleis, "Kathaper Hermes" 133-46; Christian Kunze, Zum Greifen Nah. Stilphanomene in der hellenistischen Skulptur und

ihre nachhaltige Interpretation (Munich, 2002), 155ff. with bibliog. in n. 860; Wendy Cheshire, The Bronzes of Ptolemy II Philadelphus, AAT 77 (Wiesbaden, 2009),



CHESHIRE 353

tory over Antiochus II in the Third Syrian War.31 Koenen32 believed it to symbolize Ptolemy IPsdefeat of a rebellion by Gaulish mercenaries in the Egyptian Delta in 274.33 The original monument,

following Greek tradition, probably commemorated a specific historical event,34 and it is likely thatthe sporadic small-scale replicas were produced at specific occasions involving athletic competitions,as

well. The symbolism of the compositionas

the triumph of the kingover

the forces of chaos wastimeless. The majority of these small bronze groups35 show an imitation of certain aspects of Egyptian style; they are rigidly oriented in basic geometric forms, their poses static, their limbs bent at

right angles or forming isosceles triangles after the traditional canons of Pharaonic art, enacting the

timeless, standard formula of the invincible king smiting the hapless enemy.36The Athens group (fig. 2) differs from the other replicas of the type in its spatially open, centrifugal

composition?an unmistakable take-off on the Ludovisi Gaul and other works of the Middle Hellenistic baroque style emanating from Pergamum.37 The victorious youth in this group is not steadily gazing down upon his easy conquest, as it appears on the other replicas; instead his body is twisted in a

spiraling movement, his head thrust back in his neck and directing a gaze of pathos towards the heav

ens,in

accordance with theHellenistic Greek taste for

expressive representation.The

eleganceof the

composition, avoiding jarring angles or lumpy, baroque modeling, might reflect Alexandrian taste,but the centrifugal torsion of the victor's body and his open gaze out into the distance are elementsof contemporary Middle Hellenistic style. The snakelike, loosely spiraling motion and long, smooth

limbs, along with the fluid turn of the head far upwards and around to the right, the mouth slightlyopened but the face not contorted, are comparable on a bronze Nike figure that formed part of the

plastic decoration of aHellenistic bronze vessel discovered at Vani in Georgia.38 The publishers' dat

ing of the Vani vase, along with several additional, spectacular bronze appliques that came from thisor another similar large vessel, in the second half of the second century on the basis of the elongated,slender proportions of the Nike is certainly too late. The beautiful head appliques of Pan, Ariadne, a

satyrand a

pairof maenads39 are characterized

bythe vibrant

modelingof

swellingflesh

surfaces,which appear to pulsate, breathlessly parted lips and an intense heavenward gaze that keenly recallthe Nyx on the Great Altar of Zeus from Pergamum,40 or in the case of the Pan applique head, someof the giants on the same frieze.41 The head of Pan42 is astonishingly similar to the fallen enemy ofthe Athens pancratiasts' group although more grotesque, appropriate to his half-human, half-animalform.43 The angular articulated surfaces of the goat god's prominent cheekbones, beneath which the

31Kyrieleis, "Kathaper Hermes," 142.

32Ludwig Koenen, "Die Adaptation agyptischer Konigsideologie am Ptolemaerhof," in E. Van't Dack, P. Van Dessel, and

W. van Gucht, eds., Egypt and the ellenistic World. StudHell 27 (Leuven, 1983), 143-90, esp. 170f.33 For the historical interpretations and origin of the group, see Kyrieleis, "Kathaper Hermes," 136f.; Koenen (see n. 31);

Cheshire, The Bronzes of Ptolemy II, 194ff., with references to additional literature.

34Cf. J. J. Pollitt, Art in theHellenistic Age (Cambridge, 1986), 266-68; R. R. R. Smith, Hellenistic Sculpture (London, 1991),11-14; the words of caution by Brunilde S. Ridgway in Ellen Reeder, ed., Hellenistic Art in theWalters Art Gallery (Baltimore,1988), 29-30, are worth noting, but definitely too pessimistic.35

Examples listed by Kyrieleis, "Kathaper Hermes," 133ff.36

Kyrieleis, "Kathaper Hermes," 136f.; Cheshire, The Bronzes ofPtolemy II, 60-64.37Cf. Arnold Schober, Die Kunst von Pergamon (Bregenz, 1951), 53ff., figs. 6f., 13f., 28f.; Ludger Alscher, Griechische Plastik

IV (Berlin, 1957), 52ff., 250 (Index), fig. 13a-c.38Otar Lordkipanitze, "La Georgie et le monde grec," BCH 98 (1974), 925ff., fig. 15.39

Lordkipanitze, "La Georgie," fig. 16a-e; idem, Vani, une Pompei georgienne (Besancon, 1995), 37-41; Michael Vickers, in

Jennifer Y. Chi, ed., Wine, Worship, and Sacrifice: The Golden Graves of Ancient Vani (Princeton, 2008), 41, fig. 16; DarejanKacharava and Guram Kvirkvelia, in Chi, ed., Wine, Worship and Sacrifice, 118-24, figs. 5-10.

40Heinz Kahler, Pergamon. Bilderhefte Antiker Kunst 9, ed. DAI (Berlin, 1949), pi. 28.41

Kahler, Pergamon, pis. 32, 33b.42

Chi, ed., Wine, Worship and Sacrifice, 41, fig. 16, 118f., fig. 5a, b.43Cf. Kyrieleis, "Kathaper Hermes" fig.



354 JARCE 45 (2009)

lean cheeks form sunken hollows, the clearly offset, wavy ridges of the eyebrows, even the expressionof the eyes and the piercing of the pupils are stylistically comparable to the Athens group. A significant difference on the Alexandrian statuette is that?typically for the reticence of Egyptian art?the

mouth of the fallen combatant is closed, the face showing little expression despite the pain of hisstrained

position.The

elongatedlimbs of the Nike from the Vani urn are a

peculiarityof the

type; appliques of a shield-bearing Nike that are incessantly repeated on black-glazed hydriai and amphorae44already in the first half of the third century have taken on elongated proportions, or appear that wayin their twisted movements, adjusted to the arched form of the shoulder of the vase. The Vani bronze

Nike, which along with the other appliques from the vessel was doubtless manufactured in a majorcenter such as Pergamum, should be dated in the decades around 180 BC, the Athens pancratiastgroup during the reign of Ptolemy V, 205/4-180.

Not only respective of style is the Athens statuette unique within the type, but also because the victor's head is represented as decidedly childish, almost babyish. Helmut Kyrieleis convincingly attrib

uted the portrait to Ptolemy V.45 The domed forehead, short-cropped locks of thin hair, the pointed,

slightlyarched

nose, largeround

eyesand a

tinymouth

undeniably representthe same

boywho is

portrayed on the gold and silver PTOLEMAIOUBASILEOS coins(fig. 1). Certain features on the coin

portrait?the long, pointed nose, the bony, protruding chin, the tightened facial expression, rings offlesh around the neck?would not have appeared in this manner on a young child but were exaggerated by the glyptic artist in Egyptianizing taste to give the boy king's image amore mature effect. Portraits of Ptolemy V from his later years show that he did not, in fact, grow up to look much like the

early coin images (see infra). The cheeks of the Athens bronze "king as pancratiast" are fuller and thenose smaller than on the coin images, on this piece rendered according to a Hellenistic Greek artist's

interpretation of a little boy. The Athens bronze portrait figure of Ptolemy V provides a date for theentire statuette some time within his reign but most probably during his childhood rule under guard

ianship.The coin

portrait typesof

PtolemyV as a little

boycontinued to be minted until he reached

adolescence and was crowned sole ruler in 197.46 The body of the victorious athlete belongs to a

young man rather than a small child, but the babyish face reveals his tender age.Throughout his years under the guardianship of courtiers, the official portraiture of the orphaned

Ptolemy V retained the image of a small, frail child in a huge role. This sort of propaganda paralleled,in a sense, the native Egyptian image of a boy pharaoh (such as Tutankhamun) or the designated heirto the throne; regardless of the age of the prince regent, he could still have been represented in official contexts, such as on temple walls, with a long braid of hair on one side of his head, the symbol ofa young child.47 An alabaster head in Berlin48 portraying Ptolemy V adorned with a Hellenistic diadem, an Egyptian youth lock and the crown of Upper and Lower Egypt (pschent) represents the boypharaoh at this time with the pinched, caricaturized facial features seen on his coins. The essentialdifference on the Greek bronze work is that the artist emphasized the childishness in the Athensvictor's chubby-cheeked, cherubic face with its wide eyes and tiny, slightly parted lips, in a sentimental

manner that was far from heroic but appealed to popular taste in the Hellenistic Greek world. The

44Cf. Wolfgang Zuchner, "Vom Topfer und Toreut,"/?A765/66 (1950/51), 190ff., figs. 23-25 (with additional references).45"Kathaper Hermes"139f.; idem, Bildnisse, 54f. On the ambiguity or idealization on portraits of the king in the other repli

cas, two of which may represent Ptolemy III, see Cheshire, The Bronzes ofPtolemy II, 196f., 200, 202f.46

Kyrieleis, "Portratmiinzen," 224, 230, 240, 242f.47On the Egyptian precedent for the image of a child king, see, for example, HuB, Agypten, 534f.48

Agyptisches Museum 14568: Kyrieleis, Bildnisse, 54ff., 134ff., 172, cat. no. El, pi. 41,1-4; Klaus Parlasca in Herwig

Maehler and Volker Michael Strocka, eds., Das ptolemdische Agypten. Akten des internationalen Symposions, 27-29. September1976 (Mainz, 1978), 28; Grimm, "Der Ring," 462f., 467, fig.



CHESHIRE 355

third century Sicilian poet, Theocritus, composed a touching idyll about the mythical child hero,Heracliscus, and his superhuman feats already in infancy, but the poem was actually a thinly disguisedmetaphor for Ptolemy Philadelphus' own princely upbringing.49 Like the victorious athlete of theAthens bronze group, Heracliscus was represented inHellenistic art, as well as inAlexandrian court

poetry, as an adorable child, sometimes humorous but never with anywhere near the sobriety ofEgyptian deities or crown princes. The precise date of the creation of the Athens statuette can not be

gained through style analysis alone, but the artist's emphasis on the childlike features of the king,including the long hair of a youthful Apollo, seem to imply that he had not yet attained his majority.

The small scale group, which is of high artistic quality, might have been created as a memento fora prestigious visitor or a successful competitor at the Ptolemaieia held at Alexandria in 203/2 or in

199/8, possibly to stand in the gymnasium in their own home town.50

Already in 199/8, two years before his coronation, the young Ptolemy received an eponymous cultas King Ptolemaios Epiphanes, translated in Egyptian Pr-(i Ptlwmys (pi ntr) nty pr, pi i-irpr, etc., or "thePharaoh Ptolemaios, (the god) who comes forth." The cult was served by the Priest of Alexander

the Greatin

Alexandria, while parallelto

that,a

cult of the living pharaohwas

installed alongside thecult of Ptolemy Soter in Ptolemais.51 Holbl52 was certainly correct in observing that the first mentionof the Upper Egyptian priestly office in a Theban papyrus of 199 occurred at a time when the proAlexandrian forces had temporarily seized control of the city, which had strong leanings towards the

Egyptian rebels (see infra). The innovation in the Upper Egyptian ruler cult at that time, somewhat

prematurely elevating the young Ptolemy V to divine status, may thus have been a politically moti

vated, opportunistic move to reinforce the crown's influence, particularly in the South and amongthe native populace.53

In receiving the byname Epiphanes, Ptolemy V was the first king of his line to receive a non-secular

epiclesis with an implication of transcendence?with the possible exception of Ptolemy Soter, whosetitle was

primarilyderived from a

militarysuccess but had divine

parallels.The

epithet undoubtedlydrew on the Egyptian perception of the royal presence as a dazzling or glorious epiphany, like thesun or a star in the sky.54 Although Ptolemy V had not yet attained majority as was necessary forhis ritual coronation by the High Priest of Ptah inMemphis, the concept of the royal epiphany wasinherent to Egyptian kingship since remote antiquity. The term for "making an appearance as king"(obviously at the Window of Appearances of the palace but on occasion of any royal audience or

visit), used also to express "accession to the throne," the verb h(y, was actually an extended meaningof the word for the rising or the shining of the sun.55 Clearly the likening of the king's appearance tothe sun in the skywas a grandiose statement, and thus the term hcywas reserved for festive uses.56 As

49Ludwig Koenen, Eine agonistische Inschrift und fruhptolemdische Konigsfeste (Meisenheim am Glan, 1977), 80ff.; Cheshire,

The Bronzes ofPtolemy II, 163-68.50On these celebrations of the Ptolemaieia, see the remarks of Holbl, History, 171.51

Pestman, Chronologie, 137f.; Minas, Ahnenreihen, 12If.52Donald Redford, History and Chronology of the Eighteenth Dynasty ofEgypt. Seven Studies (Toronto, 1967), 171.53Martina Minas, Die hieroglyphischen Ahnenreihen der ptolemaischen Kbnige, Aegyptiaca Treverensia 9 (Mainz, 2000), 122,

124, supposes that the reforms in the ruler cult under Ptolemy V were introduced on the occasion of the Ptolemaieia held in

Alexandria in 199/8. It is easy to imagine that the holders of the new cult offices were introduced to the public within one of

the customary festive processions on occasion of the games in the capital, but it is far less likely that administrative changes in

the ruler cult apparatus would have been undertaken solely on the basis of such a frivolous venue.54

Redford, History, 3ff.; HuB, Agypten, 505. On the significance of the Greek byname Epiphanes, see also Ludwig Koenen,"Die Adaptation agyptischer Konigsideologie," 168f., and idem, "The Ptolemaic King as a Religious Figure," in A. Bullochet al., eds., Images and Ideologies. Self-definition in the ellenistic World (Berkeley-Los Angeles, 1993), 64-66, 79.

55Wb. Ill, 239-41; Erichsen, Glossar, 359f.; Redford, History, 3-27.56Redford, History,



356 JARCE 45 (2009)

far as traditional Egyptian practice was concerned, there had, as yet, been no festive inauguration. In terms of the Egyptian calendar, there was also no interim regency, however, and the boyking's reign began the day after his father's death as "year one" of the new pharaoh. In this way, alacuna in the dating system was avoided, as was a hiatus in the vital presence of a pharaoh guiding theland.57 Polybius (15. 25) relates of the hastily arranged proclamation of the new king in Alexandria,at which time he first donned the diadem of a Hellenistic monarch. The perception of divine kingship would have been obvious not only to every Egyptian, but also to every Greek immigrant to Egypt

who had walked past a native temple, ever seen the pyramids or witnessed a native religious celebration. In that sense, the proclamation of the young Ptolemy V as "The Manifest God" had a traditionalfoundation in Egyptian religion, even though his coronation was still some two years away.58

Ptolemy V was given the additional byname Eucharistos, "bringer of good will/graciousness," forwhich the Egyptian translations vary between a phonetic writing (iwkrsts, etc.) and approximate translations into colloquial Egyptian, meaning "the doer of good things" (pi i-ir md.t nfr.t, pi ir ni-nfr.w,etc.).59 Koenen60 suggested that this title reverted to the Pharaonic epithet for the king, ntr nfr, "the

good god," and this may well be what the Egyptians were thinking. Yet the fact that the Egyptian scribes

struggled to find a proper equivalent for the Greek term suggests that the concept of eucharistos was not

quite inherent to their own royal ideology. A rarely attested epithet of Ptolemy V in Demotic, pi nb (pi)sp, was also thought by Zauzich and de Cenival to be a translation of Eucharistos.61 The uncommonDemotic phrase, which might be translated "the Lord of Reward," reveals that the new royal bynamesand their variants were probably intended to instill in the populace some sense of hope in their new

pharaoh.62 The concept of the king rewarding his subjects, in particular his mercenary soldiers, fortheir service recalls the statement of Polybius about the two guardians of the young king paying the

military to remain loyal to the crown during the transition regime,63 and it corresponds well to the

symbolic imagery of the coins of Ptolemy V (see infra). Itwas presumably due to the peculiar circumstances of the child rule and the urgent need for a ruler on the throne in a time of social uprising that

numerous variants for the king's epiclesis appeared almost at once, all giving approximate equivalents for the concept of being pharaoh. This explanation of an ad hoc solution is supported by thefact that the epithet Eucharistos disappears again from the titulary of Ptolemy V after his marriage to

Cleopatra I in 195.64

57Redford, History, 12, 19-22, 25.

58 In this sense also Minas, Ahnenreihen, 122.59

Pestman, Chronologie, 42, 161; Minas, Ahnenreihen, 121-24, with references to earlier literature.60 "Die Adaptation agyptischer Konigsideologie," 157, 168; Giinter Vittmann, "Zu den agyptischen Wiedergaben von Eupa

tor," GM 46 (1981), 21-26, esp. 21; Holbl, History, 166.61Karl-Th. Zauzich, Die dgyptische Schreibertradition in Aufbau, Sprache und Schrift der demotischen Kaufvertrdge aus ptolemdischer

Zeit (Wiesbaden, 1968), I, 110; Francoise de Cenival, "Un acte de renonciation consecutif a un partage de revenus liturgiquesmemphites (P. Louvre E 3266)," BIFAO 71 (1972), 32, 52, n. 2. Minas, Ahnenreihen, 123, n. 470, notes that this rare title is notincluded in Pestman, Chronologie.62Cf. Erichsen, Glossar, 502, s.v. "sp? Werner HuB, Agypten, 534f. and idem, "Ptolemaios V. als Harpokrates?" AncSoc 36

(2006), 45-48, esp. 48, commented on the intentions of the court propaganda to instill the populace with hope that their new

young king would bring them prosperity.63 See nn. 3-4.64The assessment of Carl G.Johnson, "Ptolemy V and the Rosetta Decree," AncSoc 26 (1995), 145-55, that Egyptian influ

ence was not present in the Greek version of the Rosetta Decree is based on the expectation that a translation from the con

servative, hieroglyphic titulary to the Hellenistic Greek would have been an exact duplicate in meaning. This was not alwayspossible due to the large philosophical disparities between the two cultures, but it can not be denied that the Egyptian perception of the pharaoh as Horus, the son of the sun god Amun-Ra, enveloped in a

mystiqueof ceremony, material wealth and un

touchable power, must have made an impression on them.



CHESHIRE 357

The Egyptian scribes, undoubtedly receiving their instructions from the King's Scribe, the sh nswwho worked in conjunction with the High Priest of Ptah in Memphis, translated Epiphanes back intoDemotic and into hieroglyphs using the verb pr, literally "to come out of, come forth."65 The wordprwas used not only for such expressions as "the sun coming forth above the horizon," but in colloquial

language in countless different mundane contexts. The common formula from Demotic legal contracts? nty nb nty prn-im=w, "everything that comes out of them (i.e., out of said business obligations),"

meaning "all future proceeds," suffices to demonstrate the potential banality of the term.66 In thecase of the king, pi nty pr provided an Egyptian term for the Greek byname suggesting a divine visionbut has a nuance of "the one who comes forth (next)," or inmodern terms, "the natural successor,"

just as epiphanein had a basic sense in Greek of "to show up, be present." That is to say, help was onthe way or a new age had arrived. That the Egyptian scribe knew well that the word h(y was the actual

theological equivalent to express the king's "appearance" in the glory of his position is evident in the

frequent writings of the hieroglyphic titulary of Epiphanes inwhich the house phonogram (for pr) hasbeen replaced by the rising sun disc with rays beaming down to earth (which could also have been

read h(y).67Kyrieleis68 surmised that a small group of gold octadrachms and silver tetradrachms of Ptolemy V

that are labeled on the reverse with the legend PTOLEMAIOY EPIPHANOUS, "of Ptolemy, the Manifest One," instead of BASILEOS PTOLEMAIOY, must refer to the boy's Egyptian coronation in

Memphis in 197/6, shortly after his celebration of majority (anakleteria) in Alexandria. It is indeed

logical to assume that new coin types of Ptolemy Epiphanes were issued to commemorate the cere

mony in the capital, which was primarily directed at the young Ptolemy's Greek subjects, reaffirmingthat the boy had a strong hold on the throne. Since, however, a ruler cult for the "Manifest God"

(Theos Epiphanes) was already installed in Alexandria and Ptolemais in 199/8, undoubtedly with theintent of bolstering the shaky authority of the underage king, his court advisors might have issued the

festive PTOLEMAIOU EPIPHANOUS coins a few years earlier as well, possibly distributing them as apayoff to his allies. It isnoteworthy that the king's portrait on these coins often still appears to be thatof a young child. If the coins with the ruler's official epiclesis were first issued tomark his celebrationof majority, a more mature portrait type would presumably have been used. A silver tetradrachm in

Trier,69 among others, appears to convey a sense of solemnity appropriate to a youth coming of ageand facing the responsibilities of a king, but there is still uncertainty in the chronology of the individual issues.

Already Svoronos70 saw a connection between the various monograms on the splendid octadrachmsand tetradrachms of Ptolemy V and the names of the most influential military leaders and courtiersaround the child, as were described in such detail by Polybius. Kyrieleis71 recognized the place of the

PtolemyIV and Arsinoe III

goldoctadrachms not in the later

yearsof the

Philopatores,as did

Svoronos, but alongside the festive Ptolemy V emissions all as part of a propaganda effort on behalfof the guardians of the underage king. The re-ordering of the Philopatores festive emissions, which

carry many of the identical monograms to the early Ptolemy V coins, necessitated a scholarly revisionof some of the mint attributions, which were dependent on the chronology of the vacillating relations

65Wb. I, 518.66

Erichsen, Glossar, 134.67

Gauthier, Livre des rois IV, 348-30, nos. 75B, 76B, 77A, 78, 80.68

Portratmunzen," 218, as did earlier Svoronos, Ta nomismata IV, 257f.69Universitat Trier OL 1997.1: Grimm, "Der Ring," 453, fig. la-b.

70Ta nomismata IV, 224-28, 257-68, 271-75.71

"Portratmunzen," 215-43.



358 JARCE 45 (2009)

of key figures at the Ptolemaic court. Thus coins with the monogram ZQ, identified by Svoronos72 as

Sosibius, a close advisor to Ptolemy III and after him to Ptolemy IV, were argued by Kyrieleis73 not tohave been minted until early in the reign of Ptolemy V. Grimm,74 meanwhile, has shown that, on

chronological grounds, the monogram must refer to another Sosibius (II), the politically active son ofthe illustrious court advisor of the same name. Silver and

gold coinageof

PtolemyV, on which the

king is represented carrying a lance on his shoulder, other times a small lance tip appearing as a

monogram only,75 can fairly certainly be attributed to a well-known military officer in the cliquearound Ptolemy V. The lance monogram is otherwise attested on coinages of central and northwestern Greece, particularly inAetolia, and itwas a symbol of the Aetolian League.76 The accompanyingletters II, K, A, ?, O on certain of these coins have been read as the mark of the mint of Scopas, the

Aetolian strategus who was recruiting mercenaries in central Greece for the young Ptolemy V in either203/2 or 199.77 Although this decipherment of the monogram has been doubted by M0rkholm,78 it

appears historically well grounded. Among other things, Scopas led these Greek troops againstAntiochus III in the Fifth Syrian War and perhaps afterward to help the Ptolemies quell the uprisingof Egyptian insurgents in the Thebais.79 Another monogram found frequently on these coins hasbeen deciphered as that of AP for the Acarnanian Ar(istomenes), an illustrious military and politicalleader who, after holding the offices of Priest of Alexander and archisomatophylax, took over the

guardianship role of the young Ptolemy V from 201/0 until the boy was crowned in 197/6, and continued to advise him thereafter until forced to commit suicide in 192.80 Regency emissions marked

with the monogram TIO have been attributed with probability to the mint of Po(lycrates), an eminentcourtier and governor of Cyprus who sided politically with Aristomenes and led amilitary campaignto subdue the Upper Egyptian rebels.81 A suggested attribution of portrait coins monogrammed with

NI to Ni(kon), an admiral in the navy under Ptolemy IV and amember of the clique of Agathocles,82has been questioned by Grimm on the grounds that the position of the former at court would have

disappeared with the assassination of Agathocles in 203.83 The Second Philensis Decree, inscribedonto the walls of the Isis Temple in Philae in the latter part of the reign of Ptolemy V,84 credits the

king with having deployed Greek troops to guard the temples, and relates that he recruited additional Greek soldiers abroad, supporting the evidence known for Scopas and Aristomenes. The grain

motif of the coin images may have referred to the livelihood of the mercenaries when at home inGreece. As they were often farmers, their crops might have been ravaged in times of war or falleninto disuse in their absence, causing extreme hardship to their families at home.85

72Ta nomismata IV, 225ff.73 See n. 9.74 See n. 10.75

Rickham, Corn Supply, 216ff.76Kyrieleis, "Portratmunzen," 217, 218, 220, n. 26; BMC Thessaly-Aetolia, 194f., nn. 1, 2, 4ff.; 196, nn. 16ff.

77Svoronos, Ta nomismata IV, cols. 263f.; Kyrieleis, "Portratmunzen," 218, 219f.; HuB, Agypten, 478, n. 37. Polybius 18.53f.

notes that Scopas was poisoned in Alexandria in 197. According to Kyrieleis, 220, in the Epiphanes coins with the lance"... programmatisch eine besondere Verbundenheit mit dem traditionellen Soldner-Reservoir Mittelgriechenland demonstriert werdensollte"

78 "Some coins of Ptolemy V from Palestine," INJ 5 (1981), 6f.79

HuB, Agypten, 490-92, 502-3, 508.80

Svoronos, Ta nomismata, 257; Kyrieleis, "Portratmunzen," 215-18; Grimm, "Der Ring," 453ff.81

Kyrieleis, "Die Portratmunzen," 225; HuB, Agypten, 503 n. 10, 504, 508, 512, 521. The attribution of the monogram to

Polycrates has been doubted by M0rkholm, "Some coins of Ptolemy V from Palestine," 5.82

Kyrieleis, "Die Portratmunzen," 223-30; HuB, Agypten, 480.83 "Verbrannte Pharaonen?" 249, n. 79.84Urk.

II, 222.8-223.8; cf. idem, "Die historische Bedeutung," 45; Lanciers, "Tempelbauten, II," 179; LdA 4, 1027f., s.v."Philensis-Dekrete" (Erich Winter).85

Garnsey, Famine, 111, 145.



CHESHIRE 359

The decoration of the royal diadem on coin portraits (tetradrachms and octadrachms) of PtolemyV with small ears of grain on the Hellenistic royal fillet (fig. I)86 and on others with a radiate crown,

possibly with blades of grain alternating between the sun's rays,87 is a unique feature of the coinsof Ptolemy V and, as shall be demonstrated below, of his consort, Cleopatra I.A common scholarlyinterpretation of the diadem woven with

grain sprigstransposed in terms of Pharaonic

Egyptiantheology88 assumes a connection of the wheat/barleycorn motif with the chthonic, regenerative as

pect of Osiris. Another early interpretation89 attributed the symbolism of the grain in the king's diadem to the chthonic cult of Ptah, in whose Memphite temple the king was crowned, but Kyrieleis90observed that the grain ears already occurred on Phoenician coins that must date before 199, two

years before the coronation. As the sources of grain varied according to time and need, the symbolism would probably not have been of a specific local nature. Egyptian iconography or the familiar

imagery of the fecundity of the Land of the Nile91 is nowhere tangibly referred to in the symbolismof the coins. The actual message of the grain?which occurs on the coinage of this royal couplealone?is probably quite the opposite: the paucity of domestic grain reserves due to the native uprisings, necessitating the importation of emergency supplies through the crown's intervention.

The Egyptian ceremony of enthronization, not performed until Ptolemy V was declared of age in

197/6, made a statement to the populace that the leaders of the rebels in Upper Egypt, who hadmeanwhile assumed titularies of Egyptian kings and driven pro-Ptolemaic factions out of manyUpper Egyptian settlements and temples (see infra), were not legitimate pharaohs.92 At his coronation by the High Priest of Ptah inMemphis, Ptolemy V received the Horus name of hwn h(y m nswt hrst it=f ("the youth who appears as king on the throne of his father"),93 a phraseology only slightlyvaried from the titulary of his father, Ptolemy IV, hwn kny sh(-sw it=f ("strong youth, whose father

made him appear as king").94 It can thus be argued that the Greek epiclesis Epiphanes for Ptolemy Vwas derived from the native concept for a festive appearance, for which the relevant titulary would

only be granted to him officially when his Horus name was bestowed upon him at his Egyptiancoronation.

The coin portrait of a child wearing a radiate crown, possibly interlaced with blades of grain, alludesto his epiphany?dependable like the dazzling sun above the horizon?with a guarantee of protectionof his people and their vital needs. The coronation ceremonies, as related in the Rosetta Decree,included the execution of numerous Egyptian dissidents?another pointed political statement defyingthe rebels in the South, featuring the new king in the traditional pharaonic model of the triumph oforder over chaos.95 The same achievement, paralleled in divine terms in Egyptian religion by the

victory of Horus over Seth, is represented in the bronze pancratiast group inAthens (fig. 2). PtolemyEpiphanes' restoration of peace after the subjugation of the native revolt inUpper Egypt was praisedin the Rosetta Decree of 196 and in the Philensis Decrees.96 It was proclaimed in these documents

86One has to imagine these woven in gold thread or wrought of gold filigree and affixed to the diadem.87 Svoronos, Ta nomismata III, pi. 41, 15ff.; IV, 263-66; 271-75; Kyrieleis, "Portratmiinzen," 218ff., fig. 3; idem, Bildnisse, 52,

pi. 40, 4; Grimm, "Verbrannte Pharaonen?" figs. 3a, 4a.88

Reginald Stuart Poole, BMC Ptolemies, 48, 60 ("Osiris/Serapis"); A. B. Brett, AmNumSocMus Notes 2 (1947), 10f.; Kyrieleis,"Portratmiinzen," 245f.

89Kyrieleis, "Portratmiinzen," 244f.

90"Portratmiinzen," 223, 244, n. 89.

91As supposed by Svoronos, Ta nomismata IV, 25If.92Veisse, Les revokes, 187-94, esp. 189.93

Gauthier, Livre des Rois, 282, no. 26; HuB, Agypten, 504f., with references in n. 28.94

Gauthier, Livre des Rois, 268f. nn. 21-23, 26; HuB, Agypten, 336f., 384f.95

Veisse,Les

revokes, 194,with n. 132.

96Edwyn Bevan, A History ofEgypt under the tolemaic Dynasty (London, 1927), 263-68; Kurt Sethe, "Die historische Bedeu

tung des 2. Philae-Dekrets aus der Zeit des Ptolemaios Epiphanes," ZAS 53 (1917), 35-49; Veisse, Les revokes, 197-220.



360 JARCE 45 (2009)

that a statue of the king, entitled "Ptolemy, the Avenger (or Protector) of Egypt (ndd Bky)" shouldbe placed in the most prominent place in every temple of the land alongside the local deity of that

temple, which was represented handing the (statue of the) king a sword (Eg. hps kny; Gr. hoplon nike

tikon).97 Even though different artistic means were used by the Egyptian sculptors, the message of theofficial statue thus had a

military nuance,similar to the Athens bronze

group (fig. 2).Despite the simmering animosity between the two Hellenistic kingdoms of Egypt and Syria, the

danger of interference by Rome loomed larger. To secure a peace treaty and establish an entente withthe Seleucid royal house against this new threat, by 195 the guardians of the young Ptolemy V

brought to realization his long-standing betrothal to a young daughter of Antiochus III, Cleopatra.98When the couple married at Raphia in 194/3, Ptolemy V was sixteen years old, the Seleucid princessCleopatra about ten.

Cleopatra Syra ("the Syrian"), as the child bride of Ptolemy V came to be known,99 was evidentlywell received in Egypt, and alongside her spouse she received an official titulary appropriate for a

queen of exceptional distinction.100 Contrary to biological fact, some Egyptian documents label herSister of the

King,101as was, in actual fact, her

predecessor,Arsinoe III

Philopator,and she lived to

play a significant role as Egypt's queen.In 180, when Ptolemy V met his premature death,102 his son, Ptolemy VI, inherited the throne, and

once again, Egypt had a king of but five or six years old.103 The boy assumed the throne first underthe guardianship of his mother, Cleopatra Syra. That Alexandrian policy recognized the mother asthe supreme authority in Egypt is evident from official protocols, which name the queen first before

her under-age son: "the pharaohs, Cleopatra the mother, the Manifest Goddess (Thea Epiphanes), and

Ptolemy, son of Ptolemy, the Manifest God (Theos Epiphanes)"104 A Greek inscription from Cyprusnames the mother/son co-regents also giving precedence to Cleopatra I105: "Queen Cleopatra, themanifest goddess, and King Ptolemy and her other children." The other children mentioned are the

boy king's sister and brother, the futureCleopatra

II andPtolemy

VIIIEuergetes

II. To what extent,in actual fact, Cleopatra I ran the political affairs of Egypt herself, independent of her court advisors,from 180 until her own death in 176 is not known.106

The identification of representations of Cleopatra I is based initially on the shaky testimony ofthe bust of a woman illustrated on Alexandrian coins from a Cypriote (Paphos) mint and whetherthese should be interpreted as physically individualized portraits of the contemporary queen of

Egypt. That they are likenesses of Cleopatra has been postulated in scholarship just as often107 as

97Sethe, Urk. II, 189, 8-10 (Rosetta Decree); 207,3 (Philensis I); 226,11-12 (Philensis II).

98Polybius 18. 51,10; App.ll. 3; Liv. 33. 40.3; Holbl, History, 140; HuB, Agypten, 499. The Seleucid princess' marriage to

PtolemyV

had already been arrangedin

her childhood between the two fathers, Ptolemy IV of Egypt (or rather, by proxythrough his advisor, Agathocles) and Antiochus III of Syria as part of a peace treaty to end the Fourth Syrian War.

99App., Syr. 5, 18.

100John Whitehorne, Cleopatras (London, 1994), 84ff.

101A Demotic document of 191/90: Pestman, Chronologie, 15; in both bilingual Philensis Decrees: Koenen, "Die Adaptationagyptischer Konigsideologie," 159, n. 47; HuB, Agypten, 535, n. 27.

102RE 23/2 (1959), cols. 1698L, s.v. "Ptolemaios (23)" (H. Volkmann); HuB, Agypten, 536.103On the uncertain date of birth of Ptolemy VI, see HuB, Agypten, 538, with references to earlier literature.104

Pestman, Chronologie, 146f.105SEG XVI,788; HuB, Agypten, 540, n. 20.106

HuB, Agypten, 537ff.107Ernst Kornemann, KLIO 9 (1909), 138; Svoronos, Ta nomismata IV, cols. 278ff.; Jean Charbonneaux, "Sur la signification

et la date de la Tasse Farnese," MonPiot 50 (1958), 96f.; Gisela M. A. Richter, Portraits of the Greeks III (New York, 1965), 265;R. R. R.

Smith,Hellenistic

Royal Sculpture (Oxford, 1986), 76; tentatively Dimitri Plantzos, Hellenistic Engraved Gems (Oxford,1999),



CHESHIRE 361

Figs. 3-4. Copper assarion, Cypriote Mint, "Cleopatra I."New York, Ameri

can Numismatic Society 1944.100.78697. Courtesy of the American Numis

matic Society.

it has been viewed with skepticism. 108Results on the native Egyptian statues of Ptolemaic women

brought recently by Sabine Albers

meier109 have made the most important strides in reconstructingthe portraiture of the "Syrian"

Cleopatra; much of the followingdiscussion is an elaboration of herconclusions.

Three iconographic types of tinycopper coins from a Paphian

mint110 bear on the obverse femaleheads that are possibly of histori

cal, rather than mythological, significance. Since each of these head types is circumscribed on some emissions with the legendBASILISSES KLEOPATRAS ("of Queen Cleopatra"), it has rightly been supposed that the headswould probably portray a queen of that name. One common emission of Cypriote assaria (figs. 3

4),111 tiny copper coins with a shallowly stamped image, bears the profile head of a woman wearing athin diadem on the obverse, on the reverse the Ptolemaic emblem of an eagle standing on a thunderbolt and the legend BASILEOS PTOLEMAIOU. The woman's hair is coiffed in long corkscrew curlsbeneath the diadem, the hair above it being flattened against the cranium. The ringlets are shorteraround the face. The diadem appears to be a thin band out of which poke blades of grain, the largestsprig emerging over the top of the head on most unclear stamps like an indistinct, thickened section

of the diadem.112 A wreath of wheat or grain is common on coin images of Demeter and appears inPtolemaic royal iconography first on glyptic portraits of Berenice II.113 The theme of agriculturalbounty is carried to the reverse of many of the "Queen Cleopatra" coins, where the "Ptolemaic

eagle," standing on a thunderbolt, carries a single cornucopia, around which is sometimes bound a

royal diadem (fig. 4). The female head on the obverse is a consistently repeated facial type, but certain vacillations?in particular the length and curvature of the nose?occur from piece to piece as dies

were worn down and re-cut. The face is long and thin, the forehead short and slightly receding toward the hairline, the cheek long and flat, a long, straight and pointed nose, firmly set lips and a

strong, bony, somewhat protruding chin. Despite her steely, determined facial expression, thewoman appears to be young. These issues, which on account of their small size and low value bear a

fairly crudely carved image, are identifiable through the BASILISSES KLEOPATRAS legendon some

of them. Historically, it appears that the only queen before Cleopatra VII who would have had the

108Marie-Francoise Boussac, BCH 113 (1989), 326; Edelgard Brunelle, Die Bildnisse der Ptolemderinnen (Frankfurt-a.M.,1976), 62f., rejected the idea of recognizing portrait features in the female bust on the Cypriote coins, in particular becausethe same facial type continued to be minted on coinage of the following royal couple. Likewise Kyrieleis, Bildnisse, 114.

109Untersuchungen zu den Frauenstatuen des ptolemdischen Agypten, Aegyptiaca Treverensia 10 (Mainz, 2002), 202-4.

110Reginald Stuart Poole, British Museum?A Catalogue of the Greek Coins: The Ptolemies (London, 1883), lvii ff.

111New York, American Numismatic Society 1944.100.78697: cf. Poole, BMC Ptolemies, lix f., pi. 18, 7; Forrer, Portraits, 25f.,no. 78 (ill.); Svoronos, Ta nomismata III, pi. 47, 15; Poole, BMC Ptolemies, pi. 18, 9.

112Forrer, Portraits, 26, no. 80.

113Martina Minas, "Die Kanephoros. Aspekte des ptolemaischen Dynastiekultes," inHenri Melaerts, ed., Le culte du souveraindans VEgypte ptolemaique au Hie siecle avant notre ere. StudHell 34 (Louvain, 1998),



362 JARCE 45 (2009)

Fig. 5. Gold Ring. London, British

Museum GR 1917.5-1.96. ? The

Trustees of the British Museum.

right to mint coins in her own name, with her co-regent, Ptolemy,in secondary place and named?without a portrait?on the reverse,

would have been Cleopatra I. After the death of Ptolemy V, that

queen ruled as regent for her young son, the future Ptolemy VI

Philometor, from 181/80-174. Examples of these issues have beenexcavated in the Sacred Animal Necropolis at Saqqara in four ancient deposits underneath the floor of a courtyard, their closed

archeological context enabling a dating of the remarkably homogenous hoards within the reign of Ptolemy VI.114

It can not be denied that the facial features of the woman onthese Paphian coins strongly resemble coin portraits of the adult

Ptolemy VI Philometor115?the lean, bony face and protruding,bony chin, a short forehead, a long and pointed nose, the firm setof the small mouth. While he was only a boy of five or six years

old, Cleopatra I as regent had coins, at least at the Ptolemaic minton Cyprus, issued with her own portrait and name on the obverse,the boy being represented by the eagle and the legend Of King

Ptolemy on the reverse. Her coin image included several new features; not only was Cleopatra's name a new one in the Ptolemaic

royal house (possibly not a significant matter at the time), but she

proclaimed her Syrian heritage openly in being represented with the non-Greek coiffure of long corkscrew curls. Her epiclesis Syra, "the Syrian," was another open declaration of international eunoia.

A plastically more fully carved image on one Cypriote issue of the same type116 almost certainlyportrays the same woman wearing a corkscrew coiffure and a thin diadem of corn, an attribute of theEleusinian

gods?Demeter, Kore/Persephone,and

Triptolemus.117The head

shapeis still

longand

relatively lean, the cheek is long and flat, the nose decidedly long and pointed, its sharply pinchedcontour indicating a thin nose bridge. The modeling is suppler, including a rounded sculpting of thebrow area that produces a slight shadow effect and a fleshier cheek. The flesh beneath the jaw ismore

swelling and rounded, the neck fuller and the expression of the large eye and the small, firmly set lipsa bit softer.

In her recent study on Ptolemaic statuary of women, Albersmeier118 stressed the coincidence ofthe appearance of the corkscrew curl coiffure on statues of Ptolemaic queens and on coin images ofa woman, either a goddess ("Isis/Demeter"?) or the queen herself, on coins simultaneously during the

reign of Cleopatra I as guardian and regent of her young son, Ptolemy VI. While those coin imageslabeled BASILISSES KLEOPATRAS would

appearto

directly identifythe head as the

queen,there is

no evidence on the coins that lack this legend to differentiate the woman's head from the formerissues.

114M. Jessop Price, in Geoffrey T. Martin, The Sacred Animal Necropolis at North Saqqara. The Southern Dependencies of the ain

Temple Complex (London, 1981), 156-65, pis. 44-46.115

Svoronos, Ta nomismata III, pi. 48, 19f.; IV, col. 302; Kyrieleis, Bildnisse, 58f., pi. 46.116

Forrer, Portraits, 26, no. 80 (ill.); Svoronos, Ta nomismata II, no. 1384; III, pi. 47, 11; Poole, BMC Ptolemies, pi. 21, 3. Forrer described the bust this time as Isis, but there is no typological difference from the former image, only a stylistic one (seealso Forrer, Portraits, no. 83 = Svoronos, Ta nomismata II, no. 1387; III, pi. 47, 15).

117Michael Blech, Studien zum Kranz bei den Griechen (Berlin, 1982), 256f. The diadem of ears of grain as a symbol of anassimilation to Triptolemus is still found on coin portraits of Gallienus; cf. Sandro Stucchi in S. Stucchi and MargheritaBonanno Aravantinos, eds., Studie Miscellanei 28. Giornate di Studie in Onore di Achille Adriani, Roma 26-27 nov. 1984

(Rome, 1984), 105, fig. 22.118Frauenstatuen, 72ff., 203; Plantzos, Hellenistic Engraved Gems,



CHESHIRE 363

A likeness of the same queen?in this case clearly a portrait?is found on the bezel of a gold ringwhich entered the British Museum in 1917 (fig. 5).119 Not only are the corkscrew curls and the lean,

bony face with a short forehead, a long, thin nose, long, flat cheeks, and firmly set lips similar, but theserious mien of this woman, who ruled Egypt alone as regent for her underage son in a time of con

siderablycivil unrest at home, mirrors the

expressionon the coin

portraits.She wears a necklace but

also a chlamys or cloak fastened with a fibula on the left shoulder?a male costume signifying her

position as regent and figural leader of the Ptolemaic military. Her royal diadem is almost entirelyobscured by long blades of barley-corn that are bound into it on the side of the head with someshorter sprigs above the forehead.120 On top of her head, she wears the horned sun disc, a native

Egyptian crown adopted with frequency on Greco-Roman representations of Isis. While vegetalwreaths were common in Greek iconography and fashion, the first occurrence of the ears of corn onan Egyptian diadem is in the composite crown for the cult statue of the deceased, deified Princess

Berenice, daughter of Ptolemy III and Berenice II, as specified in the Canopus Decree.121 The apotheosis of the young deceased princess was attached onto the Choiak festival of Osiris, with which it

approximately coincided, and adhered in principle to Egyptian funerary beliefs.122 The concept thatattributes (such as animal's horns, uraeus serpent) "sprout" or "grow" out of the crown was a traditional Egyptian mode of expression, essentially a synonym for hcy, "come forth."123 Thus an inscription in the vignette in the upper sector of the Mendes Stela says of Arsinoe Philadelphus that she

appears (or comes forth) as the uraeus on the forehead (or crown) of the king.124 It is necessary to

emphasize, however, that the grain attribute on the fully Greek diadems of Ptolemy V and CleopatraImade use of a symbol very familiar in the Greco-Roman world, generally expressing agriculturalbounty that need not have had any funerary implications.125

The marble head of a woman from a statue in Egyptian type in Brooklyn (figs. 6-7),126 althoughartistically a very satisfying work that one would hope to understand with ease, has often confounded

119London, British Museum GR 1917.5-1.96. Max. breadth of bezel: 9.5 mm. See Frederick H. Marshall, Catalogue of the

Finger Rings, Greek, Etruscan and Roman, in theDepartment of Antiquities, British Museum (London, 1907), cat. no. 96; Peter Higgsand Sally-Ann Ashton, in Susan Walker and Peter Higgs, eds., Cleopatra ofEgypt. From History toMyth (London, 2001), 67, cat.no. 43 (ill.).

120The sprigs of grain, typical for the iconography of Cleopatra I, are apparently the forms that are mistakenly identified as

feathers of a vulture cap by Higgs and Ashton, in Cleopatra of Egypt, 67. These same tiny, feathery protrusions above the foreheads of two female allegorical figures on the well-known silver patera from Aquileia were recognized as sprigs of grain byMobius, who supposed them to be an Alexandrian motif symbolizing Isis (Hans Mobius, "Der Silberteller von Aquileia," inNikolaus Himmelmann-Wildschiitz and Hagen Biesantz, eds., Festschrift fur Friedrich Matz (Mainz, 1962), 85, with pi. 24.

121OGIS I, no. 56,11. 62f.; cf. Andre Bernand, Le Delta Egyptien dapres les textsgrecs I MIFAO 71 (Cairo, 1970), 989ff.; Sethe,Urk. II, 124ff., esp. 148f., 11.3If.; S. Kothen-Welpot, "Die Apotheose der Berenike, Tochter Ptolemaios' III.," in Maechteld

Schade-Busch, ed., Wege Offnen. Festschrift fur Rolf Gundlach zum 65. Geburtstag. AAT 35 (Wiesbaden, 1996), 129-32; Holbl, A

History,108-9. The

Canopusdecree also

stipulatedthat corn ears from the first harvest should be

placedas dedications before

her statue (Sethe, Urk. II, 150, 7-151, 4).122S. Kothen-Welpot, "Die Apotheose der Berenike," 129-32; Holbl, A History, 108-9. The Canopus decree also stipulated

that corn ears from the first harvest should be placed as dedications before her statue (Sethe, Urk. II, 150, 7?151, 4).123

Redford, History, 18.124

Cheshire, The Bronzes of Ptolemy II, 110.125por example, the ever-recurring image of a sprig of barley-corn on the coinage of Metapontum, an important corn pro

ducer in South Italy; cf. Sydney P. Noe, with additions and corrections by Ann Johnston, The Coinage ofMetapontum I?II (NewYork, 1984), pis. 1-22, 24-45. The astonishing similarity of this symbol to the Egyptian hieroglyph for bd.t, "barley" (Wb. I,

486), is perhaps not accidental.126

Brooklyn Museum of Art 71.12. Provenance not known. H. -12.7 cm, see Bulletin of the Brooklyn Museum 12 (1971), 20f.;Bernard V. Bothmer, inM. True and K. Hamma, eds., Alexandria and Alexandrianism, Symposium, J. Paul Getty Museum, April22-25, 1993 (Malibu, 1996), 218, fig. 12; Sally-Ann Ashton, inWalker and Higgs, eds., Cleopatra of Egypt, 164, no. 163, with

color ill.("Cleopatra VII");

Albersmeier, Frauenstatuen, 39, 202f., 204, cat. no. 38,pi.

30c-d("Cleopatra I");

Paul Stanwick,Portraits of the Ptolemies (Austin, 2002), 34f., 37,40, n. 1, 80, 87,124f., cat. E13 (bibliog.), figs. 17lf. ("Cleopatra



JARCE 45 (2009)

Figs. 6-7. Marble Head, "Cleopatra I."Brooklyn, N.Y., The Brooklyn Museum of Art 71.12. Courtesy of the Brooklyn

Museum.

scholars. They have dated it variously from the early to mid-second century to the end of the Ptolemaic

Period,the most recent trend

attributingit to

CleopatraVII. The

symmetrical, vertically alignedfeatures, the hardened oval shape of the head and the severe attitude evoked by the firmly set lipscontribute to an overall effect similar to the strongly Classicizing style of Late Hellenistic/RepublicanRoman art, but the austere look is deceiving. The sculptor of the Brooklyn piece achieved a similarresult decades before the beginning of the Classicizing era, transposing an individualized Hellenistic

portrait type into a solemn, timeless image of Pharaonic demeanor. Albersmeier127 observed thatthe highly arched, hairless eyebrows, carved in a stylized fashion as the sharp edges of scooped-outorbital cavities, and sharply cut upper and lower lids to frame the large eyes, once inlaid in another

material, are already found on a basalt portrait of Arsinoe III (r. 217-205/4) in Copenhagen.128 Shealso recognized the stylistic and physiognomic similarities of the Brooklyn head to the granite head

fragment from a statue of a young pharaoh in a nemes head cloth inAlexandria129 that has been indis

putably accepted as a portrait of Ptolemy VI. That king's physical appearance iswell attested by coin

portraits130 that represent him with thick, wavy hair, a long, narrow and lean face, high cheekbonesand a square chin, traits also reproduced on a granite torso of a young pharaoh inAthens.131 Albers

127Frauenstatuen, 202.

128Ny Carlsberg Glyptothek jEIN 1472: Kyrieleis, Bildnisse, 118, 184, cat. M5 (bibliog.), pi. 102, 1-2; Stanwick, Portraits,

104f., cat. no. 44; Albersmeier, Frauenstatuen, 190, 200, 202, 203, 330f., cat. 80, pi. 51c-d.129Greco-Roman Museum 3357: Kyrieleis, Bildnisse, 37, 59ff., 174, cat. F2, pis. 48, 1-2, 49, 1; Stanwick, Portraits, 147 (In

dex), cat. B7 (bibliog.), figs. 54f.130

Svoronos, Ta nomismata III, pi. 48, 19-23; IV, cols. 302f.; Kyrieleis, Bildnisse, 58f., pi. 46.131

National Archaeological Museum ANE 108: Jan Six, AthMitt 12 (1887), 212ff. (with earlier bibliog.), pis. 7f.; Kyrieleis,Bildnisse, 37, 59ff., 174, cat. Fl (bibliog.), pi. 47, 1-3; Stanwick, Portraits, 148



CHESHIRE 365

Fig. 8. ''Artemis," Pergamon-Altar. Berlin,

Pergamon-Museum. Courtesy of Staatliche

Museen Berlin, Antikensammlung.

meier132 observed the family resemblance of the king's long,lean face with high cheekbones, long, flat cheeks and squarechin to the woman represented on the Cypriote coins (figs. 3

4), suggesting that Ptolemy VI took after his mother, Cleopatra

I, rather than after his Ptolemaic ancestorson

his paternal side.The same lean physiognomy and heavy coiffure of ringlets that

appears on the Brooklyn head is remarkably similar to the

Egyptianizing portraits of Ptolemy VI as well.The heavy flesh beneath the chin on the Brooklyn head, re

marked upon by Albersmeier,133 is probably not to be inter

preted as a physical trait but as a stylistic feature borrowedfrom contemporary Hellenistic sculpture. The plastic modelingof heavy yet firm flesh, with contours that are never streamlined and uplifting but always sagging, swelling or bulging, is aninnovation featured on numerous heads of

goddesseson the

Great Altar of Zeus from Pergamum, in particular the Artemis

(fig. 8)134 or the more rectangular facial type of the Hekate.135The oval-shaped face of the Brooklyn queen may have been

substantially idealized in the taste of aMiddle Hellenistic femalehead. As the Altar was apparently nearing completion for its international viewing at the Great Nikephoria in Pergamum in

181,136 the sculpting of the reliefs was contemporary with the

reign of Cleopatra I in Egypt, 194/3-176. An identification ofthe Brooklyn heads with that queen is thus supported throughelements of Hellenistic

stylisticinfluence.

Two heads from a series of mold-made terracottas from

Smyrna were published by Simone Mollard-Besques137 as portraits of Cleopatra I of Egypt. One of the replicas had alreadybeen described by G. M. A. Richter138 as a portrait, possibly representing Berenice II. Their physical similarity to the Brooklynhead (figs. 6-7) and a statuette of the same queen in the Metro

politan Museum (figs. 10-11), to be discussed below, illustratesthe difficulty in differentiating between an actual portrait and

Fig. 9. Terracotta Head from Memphis. London, Petrie Museum of Egyptian

Archaeology UC 48248. ? Petrie Museum of gyptian Archaeology, University CollegeLondon.

132Frauenstatuen, 202f.

133Frauenstatuen, 202.

134Heinz Kahler, Der grofie Fries von Pergamon (Berlin, 1948), pi. 27.135

Kahler, Der grofie Fries, pi. 6; Der Pergamon Altar (Berlin-Mainz, 2004), cover; ill. on 43.136

Kahler, Der grofie Fries, 139ff.; Elisabeth Rohde, Pergamon. Burgberg und Altar (Berlin, 1982), 26ff., esp. 30. A dating of the

completion of the exterior frieze of the Zeus Altar around 180 remains the best explanation, despite recent objections byFrancois Queyrel, LAutel de Pergame. Images et pouvoir en Grece d'Asie (Paris, 2005), 123ff.

137RA 1968/2(=Festschrift J. Charbonneaux, part II), 241-50, esp. figs.

1-4.138 "Greek Portraits III," Latomus 48 (1955), 17.



366 JARCE 45 (2009)

Figs. 10-11. Limestone Statuette from Egypt, "Cleopatra L" New York, The

MetropolitanMuseum

ofArt 89.2.660.

Courtesy ofthe

MetropolitanMuseum

of Art.

a generic ethnic type. The clayheads show a woman with a long,rectangular face, high cheekbones,a solemn mien evoked primarily

by the horizontal, closed lips, anda square chin. The face is framed

by a row of paratactically arrangedcorkscrew curls which are longerfalling over the ears. Clay portraitfigurines of Hellenistic rulers are

extremely rare and, even thoughsuch an exception might be less

surprising among the high qualityterracottas from Smyrna, the Ana

tolian provenance of both headfragments does not speak for their

identity as representations of a

queen of Egypt.A terracotta head found dur

ing Petrie's second campaign at

Memphis (fig. 9)139 has a verysimilar facial type, but it displaysa more ominous facial expression

through deeper hollowed out orbital arches and a

lumpy, heavyrendering of the flesh that suggest its manufacture in the sec

ond century BC. The absence of a crown or diadem reduces the defense of its identification as the

portrait of a queen. Like the examples from Smyrna, the Memphite clay head is said to have been

mold-made, implying serial production.140 Nor are there any other uncontroversial ruler portraitsamong the large number of terracotta heads found by Petrie over the years of excavation at Mit-Rahine (Memphis). An optical similarity between the series-produced terracotta heads and the Cypriotecoins rests probably not on corresponding portrait features, but rather on the combined overall austere effect of a long, rectangular face with a solemn expression of eyes and mouth, framed starkly bythick,

stifflynd

vertically fallingcorkscrew curls. Such a combination could have occurred in various

cultural centers at different time periods, misleading scholars to place the Brooklyn head amongRoman Classicizing works of the first century BC. The Memphite clay head, a forceful work inminia

ture, might have been used as a model to introduce to Egyptian artists the "Syrian" type?includinglong ringlets, a stern facial expression, to be used not only on the image of the queen, but now also

139London, University College, Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology UC 48248: William M. F. Petrie, The Palace ofApries

(Memphis II) (London, 1909), 17, no. 102, pi. 31; Sally-Ann Ashton, Petrie's Ptolemaic and Roman Memphis (London, 2003), (ill.);

Betsy Teasley Trope, Stephen Quirke and Peter Lacovara, eds., Excavating Egypt. Great Discoveries from the etrie Museum ofEgyptian Archaeology (Atlanta, 2005), 35, cat. 30 (color ill.).

140The present author has not investigated this aspect on the original, but it does not seem to show the freshness of an

original



CHESHIRE 367

for a global Isis type. The Smyrnaic terracottas, which were mold-made in a series, were probably ide

alized, perhaps ethnically specific heads.A limestone statuette141 of a queen in Egyptian type with an uninscribed back pillar in the Metro

politan Museum (figs. 10-11)142 has numerous features in common with the Brooklyn head. It was

carved in Egyptian style and type but in a soft stone appropriate for adapting Greek sculpting techniques. Both heads wear a triple uraeus on the horizontal headband, an exceptional insignia whichhas been the subject of much scholarly debate (see infra). The hair is arranged in identical fashion in

twisted, tubular ringlets falling densely like a mat from the crown of the head onto the shoulders.Across the forehead, emerging from beneath the plain Egyptian circlet, is a row of stylized snail-shellcurls. It is tempting to speculate that the Brooklyn head originally belonged to a similar statuette,

striding, in Egyptian costume with the outer garment ends knotted between the breasts, possiblyeven holding a cornucopia. Both images clearly portray a young woman but show slight physiogno

mic differences.

Recognizing the similarities, particularly in the coiffure, Albersmeier143 placed the Metropolitan

statuette likewise in the early second century, allowing that it, too, might represent Cleopatra I, albeitin the "Arsinoe Philadelphus" type with the cornucopia. The large, distended eyes are typically Ptole

maic, although the trait could imply a partial assimilation to Arsinoe II. She drew a comparison to thesecond century issues of the Arsinoe Philadelphus octadrachms bearing the K-monogram, suspectedsince Svoronos144 to portray Cleopatra I. The queen's mention in official protocol of Egyptian docu

ments honorifically as "King's Sister"145 was a declaration that the new queen took her place in thePtolemaic dynasty as successor of the ruling brother-sister pair that preceded her. She was, moreover,in actual fact of royal blood, the daughter of King Antiochus III ("the Great") of Syria and the sisterof the future Antiochus IV. Her union with the young Ptolemy V, which was undoubtedly intended asan alliance between the two Greco-Macedonian powers as a defensive measure against Rome, wouldhave

justified?inthe

eyesof the

Egyptians?theturn of

phrase "King's Sister."146In the

RaphiaDecree of 217 (line 11), Antiochus III is actually cited using the Egyptian wordpr- i ("pharaoh"), andhis name is set within a cartouche followed by cnhwdl snb, a slogan of well wishes for the king. This

gesture of respect for the enemy king implicit in the Egyptian text might have been determined bythe way in which the peace treaty was drawn up, as the betrothal of Antiochus's daughter to the sonand heir of Ptolemy IV was negotiated between the two parties, making them future relatives.147

That foreign princesses married into the family of other monarchs was a familiar custom in Egyptas well as in other kingdoms of the ancient world long before the Ptolemaic Period. The additionto the New York statuette of the single cornucopia?a Greek attribute?underlined the extension ofthe relationship beyond Egypt's borders. Hellenistic rulers, among each other, even occasionally

141There is some uncertainty whether the stone is limestone or marble; see Robert S. Bianchi in Susan Walker and Peter

Higgs, eds., Cleopatra Reassessed (London, 2003), 22, n. 58.142New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art 89.2.660. Provenance not known. Gift of Joseph W. Drexel, 1889. h.-61.8 cm,

seeWinifred Needier, "Some Ptolemaic Sculptures in the Yale University Art Gallery," Berytus 9 (1948/49), 137, 139f.> pi. 26, 5;Bernard V. Bothmer, Egyptian Sculpture of the Late Period (New York, 1960), 145f., no. 113, figs. 281-83 ("Cleopatra II or III");

Kyrieleis, Bildnisse, 118, 183, cat. Ml, pi. 101,1; Ashton inWalker and Higgs, eds., Cleopatra of gypt, 164, with color ill. and bib

liog. ("Cleopatra VII"); Giuseppina Capriotti Vittozzi, RendLinc ser. 9, no. 6 (1995), 39, 415ff., 431ff. (already with the identifi

cation "Cleopatra I"); Albersmeier, Frauenstatuen, 204f., cat. no. 105, pi. 31a; Stanwick, Portraits, 34, 37, 40, n. 1, 80, 87, 95, 125,cat. E14, fig. 173 ("Cleopatra VII").

143Frauenstatuen, 203f.

144See infra.145See n. 100.

146On the life of Cleopatra I, see John Whitehorne, Cleopatras (London-New York, 1994), 80-88.147Vittmann, "Feinde,"



368 JARCE 45 (2009)

addressed their royal peers from other kingdoms as "brother"148?an international bond of Macedonian elites, irrespective of their ties to their own subjects. The attribute, which was most closelyassociated with Arsinoe Philadelphus in its double version (dikeras) and was then passed on, usuallyas a single horn, to certain later Ptolemaic queens,149 is repeated on copper coins from Cyrene,

alreadysometimes in the third

centuryand also on coins of

CleopatraI

(figs. 3-4),which show a

diadem of sprigs of grain on her portrait on the obverse, and the cornucopia bound by a royal filletwith the eagle on the reverse.

There is a considerable amount of scholarly literature concerning the interpretation of the tripleuraeus and whether it can be used as a means of identifying the queen.150 A definition of the attribute is given by Diodorus (1. 47, 5), who visited Egypt at the time of Ptolemy XII. He described a statueof an Egyptian queen and mother of a prominent pharaoh Osymandias, as having "three diademsaround her head (treis basileias epi tes kephales)" to signify that she was "daughter, mother and wife ofa king (thygater kai gyne kai meter basileds)"151 This information may well have been given to the visit

ing Sicilian historian by a native tour guide, a scribe or a priest, reading the hieroglyphic inscriptionson the back

pillarof a statue such as the

sculpted fragmentof a feather crown with a horned sun

disc,adorned with a triple uraeus, which was discovered by Petrie at Coptos.152 Aside from a possibleadaptation of the attribute in Kush, in Egypt the triple uraeus is seen only on certain queens butalmost never on kings,153 and thus logically could have alluded to a royal woman's multiple roles as

daughter, sister or consort, and mother, such as are embodied by the uraeus, Hathor or other Daughters of Ra.154 Three uraei appear already on a statue of Queen Tiye of the Eighteenth Dynasty.155

The royal lady with a triple uraeus described by Diodorus was undoubtedly Touiya, the mother ofRamses II ("the Great"), the famous king who is repeatedly cited by that historian as Osymandias?a.Greek transliteration of his throne name (Wsr-mi'-R*).156 Touiya was known to the Romans as themother of one of Egypt's greatest pharaohs and herself as a celebrated King's Mother.157 Albersmeier's158

interpretationof treis basileias as

perhapsa mixture of different

royal insignia totalingthree is overly cautious; the number of components of a crown would not have been noteworthy, onlythe fact that the uraeus?referred to in Greek as a basileial59?w2is tripled. As Stanwick observed,160the tripling of a symbol could signify, in Egyptian orthography, simply plurality; hence, the threeuraei could be interpreted as ntr.wt, "goddesses." The statement of Diodorus is supported by the

148Wilhelm Volcker-Janssen, Kunst und Gesellschaft an den Hofen Alexanders des Grofien und seiner Nachfolger (Munich, 1993),63; Cheshire, The Bronzes ofPtolemy II, 124, n. 849.

149Thompson, Ptolemaic Oinochoai and portraits infaience (Oxford, 1973), 31-34; Katrin Bemmann, Fullhorner in klassischer

und hellenistischer Zeit (Frankfurt-am-Main, 1994), 82ff., 88ff.; Cheshire, The Bronzes ofPtolemy II, 117ff.150

Bothmer, Egyptian Sculpture, 145-57; Robert S. Bianchi, Cleopatra's Egypt (Brooklyn, 1988), 176; Ashton in Cleopatra ofEgypt, 154-55, 171; Stanwick, Portraits, 37, 41, 46, 76, 80; Albersmeier, Frauenstatuen, 48-52.

151Albersmeier, Frauenstatuen, 48, citing Paul Stanwick, Egyptian Royal Sculptures of the Ptolemaic Period (Dissertation, New

York University, 1999), 105.152

London, University College, Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology UC 14521: William M. F. Petrie, Koptos (London,1896), 2If., pi. 26, 3; Ashton, Ptolemaic Royal Sculpture, 67 (ill.); Ashton in Cleopatra of Egypt, 171, cat. no. 170, with excellent

photographs and bibliography.153Ashton in Cleopatra of Egypt, 155, cites one example of the first century bc at Dendera.154

Albersmeier, Frauenstatuen, 48ff. with a review of the various interpretations; for the identity of the queen with Hathor/

daughter of Ra/uraeus, etc., see Wendy Cheshire, "Zur Deutung eines Szepters der Arsinoe II. Philadelphos," ZPE 48 (1982),108ff.; with revisions in idem, The Bronzes of Ptolemy II, 110, 123f., n. 843; Lana Troy, Patterns of Queenship in Ancient Egyptian

Myth and History (Uppsala, 1986), lOOff., 126ff.155

Bianchi, Cleopatra's Egypt, 176.156j^er KleinePauly 4, col. 379, s.v. "Osymandias" (Wolfgang Helck).157Diodorus Siculus 1, 47, 3-5; Cheshire, "Aphrodite Cleopatra," I7lf.158

Frauenstatuen, 48.159Canopus Decree: OGIS I, no. 56,11. 56, 62-3.

160portraitSi 37.



CHESHIRE 369

Fig. 12. Copper Coin, Cyrenaica, "Cleo

patraI."

London,British Museum 1866

1201-3880. ? The Trustees of the ritishMuseum.

queen's titulature inscribed on the Coptos fragment: "Noblewoman, great of praises, Mistress of Upper and Lower Egypt,satisfied . . .Daughter of the King, Sister of the King, Great

Wife of the King, who placates the heart of Horus." The epithet "who

placatesthe heart of Horus"

(shtp-ib-Hr)is a refer

ence to the queen as the embodiment of Hathor; the preciseepithet appears in a cartouche of Arsinoe II, who was alsootherwise assimilated to that goddess as sister of Horus, the

king.161 Because of the tendency to syncretism among the

Egyptian deities, the three cobras could represent virtually anythree "daughters of Ra" who had a theological connection withthe institution of queenship as well. Ashton162 rightfully inter

preted the triple uraeus as a reference to a queen with mul

tiple family ties to the king, but presumed?differing from ourown

arguments?thatthe three known Ptolemaic

examplesall

portrayed Cleopatra VII.In contrast to the Hellenizing head in Brooklyn, the Egyp

tian artist of the Metropolitan statuette created a rather schematic portrait within the parameters of contemporary native

royal sculptural style. The small mouth with tightly pursed lips is a similar physical feature to the

Brooklyn portrait, although there the mouth is fleshier, similar to the Cypriote coin images (fig. 3).The thin cutting of the lips and nose-bridge, as well as the linear incisions for the eyelids, is symptomatic of the less graceful workmanship of the Metropolitan statuette. The pert, lively facial expressionof the statuette is a frequent tendency on provincial works, including on royal sculpture from native

workshops from the second century. The nose appears to show a slight hook, but minor variations inthe length or curve of the nose are found as well among the various coin issues due to the extremelysmall size of the copper coins (which are irregularly formed but paper-thin and about the breadth ofa U.S. dime). One miniscule slip of the hand of the die-cutter would have led to the nose on these mediocre silhouettes being twice as long, or aquiline instead of straight.

During the reign of Ptolemy V Epiphanes, a significant change appears also to take place on afamiliar type of Cyrenaic copper coinage with a portrait head of Ptolemy I Soter on the obverse anda head of Libya, encircled by the legend BASILEOS PTOLEMAIOU on the reverse. From the earlysecond century bc on, when a more pathetic visage of Ptolemy Soter is introduced, the reverse nowbears a bust of the eponymous goddess with the head of a much younger woman, and on some

issues, the girl shows individualized facial features that appear to represent the contemporary queenof Egypt. One new feature in the public image of Cleopatra I is that she, like her husband, throughtheir child marriage assumed the throne when barely reaching adolescence. An assarion in the British

Museum (fig. 12)163 shows Libya with youthful, pert facial features that closely resemble the Metro

politan "Cleopatra" statuette?the wide open, brightly gazing eye, a low, straight forehead, the short

161Gauthier, Livre des Rois, 241f.; Cheshire, "Zur Deutung eines Szepters der Arsinoe II. Philadelphos," 109.

162See n. 149.163British Museum 1866-1201-3880: Poole, BMC Ptolemies, lvii f., 6f., no. 83, pi. xviii, 4; E. S. G. Robinson, BMC Cyrenaica

(London, 1927), cxlvi?clix, pi. 31, 3-8, esp. no. 6. For earlier issues of the Soter/Libya type, which show a harshly "barbaric"head of Libya, see Robinson, pis. 30, 12f. and 31, 1, as well as comments by Svoronos, Ta nomismata TV, 128ff., who suggests a

plausible, but still hypothetical, identification of that Libya head as an assimilation to a portrait of Berenice, wife of King Magasof

Cyreneand

daughterof the Persian

princess Apama, rather than,as

suggested by Robinson and others,as

Berenice (II),who married Ptolemy III. In this sense, Cleopatra I will have been the second descendant of the last Persian royal family to goWest and marry a king of Cyrenaica, which was meanwhile annexed by Egypt.



370 JARCE 45 (2009)

nose, the thin-lipped mouth and a firmly protruding chin, which is offset by a deep indentation beneath the lower lip. A stiff but bright smile is evoked on the sculptural portrait as on the glyptic im

age by the lips being pressed tightly together and curled up at the corners. The profile contour of thenose on both portrait types is straight in its upper half and has a slight downward hook near the tip;

the pointed tipends

abruptlya

bit higherthan

the levelof the

nostrils, giving the appearance ofa

turned-up nose, when in fact, it is the opposite. Even the curve of the jawbone on the coin portraitclosely matches the profile of the Metropolitan statuette. The long corkscrew curls on the Cyrenaiccoin images, typical not only for Oriental fashion but also for the mythical figure Libya and hence

giving rise to the misleading term "Libyan locks,"164 are hardly to be differentiated from the Cyprioteportraits of Cleopatra I or the stone portraits in Brooklyn and the Metropolitan. In front of the headof "Zifrya/Cleopatra I" on some of the coins, such as figure 12, is a tiny cornucopia?an attribute that

appears occasionally on Cyrenaic coinage since the third century and undoubtedly refers to the vast

production of grain from the region, much of which was destined for export. The cornucopia alsooccurs on the limestone statuette inNew York, although the connection within the Ptolemaic dynastyis obvious here. The

styleof the coin

imageis

unsophisticatedand rather

simplifiedwith

clearlyout

lined, isolated individual features lacking inner modeling, lying on flat, empty flesh surfaces. The

glyptic portrait owes its cheery facial expression to provincial Egyptian influence, just as does the

sculpting style of the limestone "Cleopatra I" in the Metropolitan Museum. The style of the Cyrenaicassarion recalls that of the Arsinoe Philadelphus coins,165 although it is cruder, while the Greek

inspired portraits of the same queen evoke the fierce authority of Persian art.The inscription of the queen's name within a cartouche on the right shoulder of the Metropolitan

statuette, although by no means without precedent on Egyptian sculpture,166 has been the object ofmuch scholarly speculation. The most remarkable aspect of the cartouche is not its placement on thearm like a tattoo167 but its terse form. The queen's proper name (aGreek one, spelled alphabeticallyin

Egyptiancharacters

Qliwlpldrl),written neither with the traditional

prefixof a title

(queen,wife of

king, etc.) nor in combination with an epithet of divine association (mry n- , "beloved by, . . .",stp n?"chosen by . . . ," tc.) with the name of an Egyptian god.168 The overall effect of the hieroglyphs hasan authentic appearance, despite the orthographic blemishes that were recently pointed out by R. S.Bianchi, who discounted the addition of the cartouche as a modern forgery.169 It is far more likelythat the blunt cliche of naming a ruler by his proper name, spelled alphabetically within a cartouche,

164O. Elia, Rivista del Real Istituto di Archeologia e Storia delVArte 8 (1941), 89ff.; Albersmeier, Frauenstatuen, 7lf. with bibliography; Robert S. Bianchi, in L. Bricault, M. J. Versluys, and R Meyboom, eds., Nile into Tiber. Egypt in theRoman World (LeidenBoston, 2007), 482-87.

165See n. 235.166To name only a few, a granite statue of Ramses VI in Marseille, Musee d'archeologie mediterraneenne 209: Christine

Favard-Meeks and Dimitri Meeks, Musees deMarseille. Cahier du Musee dArcheologie mediterraneenne. La Collection Egyptien, Guidedu Visiteur (Marseille, 1989), 19, bears a cartouche engraved on the sleeve of his garment. A limestone torso of an official, alsoin Marseille (Meeks, Cahier, 15, with color ill.), bears cartouches of Ramses II inscribed on his upper arms. In London, Petrie

Museum of Egyptian Archaeology UC 14632: Trope et al., eds., Excavating Egypt, 29, with bibliogaphy. Two colossal, dioriteseated statues of Amenophis III in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, bear the king's cartouches on both upperarms: William C. Hayes, The Scepter of Egypt (Greenwich, Conn., 1959), 234f., figs. 139f.

167The late fourth century Papyrus Bremner-Rhind details that two young women, in preparation to enact the roles of Isisand Nephthys in the Choiak festival, should each have the name of the goddess written on their arm; Robyn Gillam, Performance and Drama in Ancient Egypt (London, 2005), 103f. Further on tattoos in ancient Egypt: Albersmeier, Frauenstatuen, 59,with n. 366.

168That the inscription is a modern forgery has been suspected by Albersmeier, Frauenstatuen, 114, and Stanwick, Portraits,95, and argued in greater detail by Bianchi in Cleopatra Reassessed, 15ff.; also A. Rammant-Peeters inWilly Clarysse, AntoonSchoors, and Harco Willems, eds., Egyptian Religion, The Last Thousand Years. Studies Dedicated to theMemory of an Quaegebeur,

vol. 2. OLA 85 (Louvain, 1998), 1453.169 In Cleopatra Reassessed, I7f.



CHESHIRE 371

was added sometime after the completion of the statue, but the reason is difficult to determine inview of the statue's present, disengaged context. Following H. G. Fisher's observations on PharaonicPeriod monuments, the orientation of the hieroglyphs in the cartouche towards the left, that is, awayfrom the body of the queen, could first have been determined upon the placement of the statuette in

a temple, where it was then juxtaposed with a statuette of the king or beside an image of the localtemple god (in Ptolemaic times as synnaos theos), the inscriptions on both monuments thus arrangedto face inward towards each other.170 The truncated form of the inscription would then also probablyhave been the result of an on-the-spot addition after the statue was in place, in which case someawkwardness in the execution of the signs (reed leaf, birds) might easily be excused.171

Bianchi compared the inscription to the simplistic use of a cartouche containing the words Pr-9

("Pharaoh") as a substitute for the ever-changing name of the ruler of Egypt in hieroglyphic templeinscriptions of Roman times.172 Erich Winter173 called attention to a scene on the architrave over theentrance gate to the Ergamenes chapel at Dakke that was recarved under Tiberius. Behind the pharaoh figure, representing the Roman Emperor, stands a figure of his consort in the familiar manner of

a Ptolemaic queen. Instead of the name of the Empress?which might well have been unknown to thestonemason of Egypt's southern frontier region?the column of hieroglyphs in front of the woman'shead reads phonetically Cleopatra without a cartouche. Undoubtedly, the mystique of one notoriousor several other Ptolemaic queens of that name acquired a remarkable longevity in the Roman world;a Demotic graffito of the fourth century AD at the Isis Temple on Philae refers to the gilding of astatue of "Cleopatra."174

In his recent book on Ptolemaic Egyptian royal sculpture, Paul Stan wick175 has collected a goodnumber of sculptures of kings of similar style, for the most part wearing the nemes headcloth, whichhe dates certainly correctly to the "first half of the second century B.C."Although Stan wick does notinclude the Metropolitan queen statuette within the pieces of this time period,176 the material he

presentsenables a

goodcharacterization of native art of the

reignsof Ptolemies V and VI.

Amongthem, a limestone head of a pharaoh in a nemes from Canopus177 offers a particularly close stylisticcomparison to the New York Cleopatra. Both heads have a very direct, friendly expression, are sculptedin large, simplified, flat-lying features with a complete lack of sophistication (one is reminded of theextreme youth of both kings, as well as their spouses, Cleopatras I and II, at the time of their ascentto the throne). The shape of the face of these portraits, both with a strong Egyptian stamp, is similar:the side planes of the head extend vertically down the temples to the cheekbones, beneath which the

170Cf. Henry G. Fischer, The Orientation of ieroglyphs. Egyptian Studies 2 (New York, 1977), 33, n. 86.171The replacement of the lasso (wt) with a cobra in the spelling of "Cle-o-pa-t-r-a" is not, despite Bianchi's objections (see

n. 117), grounds to discredit the cartouche as a forgery. The botched hieroglyph is crammed in a small space and the sculptormight not have been able to execute the loop of the tiny lasso in the friable stone. Instead, its replacement by an easilyinscribed, linear etched serpent might have satisfied the stonemason as an approximation of the word i(r.t, cr(.t, "uraeus"

(Greek, oupaioc;); cf. Wb. I, 42; Erichsen, Glossar, 65. The alphabetical transliteration of the vowels in the Greek name in the car

touche is, as often the case in Ptolemaic writings of the queen's name, excessively elaborate; the serpent could be consideredan acrophonic writing, a cryptogram or an improvisation over chipped stone.

172Bianchi in Cleopatra Reassessed, 15, with nn. 34-35.173

"Octavian/Augustus als Soter, Euergetes und Epiphanes: Die Datierung des Kalabscha-Tores," ZAS 130 (2003), 197-212,

esp. 209, pi. 50.174F. LI. Griffith, The Demotic Graffiti of the odekaschoenus (Cairo, 1937) I, 104, Ph. 370,11. 7f. See also Cheshire, "Aphrodite

Cleopatra," 151-91, for other Egyptian Cleopatrae before the illustrious seventh, especially Cleopatra III, who received significant cult forms that might have evolved into the later Roman divine figure.

175Portraits, 20, 21, 110f., cat. nos. B19-B 27 (with earlier bibliography), figs. 65-77.

176 Instead he assigns it to Cleopatra VII, as do the authors of the recent exhibition catalogue, Cleopatra ofEgypt (see n. 90).177

Alexandria, Greco-Roman Museum 28103: E. Breccia, he Musee Greco-Romain 1925-1931 (Bergamo, 1932), 17f., no. 10,pi. 9, 32; Stanwick, Portraits, 20, 21, 70, 83, n. 21, 86, 110, cat. B22 (bibliography), fig.



372 JARCE 45 (2009)

Figs. 13-14. Marble Bust from Egypt, "Cleopatra I."Paris, Musee du Louvre Ma 3546. ? Louvre, DistRMNI Christian

Larrieu.

cheek planes slant inward and become rapidly slimmer towards the large, rather pointed chin. A horizontal axis, low set on the forehead, is emphasized on the pharaoh's head in Alexandria by the

straightly drawn band of the nemes, on the New York "Cleopatra I" by a horizontal row of tiny snailshell curls arranged across her brow. Both heads show the rendering of the eyebrows each by one

sharp edge, cut along a simple, shallow curve, the narrow bridge of the nose and the identical, rou

tine and symmetrical cut of the upper and lower eyelids framing almond-shaped eyes. It is probablethat the New York statuette and the Alexandria head represent the young couple, Cleopatra I and

Ptolemy V Epiphanes respectively, relatively early in their reign. As a portrait of Ptolemy V, the Alexandria head can be compared with respect to the head shape, the large eyes and slimmer lower partof the face beneath the cheekbones, to a marble head in the Louvre178 and a head in Budapest,179both of which Kyrieleis180 persuasively attributed to Ptolemy V. Another pharaonic-style portrait of a

pharaoh wearing a nemes and bearing these same physical and stylistic traits pointing to its identification as Ptolemy V is a granite head retrieved in recent years from the Alexandria harbor.181

The baroque modeling of heavy flesh and mannish, dark facial expression that characterizes theheads of many goddesses on the Pergamum Altar (fig. 8) and influenced the Egyptian sculptor's style

on the head in Brooklyn (figs. 6-7) can be recognized on a marble bust in the Louvre (figs. 13-14),said to come from Egypt,182 which also merits consideration as a portrait of Cleopatra I. The

178Paris, Musee du Louvre Ma 3532: Kyrieleis, Bildnisse, 56f., 133f., 173, cat. E10 (bibliography), pis. 44, 3-4; 45, 1; Ashton,

Ptolemaic Royal Sculpture, 54 (with ill.).179

Szepmuveszeti Muzeum 842: Anton Hekler, Die Sammlung antiker Skulpturen (Vienna, 1929), no. 161 (ill.); Kyrieleis, Bildnisse, 55f., 135, 173, cat. E9 (bibliography), pi. 44, 1-2.

180Bildnisse, 55f., 135, 173, cat. E9 (bibliography), pi. 44, 1-2.

181Alexandria 1015: Ashton, Ptolemaic Royal Sculpture, 66, no. 2. 6, with ill. and bibliography ("mid-first century bc").182

Paris, Musee du Louvre Ma 3546: Richter, Portraits, 267, figs. 1850-52; Kyrieleis, Bildnisse, 120ff., 128, 185, cat. M12,pi. 104, 1-2 ("Cleopatra, early 2nd century"); Smith, Hellenistic Royal Portraits, 94, 166f., no. 56 ("Cleopatra I, II or III"); O. M.

Nielsen, "Om ptolemaeiske dronninger og gudinder," Meddelelser fra Ny Carlsberg Glyptothek 51 (1995), 104 ("Cleopatra I?");Marianne Hamiaux, Les sculptures grecques II: La periode hellenistique Ille?Ie siecles av.J.-C. (Paris, 1988), 87f., no. 89 ("CleopatraII or III?"); Ashton in Cleopatra ofEgypt, 59, cat. no. 25, with 2 color ill. ("Cleopatra II or III"); Stanwick, Portraits, 75f., 77, 87,figs. 263f. ("Cleopatra



CHESHIRE 373

rounded lower edge of the nude bust was trimmed to be fitted into a statue. The thin, flat ruler'sdiadem and the corkscrew curl coiffure have led to a widespread assumption that the head portrays aPtolemaic queen, who would have worn in addition an Isiac crown or another attribute inserted intoa hole in the top of the head.183 Several scholars in more recent years, however, have questioned

whether it representsa

female at all. E. La Rocca184 contended that it representsa

man, attiredas a

priest of Dionysus, and Stephan Schmidt185 more recently proposed its attribution to a Nabataean

king, several of whom are portrayed on coins with this identical coiffure. Schmidt's argument for anattribution to a Nabataean king hinges entirely on the dating of the extant; since the nomad peopleof Arabia were not sufficiently Hellenized, nor did they build permanent settlements, until about

100, and a portrait statue of one of their leaders inHellenistic style could hardly be expected beforethat time.186

Kyrieleis187 put forward stylistic arguments for a dating of the Louvre head around 180, which canbe better defended. Typically for Pergamene heads from the time of the Great Altar, the heavy fleshof the face and the thick neck, even more than the Brooklyn head articulated by "Venus rings" andan Adam's

apple,has a substance of its own and swells or buckles

independentof the

supportof the

bone structure. The sculptor was evidently more interested in creating a dramatic texture of the surface than in symmetry or stable forms. The energetic twist of the neck and upward turn of the head,and the dark, passionate gaze of the eyes with plastically sculpted hollows under the brows to eitherside of the nose bridge to evoke a shadowing effect were typical for the late Baroque phase of the

Middle Hellenistic Period. Kyrieleis188 recognized Egyptian influence in the sculpting style of theLouvre head; the surfaces of the marble are calmer and the mouth almost closed, appearing to"breathe" less heavily, than is the case with the passionate divine figures on the Pergamene reliefs.189

Nonetheless, the stylistic proximity of the Louvre bust to the sophisticated Pergamene school of thefirst half of the second century is remarkable?and hardly to be expected from a provincial school inthe Arabian Desert.190

Kyrieleis' comparisonof the Louvre

"Cleopatra"to an Alexandrian

portraitof

Ptolemy VI191 is an implicit attribution of the head to the boy king's mother, Cleopatra I, or to his

sister-wife, Cleopatra II. The attribution to a Ptolemaic queen provides an easier explanation for therecession carved into the top of the Louvre head, into which one of various Isiac crowns or attributes

(horned sun disc, feather crown, lotus bud, uraeus ring as base for an additional Egyptian crown, earsof grain) could have been inserted, while Schmidt's suggestion of an attribute such as corn ears of theNabataean deity Dusares192 is rarely represented.

183Hamiaux, Sculptures grecques, 87.

184L'eta d'oro di Cleopatra. Indagine sulla Tazza Farnese (Rome, 1984), 26.185

"Konig, nicht Konigin. Ein nabataisches Herrscherportrat in Paris," AA (2001), 9Iff.186

Schmidt, "Konig, nicht Konigin," 97ff.

187Bildnisse, 120f.188Bildnisse, 120.

189Schmidt, "Konig, nicht Konigin," 97, also acknowledged the influence of Alexandrian provincial style on the Louvre

head but, dating the head to the end of the second or the first century, attributes this influence to the geographical proximityof Arabia to Egypt.190To differentiate between the baroque modeling of the sculpture of the latter part of the early second century BC andthe tendency towards rendering heavy, sagging flesh with a more lifeless or weakened expression one century later, the

"Cleopatra" head may be contrasted with another work at the Louvre, the Delian torso of "Inopos/Alexander the Great"

(Louvre Ma 855: Smith, Hellenistic Royal Portraits, 172, no. 89, pi. 54, figs. 6f.; Hamiaux, Sculptures grecques, 67ff., cat. 71 (ill. and

bibliog.), which was undoubtedly sculpted in the decades around 100 BC. One key difference is the rendering of the eyes. The

crisp demarcation of the eyebrows as sharp edges and the shadowing evoked by deeper undercutting of the orbital cavities of

the "Cleopatra" produce greater pathos or even fury in the expression of the eyes, while the modeling of the lumpy brow

musculature, the swollen flesh around the eyes, and the thick lids of the "Alexander/Inopos" appears like a monotonous juxta

position of identically textured elements, melding into each other with no higher points of interest.191Alexandria, Greco-Roman Museum 24092: Kyrieleis, Bildnisse, 59ff., 120f., 127, 174, cat. F3 (with bibliog.), pis. 49-51.

192"Konig, nicht Konigin,"



374 JARCE 45 (2009)

Fig. 15.Hyacinth Intaglio withPortrait of Cleopatra I. Oxford, Ash

molean Museum 1892.1572. Cour

tesy of the Ashmolean Museum.

The facial features of the Louvre "Cleopatra" are difficult to recognize, partially due to damage and modern restoration of most of thenose and a large portion chipped out of the upper lip.193Moreover,the sculptor made use of the Middle Hellenistic baroque taste for ex

aggerated, sensual forms with such artistic liberty that he neglectedthe accurate physical portrait of the queen. A physical resemblanceof the portrait to the Cypriote coins with a bust of "Cleopatra I" (fig.3) can possibly be recognized, however: a low forehead, jutting outover the brow, what appears from the extant upper part of the noseis straight, a long, flat cheek and a meaty, protruding chin. The al

most masculine strength of the portrait, the grimly set lips of thesmall mouth and the fierce glance of the eyes on the marble portraitare comparable to the furrowed brow and sternly set mouth on someof the Cypriote coin images (figs. 3-4) and, in sentiment, to the fierce

image of Arsinoe Philadelphus on early second century K-monogrammed octadrachms. Decisive for the attribution of the Louvre

bust to Cleopatra I are, on the basis of its art historical placement about 180, its physical differencesfrom the round-faced countenance of Cleopatra II, who had prominent cheekbones, a wide mouthand large eyes, as I have recently discussed elsewhere.194

A hyacinth intaglio in the Ashmolean Museum (fig. 15)195 closely follows the type of the Cypriotecoins (fig. 3) showing a woman wearing a corkscrew coiffure with loose sprigs of grain bound intoher diadem, including one full ear of corn over her forehead. In addition, a sun disc flanked by a

pair of cow's horns identifies her as Isis or an Egyptian queen; the identification as a queen is supported by the long streamer falling down behind the head from the wreath?a common feature of the

Hellenistic royal diadem.196 The large, dominant eye suggests that it is a ruler portrait, intended tobe intimidating.If the facial features on the glyptic image are to be interpreted as a portrait, then it is easy to find

in it similarities to the images now identifiable as Cleopatra I. That the image is a Ptolemaic queen is

supported by the parallel of an intaglio of the same portrait type and attributes in Alexandria,197which I have argued elsewhere is a representation of Cleopatra Berenice III.198 The woman on theOxford cameo is clearly young. She has a low forehead, slanting in towards the hairline, the nose is

straight and sharply pointed, the chin is prominent?features typical of all the coin portraits of Cleo

patra I. The youthful appearance of the queen, whose gently rounded cheeks and chin, and pert,tight-lipped little smile have not yet acquired the lean, bony frame and the harsh facial expression ofthe mature

CleopatraI. In this

aspect,the cameo

portraitis

comparableto the

youthful imageson

the Cyrenaic coin portrait (fig. 3) and the New York statuette (figs. 10-11) discussed above. The

tightly rolled corkscrew curls are rendered in a hard, ropelike manner, falling down onto her shoulders from beneath the diadem; above it, the hair lies flat against the head, and a shorter, ropelikeringlet in the front falls over the ear; this rendering of the hair closely resembles that on the statuette

193por a description of the damages to the bust, see Hamiaux, Sculptures Grecques, 87f.194

Cheshire, The Ptolemies in Memphis (forthcoming), "Excursus: The Portraits of Cleopatra II."195

Oxford, Ashmolean Museum 1892.1572. h.-3 cm, see La Gloire d'Alexandrie (Paris, 1998), 161, no. 102 (ill.) (MarieFrancoise Boussac).

196Smith, Hellenistic Royal Portraits, 85.

197Greco-Roman Museum 28855: Marie-Francoise Boussac and Paola Starakis-Roscam, "Une Collection d'intailles et de

camees du Musee d'Alexandrie," BCH 107 (1983), 468ff., no. 32, fig. 31.198Cheshire, Ptolemies, Chapter, "Cleopatra Berenice



CHESHIRE 375

in the Metropolitan and the head in Brooklyn (figs. 6-7). The mouth is small but the lips are fleshy,the upper lip protruding a bit beyond the lower one, in an earnest, almost frowning expression?adetermined look apparently found on most of this queen's portraits?an attitude more typical forSeleucid royal portraits than for the Ptolemies, hinting at the queen's own lineage.

The style of the gem carving fits well within the early second century.199 Coins of the youngPtolemy V (fig. I)200 show similar hardened forms, stone-like skin surfaces, angular contours of the

profile. Particularly comparable to the intaglio are the sharp rendering of the pointed nose, the additive lips, and the offset, protruding chin, each feature lying isolated on top of the inanimate shell ofthe face with a lack of plastic integration within the flesh. The large, rigid eye is very comparable onthe gem portrait of the queen and the king's coins. An identification of the Oxford intaglio as Cleo

patra I is thus well supported. The addition of thin blades of grain to her diadem, represented not

only on the cameo but also on some of the Cypriote coin portraits (figs. 3-4), is paralleled on coin

portraits of the young Ptolemy V, on which he wears a diadem decorated with corn (fig. I).201Certainly the valuable gold and silver emissions bearing the boy king's portrait, in a major part

destined for the Ptolemies' Greek subjects and mercenaries outside the sphere of circulation ofPtolemaic copper money,202 but also a large portion of the low value copper coins from a Cypriotemint, destined for domestic circulation, will have been minted to cover the expenses of the military.The troops still consisted in the early second century bc to a large extent of mercenaries from disparate parts of the Greek world. In the age of democracy, shipments of food supplies to various parts ofthe Mediterranean world in times of famine or extreme hardship had been undertaken among the

Greek poleis but more often by well-to-do private citizens. This emergency relief took the form of

loans, in ideal cases at minimal interest, or of outright grants. From the late fourth century bc on, inthe expanded world of the Hellenistic monarchies, the peasant folk became increasingly reliant onthe euergetism of well-to-do private citizens.203 The recipients of the charitable actions often rewarded

their benefactors with public gestures in the form of portraitstatues and

decreesset

upin the

Agora,golden wreaths or diadems, or with the bestowal of honorific titles for their assistance.204

In Egypt, a far more centralized government was already well developed long before the Ptolemaic

Period, and the intervention of the king, as an agent of the gods with the enormous grain reservesof the State at his disposal, in times of crisis was a natural expectation of the populace.205 The agricultural wealth of Egypt was known to the Greeks since earliest historical times, and it is likely that

grain was exported to the West before the Ptolemaic Period far more often than is documented,

although possibly on the part of private entrepreneurs.206 In 396, according to Diodorus,207 the

pharaoh Nepherites I fulfilled an alliance with Sparta by sending King Agesilaos a large shipment

199Boussac, "Collection d'intailles," 468ff., suggested a dating of 180 BC.

200Kyrieleis, "Portratmiinzen," passim.201

Kyrieleis, "Portratmiinzen," 213ff., figs. Iff.; idem, Bildnisse, 52, pi. 40, 1-3.202

Poole, BMC Ptolemies, lxx; Kyrieleis, "Portratmiinzen," 222. The Raphia Decree of 217 states (lines 27-30) that PtolemyIV paid his troops 300,000 gold pieces for their victory; Heinz-Josef Thissen, Studien zum Raphia-Dekret. Beitr.z.Klass.Philol.23

(Meisenheim am Glan, 1966), 20f., 64f.203 In ancient Egypt as well, it was a known practice that private individuals of means came to the aid of those in need in

times of famine, Jacques Vandier, La Famine dans VEgypte ancienne (Cairo, 1936), 26f., 38, 130f.204 Peter Garnsey, Famine and Food Supply in the Graeco-Roman World. Responses toRisk and Crisis (Cambridge, 1988), 30, 82

66, 163f., 261-67, 272; Hans-Christian Dirscherl, MBAH19 (2000), 26, n. 121; Peter Van Minnen, "Euergetism in Graeco-Roman

Egypt," in Leon Mooren, ed., Politics, Administration and Society in the ellenistic and Roman World, StudHell 36 (Leuven, 2000),437-69.

205Vandier, La Famine, 23-25, 54, 57; Paul Barguet, Le stele de lafamine a Sehel (Cairo, 1943).

206M. M. Austin, Greece and Egypt in the Archaic Age (Cambridge, 1970), 35, 69-70, nn. 2-3; Friedrich Kienitz, Die politische

Geschichte Agyptens vom 7. bis zum 4.Jahrhundert vor der Zeitwende (Berlin, 1953), 73.207 13.79,



376 JARCE 45 (2009)

of grain and supplies for his troops to fight the Persians.208 Conversely, in a period of hardship in

Egypt in 323/2, the satrap Cleomenes bought grain from Sicily.209 In the third century BC KingHieron of Syracuse sent a shipload of grain to Egypt in a time of famine.210 Grain imports by PtolemyIII from Crete and Syria are mentioned in the Canopus Decree.211 When the inhabitants of Rome

suffered a famine after their countryside had been ravaged in the Hannibalic Wars, they appealed toPtolemy IV for an emergency shipment of corn.212

As Greek mercenaries were recruited from abroad to quell the Egyptian nationalist uprising in thesouth of Egypt,213 the message of the coins was surely pragmatic and international. The broad inter

pretation of the corn symbolism alone, as mentioned by Kyrieleis,214 alluding to the prosperity andsustenance guaranteed in the person of the king, was undoubtedly the message the populace drewfrom them. Two decades of native revolts caused severe destruction in many parts of the Egyptiancountryside, while people who were uprooted from their land either to escape the fighting or to jointhe military deserted their farms, which fell into disrepair and draught, so that no crops were harvested. A Dublin papyrus215 relates about the Lycopolite nome that, at the time of the rebellion of

Chaonnophris, most of the population died and the land went arid.216The Greeks might easily have connected the hope that these images offered in the person of the

king with the cult of Triptolemus, Demeter or another chthonic deity.217 Clement of Alexandria218relates one historical tradition that the Alexandrian cult image of Serapis (or, in the words of Clement, "Pluto") was a gift from the people of Sinope inAsia Minor in gratitude to Ptolemy Philadelphusfor having sent them grain in a time of famine. This rumor may have had some basis in fact, sincethe canonic image of Serapis wore on his head a kalathos, in Roman times a modim?a basket ofthe volume of the standard measure of grain.219 Cleopatra I would have been tacitly assimilated,

through the addition of the blades of grain in her diadem, to Demeter. Even though the imagery of

208Kienitz, Die politische Geschichte, 79-80.

209Garnsey, Famine, 152-57, 161f.

210Athenaeus V 209b; Vandier, La famine, 33f.211

Sethe, Urk. II, 130f., hierogl. 1.9, Greek 11. 13-19; Vandier, La famine, 126-28; Heinz Heinen, "Hunger, Not und Macht,"AncSoc 36 (2006), 13-44, esp. 17-19.

212Polybius, 9.11; cf. Fraser, Ptolemaic Alexandria I, 155; II, 269, n. 186, with further references.

213Hu6, Agypten, 476-78.

214"Portratmunzen," 244.

215Pestman, "Haronnophris," 103, 12Iff. (ww).

216The ancient Egyptian grain reserves, replenished annually through taxation in kind, were, in normal times throughouthistory, generally equipped to sustain the population in times of hardship. It was only during periods of civil unrest, a foreigninvasion or an unstable regime that this well-organized system broke down; Vandier, La famine, 24-27, 35-38, 48-50.

217John McK. Camp, "A drought in the late eighth century B.C.," Hesperia 48 (1979), 397-411, esp. 398, 401-3, 407-8, saw

the relief from severe drought in Athens as the reason for the foundation of the cult of Zeus Ombrios (the Bringer of Rain) onMount Hymettos. He compared, among numerous additional examples, the aetiological myth of the foundation of the cult ofArtemis at Brauron, which was allegedly intended to persuade the goddess to end a plague or famine she herself had inflictedon the populace. Disagreeing, Garnsey {Famine, 112) believed the cults of agricultural deities to be addressed not to specificcrises but to the normal risks and vicissitudes of farming, which was always dependent on the behavior of the weather.

218Protr. 4.48: Fraser, Ptolemaic Alexandria I, 247; II, 398, n. 449.219Der Kleine Pauly 3 (Munich, 1975), col. 1379, s.v. "Modius (4)" (E. Bund). Thus on a large cameo in the Bibliotheque

Nationale, Paris, the Emperor Claudius, in the role of Triptolemus, rides in the god's serpent-drawn chariot, while at his sidethe Empress Messalina, in the guise of Ceres, reaches out to the populace with a volumen in one hand, and sprigs of grain in the

other; M.-L. Vollenweider, Camees et intailles II. Les Portraits romains du Cabinet des medailles (Paris, 2003), 98f., cat. 105 (with references to earlier literature), pi. 14. H.-P. Laubscher, "Triptolemos und die Ptolemaer," JbKGHamb 6/7 (1988), 32f., 40, n. 132,observed that not only did Claudius made an effort to relocate the center of the Eleusinian Mysteries to Rome (Suet., Claud.

25, 5), but a severe famine at the beginning of his reign necessitated large scale political operations initiated on the part of theEmperor; cf. also Rickham, Corn Supply, 73ff., 193,



CHESHIRE 377

the BASILISSES KLEOPATRAS coinswas to a large extent pragmatic and political, an additional pleato the gods for assistance might also bring results.

Cleopatra Fs predecessor, Arsinoe III Philopator, had appeared before the troops to encouragethem before the Battle of Raphia to success against the troops of Antiochus III, and an applique

figure from a faience oinochoe of a woman holding a lance might represent her in this role.220 Thesituation was rather different one and a half generations later, when the "Syrian" Cleopatra, the

daughter of that very Antiochus whom the Egyptian forces had helped defeat, herself assumed a

leadership role?if only, possibly, as a figurehead?of the Ptolemaic military.When Ptolemy V died in 180 bc, and the rule of the land fell upon his widow in a guardianship

role for the young Ptolemy VI,221 it became necessary for Cleopatra I, as the only adult of the reigning pair at the head of a country embroiled in civil war, to establish prestige in the eyes of the troops.

Her assumption of the right to mint her own coinage, her portrait head adorned with a crown of

wheat, was an assurance that sustenance for the populace could be brought from abroad, if necessaryin times of conflict, and that the military?including a large number of Greek mercenaries?would be

rewarded for its service. One dependable asset which the Ptolemies were always able to distribute aspayment was land?a commodity that was scarce in Greece. Second-century papyri from Tebtynisattest that four thousand soldiers who fought on behalf of the crown against the rebels in theThebaid were rewarded with parcels of land (ge klerouchike) in the Fayum.222 The ears of grain (mostprobably barley-corn) in Cleopatra's diadem symbolized her earthly assumption of the role of Deme

ter, the fertility goddess who provided grain for her divine son, the ploughman Triptolemus, who inturn distributed it to the human populace.223 On Roman coinage, the assimilation of the portrait ofcertain empresses to Ceres through the addition of ears of grain symbolized the Imperial corn doleto the urban populace of Rome.224

It was not unknown for Macedonian queens to assume a temporary leadership role in the govern

ing of their land, justas

it occasionally occurred that they took political matters of the country intotheir own hands and arranged the necessary assassination of opponents 225 There was indeed historical precedent for aMacedonian queen, minding the homeland while the king and his troops were at

war, to provide for the populace in times of famine by having staples imported from abroad.226 Thesister of Alexander the Great, Cleopatra, and his mother, Olympias, are mentioned in an inscriptionof 333/2 as having received grain from Cyrene,227 obviously in a time of crisis when that basic com

modity was not available at home. The same Cleopatra, acting as regent inMacedonia, is recorded as

having sent a shipment of grain to Corinth in approximately that same year.228 Yet the sole rule of aMacedonian queen had always been an emergency solution to a situation when the king was abroad

(Alexander the Great), underage (Alexander IV) or incapable (Philip Arrhidaeus), and officially she

alwaysacted in the name of the

king.229To a certain extent the

queensof Ptolemaic

Egyptwere an

exception to this tradition.230

220Dorothy Burr Thompson, Ptolemaic Oinochoai and Portraits in Faience. Aspects of theRuler Cult (Oxford, 1972), 26.

221 See n. 105.222Veisse, Les revoltes, 158, with n. 14.223

Laubscher, "Triptolemos," 25, 28f., 32f., 38, n. 79 (with further bibliography).224 Sarah Pomeroy, Goddesses, Whores, Wives, and Slaves2 (New York, 1995), 184, 202-4, 216.225E. D. Carney, Women and Monarchy inMacedonia (Norman, Okla., 2000), 290f., n. 5, 291f., n. 22.226

Carney, Women and Monarchy, 89f.227SEG IX, 2; Carney, Women and Monarchy, 86, 89f.228

Lycurg., Leoc.26; Carney, Women and Monarchy, 86, 89f.229Dolores Miron, "Transmitters and Representatives of Power: Royal Women in Ancient Macedonia," AncSoc 30 (2000),

35-52, esp. 39-42, 52.230Miron, "Transmitters and Representatives," 51.



378 JARCE 45 (2009)

In Egypt, a change in the representation of the deified Arsinoe Philadelphus on the special issuesof her high-value coins occurred around the beginning of the second century, including variationsin the physiognomy of the head of the queen as well as a new, fierce facial expression. Svoronos231

suggested that the issues bearing a K-monogram belonged at the head of a new type, and the earliest

of these commemorated the tenth anniversary (reading K for kappa, the Greek writing for "ten") ofthe marriage of Ptolemy V to Cleopatra I. Kahrstedt232 believed, like Svoronos, that the new head

type on these Arsinoe-coins portrayed the contemporary queen in the iconographic type of the Thea

Philadelphos, a working hypothesis expounded upon by Brunelle.233 Kyrieleis234 allowed that the portrait on these later Arsinoe coins showed a steeper forehead with a sharp break at the top of the nose

bridge235 and the fuller lips of the small mouth located closer up beneath the nose, but held it for

possible that the crasser features were "auf eine allmahliche Deformierung des traditionellen Arsinoe-Bildes

zuriickzufuhren ' More striking than the deviations in the physiognomy of the long deceased queen isthe sudden change in the rendering of the facial expression of the Brother-Loving Goddess on the

K-monogrammed issues. With the eyebrow arched high, as if in indignation, the bulging cornea

appearing to glare ferociously rather than staring placidly, the lips, pressed in determination or perhaps sneering?this image marks a clear break with the calm and timeless coin portrait of the third

century goddess236 and hints that a significant change had taken place. Although Svoronos categorized some of the K-monogrammed Arsinoe octadrachms in the later second and first centuriesbased on stylistic judgments, most examples237 come close to reproducing the same long, lean facial

type, a thin aquiline nose, a small mouth with firmly set lips, and an offset, somewhat protrudingchin as do the other K-monogrammed issues with little essential variation. The Cypriote bronzecoins struck in the name of Cleopatra (figs. 3 -

4)238 and the bezel of a gold ring in the BritishMuseum (fig. 5)239 fairly certainly portray Cleopatra I, but consistently give the appearance of a

younger woman. It is therefore possible that the K-monogrammed Arsinoe Philadelphus issues

merelyintroduced a new face for the

Brother-LovingGoddess with a fierce

expressionand features

strongly assimilated to those of Cleopatra I, but the problem still merits further study.The new interpretation might be explained by the entry of a Syrian princess into the Ptolemaic

royal family. Seleucid coin portraits are more intensely expressive, occasionally even fearsome, a

phenomenon that Kyrieleis240 explained as an attempt to intimidate the culturally widely diverse factions of a vast empire. The new portrait type can not, however, have made reference to Cleopatra Iat the time when she married Ptolemy V, since she was only about ten years old and figured in politics

marginally, even as a symbol. The coins from Cyrenaica (fig. 12) portray the "foreign" Ptolemaic

queen in a youthful type, presumably approximately around the time of her marriage, that shows

231Svoronos, Ta nomismata II, no. 1374; III, pi. 47, 1-3; 51, 17-24; IV, cols. 252ff.; Forrer, Portraits, 23ff. (2 ill.); Richter,

"Greek Portraits III," 265 (with hesitant recognition of portrait features); Brunelle, Bildnisse, 60-62; Kyrieleis, Bildnisse, 113ff.,

pi. 100,1; Grimm in Dietrich Wildung and Giinter Grimm, eds., Gotter?Pharaonen (Mainz, 1978), cat. 82.232U. Kahrstedt, "Frauen auf antiken Munzen,"XL/0 10 (1910), 274f.233

Bildnisse, 61-63. The current state of research on these coins is still unsettled.234

Bildnisse,llS.235

I.e., in contrast to the smooth and unbroken curvilinear profile of Arsinoe's portrait on most of her third century coins.236The rigid and formal style of the Arsinoe coins was characterized by Kyrieleis, Bildnisse, 80, as "ceremonial," but the remote

otherworldliness of the deceased queen's image might also be considered assimilation to native Egyptian art; cf. Cheshire, TheBronzes ofPtolemy II, 94.

237example, even an issue placed by Svoronos as late as the reign of Ptolemy XII: Svoronos, Ta nomismata II, 303,

no. 1841; III, pi. 61, 26; IV, col. 352.238 See n. 110.239

See n. 118.240Bildnisse, 161f.; cf.Wendy Cheshire, "Aphrodite Cleopatra,"/Ai?C? 43 (2007), 160.



CHESHIRE 379

neither the ferocity nor the mature physiognomy of the Cypriote coins of the adult queen as guardian for Ptolemy VI.

It is fairly certain that the Arsinoe gold octadrachms with the K-monogram and the ferocious glarewere minted for a special purpose. The goddess Arsinoe Philadelphus figured after her death as the

divine protector and supporter of her husband, Ptolemy II, in his military enterprises while he wasstill on the throne in Egypt some twenty years longer,241 just as Cleopatra I was to run the militaryaffairs in a guardianship role for the boy king, Ptolemy Philometor. The venomous glare in the facial

expression of "Arsinoe Philadelphus/Cleopatra" on the gold coins has a more intimidating effectthan the accustomed placid mien of the Brother-Loving Goddess and would have been more effectivefor the glyptic image of a sole ruling queen, but other factors might also lay behind the new inter

pretation of the queen's image. In Egyptian theology, the queen was assimilated to the daughter ofRa, Hathor, and hence the uraeus serpent?a function assumed already by Arsinoe Philadelphus.242 Itwas in the form of the venomous cobra on the brow of the pharaoh that the queen/uraeus destroyedall foes and hence would have functioned as "Mistress of the Navy." The ferocious glance of the

K-monogrammed Arsinoe Philadelphus issues appears to imitate the fiery uraeus serpent in defenseof her kingdom.

The Arsinoe coins may have assumed, to a certain extent, the portrait features of the contemporary queen in the case of Cleopatra I just as had been done for Berenice II243 and Arsinoe III,244 buttheir appearance is of a mature woman. As Cleopatra I lived to be about forty years old, the coin

portrait could only have been assimilated to her appearance towards the end of her life, as she ruledas guardian for her son, the underage Ptolemy VI Philometor, from 180-174. It ismost likely that the

K-monogram did not signify "year ten" but instead would be the minting mark for K(leopatra) who, asone of the few Ptolemaic queens to do so, possessed the right to issue her own coinage as leader ofthe State in this period.245 The praenomen of the queen, spelled phonetically in hieroglyphs within a

cartouche on the upper arm of an Egyptian statuette with a cornucopia inNew York (figs. 10-11) wasalso seen to contain exceptional features. Moreover, the monograms on the festive coin issues in thetumultuous early years of the reign of Ptolemy V have also been thought to refer to the moneyers

within the circle of courtiers who assumed a role of military leadership or guardianship for the childhood rule?SKOPA(S), PO(lykrates), Nl(kon), Sd(sibios)?AR(istomenes).246 The interpretation of the

monogram K(-leopatra) for the ruling queen's own mint is thus well founded.An imposing gold octadrachm in the British Museum bearing the bust of a veiled woman with a

stephane and scepter on the obverse and on the reverse, in somewhat smaller scale, a lean-faced boywearing a royal diadem, labeled "of Queen Cleopatra" and "of King Ptolemy" respectively,247 wasattributed by Helmut Kyrieleis248 to the rule of Cleopatra I as guardian for the underage Ptolemy VI.

A clear overallpattern

can be obtained from a review of thelarger

mass ofportraits

attributable to

241Cheshire, The Bronzes ofPtolemy II, 110, 114-16, 132f.

242 See n. 153. There was, at least in the case of Arsinoe II, apparently a real basis for her influence on the Ptolemies'maritime power; Hans Hauben, "Arsinoe II et la politique exterieure de l'Egypte," in Egypt and the ellenistic World, 98-127,

esp. HOff.243

Kyrieleis, Bildnisse, 96 pi. 82, 3.244

Kyrieleis, Bildnisse, 103, pi. 88, 3.245 See p. 358. Svoronos, Ta nomismata IV, 253f., considered this possibility but rejected it, believing that a letter in front of

the head must be a numeral for the year.246 See p. 358.247

London, British Museum CM 1978-10-21-1: Helmut Kyrieleis, Ein Bildnis des Konigs Antiochos IV. von Syrien, Berliner

Winckelmanns-Programm 127 (Berlin, 1980), 17-20, figs. 8f.; Smith, Hellenistic Royal Sculpture, 93, 94, pi. 75, 15f.; Andrew

Meadows and Sally-Ann Ashton inWalker and Higgs, eds., Cleopatra ofEgypt, 84, no. 77.248 See n. 150.



380 JARCE 45 (2009)

those rulers, but the London gold coin is, to date, typologically unique and presents numerous exceptional features. The other portraits of Cleopatra I have been thus far identifiable on the basis of thecoiffure of corkscrew curls, a long, lean or bony face and a stern expression or, in her early years as achild bride and Queen of Egypt, a pert facial expression with wide-open eyes, a short, pointed nose,a

tightsmile with

lips upturnedat the corners, a short forehead and somewhat fuller cheeks charac

teristic of youth. In view of this evidence, it is dangerous to use the London octadrachm as a base for

portrait study of Cleopatra I, either for the queen's true appearance or in her official portraiture249when, in fact, it presents quite the opposite picture from the larger corpus of evidence. Her otherwise typically fierce or stern facial expression could have been thought appropriate in combinationwith the Orientalizing corkscrew coiffure of the Syrian newcomer, while the docile facial expressionof the London octadrachm was better suited to the purely Hellenistic type with veil, scepter, stephaneand a melon coiffure, of which the ends of the tresses of hair, bound in a knot on the back of the

head, can be seen beneath the veil. Differing from the "Arsinoe Philadelphus" type is the absenceof the small horn curving around the ear like an earring.250 The horn does occur on the second

century "ArsinoePhiladelphus" special

issues with theK-monogram

and the fierceportrait

version.On the London octadrachm, it is instead the smaller image of the boy "Ptolemy" on the reverse whois represented with stern, bony, overly mature features similar to the coin portraits of his father as an

underage king (fig. 1). As shall be observed on a portrait of that king in Alexandria (figs. 23-24),probably made at the time of his coming-of-age and marriage to his sister, Cleopatra II, the youngPhilometor probably had a proportionally broader face with somewhat fuller cheeks and a smallerchin than is shown on the lean, bony portrait heads of his adult life. The London octadrachm thus

represents a role reversal of regent queen and boy king, possibly determined by a specific message of

propaganda. Thus this unique coin still poses some unresolved questions.A plethora of papyrological sources clearly attests to the importance of the supply of food to

the army deployed to hostile territory in Upper Egypt to subdue the rebels. A papyrus containing aGreek letter of September 188 to one Spemminis in Lycopolis writes of a shipment of grain for thesoldiers.251 The archive of the sitologos of the southern border garrison of Syene252 records shipmentsof wheat received from other Upper Egyptian towns (Thebes, Dendera, the Pathyrite nome, etc.) tobe distributed directly to the soldiers; within a three-month span in the summer of 187, delivery of

11,000 artabae of wheat was recorded.253 The transport of grain and other food supplies to the

troops abroad or in hostile territory was a vital duty of the military. In troubled times, itwas vital thatthe Ptolemies maintained control of the Nile and other waterways so that their ships carrying food

supplies, weapons and reinforcement troops could pass through.254 It was perhaps the success of

Cleopatra I for her pan-Hellenic collaborations in providing for the sustenance and reward of the

pro-Ptolemaic populace and the troops combating the rebels that led to her posthumous cultic hon

ors with an eponymous priesthood in the Macedonian regime's Upper Egyptian administrative basein Ptolemais. From 176 to 165/4, an eponymous priest (Gr. hiereus, Eg. w(b) of "King Ptolemy and

Cleopatra, his mother" is recorded,255 keeping alive the memory of the "Syrian" queen in Egypt even

249 Such asWhitehorne, Cleopatras, 83-84.250On this attribute, see Kyrieleis, Bildnisse, 79; Cheshire, The Bronzes of Ptolemy II, 111-12, 117, with references to earlier

literature.251

Rgr.Med. I 24: Pestman, "Haronnophris," 118, n. nn.252SB VI, 9367: H. Hauben in Proceedings of the XVIIIth International Congress of Papyrology (Athens, 1988), II, 243ff.;

Pestman, "Haronnophris," 119, n. pp.253

yeisse, ]^es revoltes, 156.254

Veisse,Les

revoltes, 156,n.

4; Hufl, Agypten,51 Of.

255 Pestman, Chronologie,



CHESHIRE 381

Figs. 16-18. Sandstone Head of a Pharaoh. San Jose, Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum RC 1755. Photographs courtesy ofthe Rosicrucian Museum.

after her death.256 Apparently beginning in 165/4 bc, the offices are separated; Ptolemy VI then

received, as the living, Mother-Loving Pharaoh (Philometor), an eponymous priest,257 and the cult ofthe deceased queen was administered by a priestess (w(b.i) of "Cleopatra, the mother, the goddess

Manifest (Epiphanes)."258A bluntly carved sandstone head of a pharaoh in San Jose (figs. 16-18)259 is stylistically comparable

to the statuette of Cleopatra I in the Metropolitan Museum (figs. 10-11) and can thus be convenientlystudied within this same context. Formally, the head is a conventional representation of an Egyptianpharaoh wearing the nemes headcloth, adorned with an erect cobra over the brow. The general surface area of the uraeus has been demarcated in high relief but remains in itself an unarticulatedblock?a preliminary step in carving the royal head as is seen commonly on unfinished "sculptors'

models."260 Also the left ear (fig. 18) is in a state of incompletion. The bottom limit of the sketcheduraeus stops short of touching the brow of the king, while its thick tail continues back to the top ofthe head. An indistinctly cut horizontal depression along the edge of the nemes against the forehead

appears to indicate the flat band that borders the head cloth, to which the uraeus is affixed above.The nemes has a smooth surface without plastic indication of lateral stripes. It is rounded at the topand lies closely against the contour of the head until a point vertically aligned with the temples; from

256The ambiguity of a priesthood serving, collectively, the living ruler and his deceased mother was probably initially thecause of some confusion to the notaries, as in RBoston 38.2063b, written in 176, the title of the office is garbled in Demotic as

"the priest of King Ptolemy, the Manifest God (i.e., Epiphanes), the Mother-Loving, and Cleopatra, the Manifest Gods" w(b (n)Pr-(?

Ptlwmys ptntr

(nty) pr ptmr mw.t=w irm

Glwpytrlnl ntr.w

(nty) pr; Pestman, Chronologie,note

c); Minas, Ahnenreihen,136

38. There was a precedent in the cult of Ptolemy II who, after the death and immediate deification of his sister-wife, Arsinoe

II, continued to receive dedications addressed to the Theoi Adelphoi collectively; Cheshire, The Bronzes of Ptolemy II, 130ff.

Already the posthumous cult of Arsinoe Philadelphus, in her capacity as divine protectress of her brother, the living Pharaoh,included a perpetual guarantee of agricultural produce; Cheshire, The Bronzes ofPtolemy II, 109-11, 117-23, 132-33.

257Pestman, Chronologie, 143 (p), 148.

258Pestman, Chronologie, 143 (k).

259Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum RC 1755. Acquired from Parke-Bernet Galleries, New York. Provenance not known.Dimensions: 20.9 x 18.7 x 19.5 cm. Bibliography: Lisa Schwappach-Shirriff, Treasures of the Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum. A

Catalogue (San Jose, 2004), 104 (with color ill.). I am indebted to David Pinault, former Curator at the Rosicrucian Museum, for

generously providing me with photographs and allowing me to publish this unusual piece. As is often the case with piecesacquired without provenance and virtually without close parallels, the suspicion of its being a forgery naturally arises. The

following argumentation to place this piece within provincial Egyptian sculpture of the early second century should serve

simultaneouslyas a

supporting opinionfor its

authenticity.260Nadja Tomoum, The Sculptors' Models of the Late and Ptolemaic Periods (Cairo, 2005), pis. 2-6, 13-14.



382 JARCE 45 (2009)

there, where it is folded over in the back, it pokes out sharply to the sides. The back of the head is

irregular and rough hewn.The head is a squat, round shape, the low forehead appearing as if compressed beneath the nemes.

The sculpting style of the sandstone is simplified and limited to the placement of big, schematizedfeatures isolated on

large,hard surfaces. The cheeks are round and full, even bloated. Large pieces

chipped off the front and underneath the chin obscure its original form, but it appears to havefollowed the same rounded contour as the cheeks, so that the entire face is a near globular form. The

eyes are large and spread across almost the entire breadth of the face. In a profile view, they appearwide open with only slightly convexly curved corneas, their surfaces slanting inward toward the lowerlids. The shaping of the eyes is rigidly geometric and symmetrical, producing the artificial appearance of amask. The hard and evenly cut upper eyelids overlap the tear ducts but meet the lower lidsto form sharply pointed outer and inner corners. The nose is completely broken off, probably inten

tionally, since it has been very thoroughly removed. The most distinctive features of the face are thethick lips, which are turned up at the corners in a slight smile. The surface of the mouth was polishedsmooth without an incised or plastically raised contour, giving the lips their fleshy appearance. Theears?in particular the left ear?are schematically rendered in a half figure-eight shape, with sketchedbut hardly precise detailing of the inner ear, probably after a crude model. The exuberant, round

face, plump cheeks, and fleshy lips of the San Jose sculpture appear to point to ethnically African

features, such as were represented in those times in the art south of the border inMeroe261 but werewell represented to the Egyptians already in Kushite royal sculpture of the 25th Dynasty.262

A group of monuments cited above as similar to the New York "Cleopatra I" (figs. 10-11), andwhich Stanwick263 has placed convincingly within the first half of the second century BC,were workedin a style that could also be compared well to the San Jose portrait. Particularly similar on the Metro

politan and the San Jose heads is the shaping of the brow region. The lower edge of the nemes of the

king lies low and snugly across the forehead, tapering down slightly towards the temples to follow a

steady course equidistant from the line of the brows. The smooth plane of the forehead is clearlydemarcated above by the incised outline of the nemes running parallel to the gently indented edge ofthe hairless eyebrows. The forehead of the "Cleopatra" statuette is similarly a narrow, smooth plane,the row of snail shell curls lying closely against the head and curving a bit lower over the temples tocontinue to run parallel to the downward curvature of the outer edges of the eyebrows. The orbitalcavities on both heads are very slightly hollowed out, so that the eyes are shallowly embedded. The

eyebrows are indicated by sculpted edges in flattened arches, which bend down slightly at the outercorners. As the narrow distance between the eyebrows and the lower edge of the nemes (on the king)or forehead curls (on the queen) is almost equal to the height of the orbital cavities on both heads,the eye and forehead region achieves a certain balance of its own. The eyes are in neither case the

blank, distended eyes characteristic of many portraits of Ptolemies; they are closer to almond-shaped,large in the center and coming to pointed inner and outer corners in even, stereotypical Egyptianfashion without Hellenistic influence. The upper lids are delimited by a double incised outline, thelower lids by a shallow second outline. Both pieces are modest provincial creations but must still beconsidered under the rubric of royal sculpture. The individual features on both portraits are simpli

261Kasimierz Michalowski, The Art of Ancient Egypt (New York, 1969), figs. 620, 625; Laszlo Torok, The Kingdom of Kush.Handbook of the Napatan-Meroitic Civilization = HdO 31 (Leiden, 1997), 425.

262Edna R. Russmann, The Representation of the King in the XXVth Dynasty (Brussels, 1974), 9, 13-24, figs. 1, 5ff.; Robert

Morkot,"Archaism in

EgyptianArt from the New

Kingdomto the Late

Period,"in

J. Tait, ed.,Never Had the Like Occurred:

Egypt's View of itsPast (London, 2003), 84; Torok, Kingdom ofKush, 428f.263 See n.



CHESHIRE 383

fied. An openly smiling facial expression on both heads is evoked not only by the upturned cornersof the lips but also the expansive horizontal sweep of the upper and lower eyelids and the direct gazeof the large, wide open eyes. The eyes of the San Jose pharaoh are tilted up slightly at the outer corners, enhancing the open, happy expression of the usurper. The lower eyelids on the Metropolitan

CleopatraI curve

upwardtomeet the outer corners of the

upperlids

midway,but the

strong upwardbend of the lower lids from their centers towards the outer and inner corners creates a buoyant,"smiling" effect that lacks the elegance of third?or the sobriety of first?century royal art. Of Stan

wick's group, a particularly comparable portrait head of a pharaoh from Canopus in Alexandria264must represent Ptolemy V or VI. The San Jose head differs from these pieces mainly through the

emphasis of an African physiognomy. The prominent, globular form of the face and the fleshy lips ofthe San Jose pharaoh present a starkly different appearance from the loose shaping of the elongatedface of the New York Cleopatra; on the latter, the contours of the brow dip in slightly at eye level,then expand gently to indicate the cheekbones and then taper gradually towards the chin to suggesta weaker, or ethnically European, physiognomy.265

A limestone torso of a female in Egyptian type in the Petrie Museum266 wears, over an echeloned

wig of corkscrew curls, a uraeus serpent attached to a horizontal band (ssd) above her forehead, iden

tifying her as royal. In addition, the ring of uraeus serpents on top of her head served as a base forthe attachment of a tall crown. The portrait head of this queen is stylistically closely comparable tothe Alexandria pharaoh267 in its routine execution of the eyes and brows; the large, almond-shapedeyes are framed by even, double incisions marking the cosmetic strip on the upper lids. On the London torso, this strip overlaps and extends far beyond the outer corners of the eyes. The lower lids onthis work are indicated only by a single incision, but the shaping of the eyes is comparable on the

Alexandria pharaoh, whose eyes are bordered beneath by doubly outlined lids, equally dull andimmobile. The eyebrows on both are gently articulated ridges without indication of eyebrow hair,flattened horizontally over the orbital cavities, which are only slightly hollowed on both sides of thenose. The puffy quality created in the entire lower region of both faces due to the rounded-off contours is very similar, even though the queen has a broad, plump face and the king a lean one. Thedifferentiation between Pharaonic-style portraits of Ptolemies V and VI is not clear, and Stanwick hasleft many attributions in this time frame open. On stylistic grounds, the London torso should bedated to approximately the same period. The London portrait, with its merry, round face, large eyesand plump cheeks, clearly represents a different individual than the stern, lean-faced queen whoseattribution to Cleopatra I has been defended above. In the entire first half of the second century, this

queen can only have been Cleopatra II.268 In a separate study I have recently attributed the Londontorso, along with a statue fragment of a physically similar, round-faced young queen inMariemont,269

264 See n. 176.265

Regarciing the ethnic distinctions between Europeans and Asians, in the view of the ancient Greeks, it is informative toread the Hellenistic treatise by an anonymous author of the Hippocratic school, About Airs, Waters and Places; see, for example,

W. Backhaus, "Der Hellenen-Barbaren-Gegensatz und die hippokratische Schrift peri aeron hydaton topon," Historia 25 (1976),170-85. It is unfortunate that the sections of the ancient text devoted to ethnography of Egyptians, Libyans and Africans are

no longer preserved.266

London, University College, Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology UC 16674: Anthea Page, Egyptian Sculpture,Archaic to Saite, from the Petrie Collection (Warminster, 1976), 90f., cat. no. 100; Albersmeier, Frauenstatuen, 337f., cat. no. 89

(first century bc), pi. 54b-d; Excavating Egypt (see n. 138), 36, cat. no. 31.267 See n. 176.268portraits of that queen's daughter, Cleopatra III, differ clearly from those of the mother, as is discussed by the present

author in Ptolemies (forthcoming).269Musee royal de Mariemont B. 505 (=E. 49): Baudouin Van de Walle, CdE 24 (1952), 29ff., pis. 6f. ("Cleopatra VII?"); Kyri

eleis, Bildnisse, 119f., 185 cat. Mil; Albersmeier, Frauenstatuen, 17, 53, 55, n. 337, 241ff., 339f., cat. 91 (with bibliog.), pi. 53c

("Cleopatra VI Tryphaena"); Sally-Ann Ashton, The Last Queens ofEgypt (London, 2003), 120ff., fig. 20 ("Cleopatra VII").



384 JARCE 45 (2009)

to Cleopatra II in the early years of her reign, some time between 174 and the early 160s.270 ThePetrie statuette provides a good stylistic link to the San Jose pharaoh (figs. 16-18), as well, and it is

possible to date the portrait of the queen stylistically early in her reign with Ptolemy VI. The Mariemont fragment, which is a finer work, the Petrie torso and the San Jose head are characterized by a

similar simple, unpretentious sculpting style in large surfaces, big, heavy facial features?the almondshaped eyes, framed by routinely carved, somewhat thick lids, a simple, rounded form of the fullcheeks and chin and barely curved ridges marking the eyebrows, which establish a stabilizing horizontal across the forehead. The robustly bulging flesh of the "fat pharaoh" in San Jose had been an

unusual feature in Ptolemaic art up to this point but can be compared with the bulging cheeks on theRichardson Head, a portrait of Ptolemy VIII Euergetes II in his youth,271 made presumably between170-164 at the time of his joint reign with his two older siblings, Ptolemy VI and Cleopatra II.Within the time frame of the early second century bc, there were no ruling Ptolemies who looked

even remotely similar to the San Jose portrait. It is, however, possible to suggest an attribution of the

ethnically distinctive pharaoh to one of the two leaders of the rebellion in the Thebaid, who usurped

the throneover

large parts of Upper Egypt towards the end of the reign of Ptolemy IV and wellinto the reign of his son, Ptolemy V.272 Other than their names and the duration of their rule, noth

ing is known personally about the two pretenders. Their names?or at least the names they assumedas kings in Egypt and had written in hieroglyphs within cartouches273?are Egyptian, as are their

epithets. From 205?199, the rebels were led by one Hor-wennefer, (Egyptian for "Horus-Onnophris,"the latter component being a name of Osiris). A Demotic inscription of late 205 bc dated officially tohis reign274 attests that he was recognized as pharaoh?at least in Thebes?by that time. His successor

(from 199-191) bore a similar name, Ankh-wennefer ("Onnophris"or "Osiris lives"), transliteratedinto Greek Chaonnophris,275 and he bore the identical epithets. Chaonnophris counted the years of

his reign collectively from the beginning of the rule of Horonnophris, thus beginning with "yearseven."276 If

followingPharaonic

Egyptian custom,this method of

numberingthe

yearswould

implythat he had first been a co-regent, perhaps with lesser status, with Horonnophris the first seven years.There is no known coregency, and it is possible that the pretenders used a unique method of datingaccording to the combined years of their counter-regime. An attribution of the San Jose head to thelater of the two rebels, Chaonnophris, agrees best with the closest stylistic comparisons, portraits of

Cleopatra I, Ptolemy V and Cleopatra II in her early years. Due to the wide chronological margin oferror in dating Egyptian art according to style, however, the possibility that the head might representhis predecessor, Haronnophris, cannot be excluded.

It is hardly to be expected that the young princess, the future queen Cleopatra II, and the insur

gent leader Chaonnophris ever met; he was captured and executed in 186,277 the year when her

270The identification of the Mariemont torso was suggested tentatively by Bothmer, Egyptian Sculpture, 132f., and Claire

Derriks, Mariemont. Choix d'Oeuvres 50: Egypte (Morlanwelz, 1990), cat. no. 40, and discussed in detail, along with portraits ofthe mature Cleopatra II, by Cheshire, Ptolemies, "Excursus."

271New York, William Kelly Simpson Collection: R. R. R. Smith, "Ptolemaic Portraits: Alexandrian Types, Egyptian Ver

sions," inMarion True, ed., Alexandria and Alexandrianism (Malibu, 1996), 207f., fig. 5; Stanwick, Portraits, 58, 59, 62, 63, n. 26,72f., 77, figs. 258f.

272Detailed discussions on this episode in Ptolemaic history are given by Pestman, "Haronnophris," passim; HuB, Agypten,445ff., 506ff., with extensive literature cited in 445, n. 17; Veisse, Les revoltes, 11-26, 83-98, 155-85.

273Gauthier, Livre des Rois, 426-28.

274Sethe, "Die historische Bedeutung," 41; Pestman, "Haronnophris," 104-5; Veisse, Les revoltes, 23-26 (disputing Pestman's

results and assuming a date of the expulsion of the Ptolemaic regime already in 206).275

Pestman, "Haronnophris," 126f.276

Pestman, "Haronnophris," 128ff.; Veisse, Les revoltes, 22.277HuB, Agypten,



CHESHIRE 385

brother and future husband was born. Yet the sculptor who created the San Jose head of the pretender in Thebes understood enough about contemporary royal art of the Ptolemies to portray himin a way that would find acceptance among the same native populace, while at the same time emphasizing the ethnic physiognomy to appeal to their anti-Greek sentiments.

The San Jose head appears to have been left in a state ofincompletion.

The choice ofsculpturalmaterial?a coarse-grained sandstone that would have hindered the carving of finely nuanced details

is a possible indication that the piece was made well to the south, in the Thebaid or even beyondEgypt's borders. Sandstone was commonly used for sculpture as well as architecture in Meroe.278

Coupled with the ethnic African features of the head and the blocklike execution of the uraeus, theSan Jose head was presumably sculpted by an Upper Egyptian artist.

The implication of "resurgence from the dead" that is embodied within both similar?but otherwise

unparalleled?proper names of the rebel leaders can possibly be interpreted as a sign of the Egyptiannationalist renaissance that the rebel leaders wanted to convey.279 One might therefore suspect thatthese names were not given at birth but were chosen specifically with the rebellion inmind. The ease

with which the two leaders assumed these half-authentic sounding, theophoric names seems almostheretical in the presumption,280 but the Greek and Demotic sources refer to the rebels consistentlyas "Egyptian."281 The royal titulature the leaders bore?and both of them identically?is of the mostobvious sort, "forever-living, Beloved of Amun, King of Gods, the great god" (cnh dt mr ylmn-nsw-ntr.w

pi ntr 9), aligning the pretenders with the Theban clergy in contrast to Ptolemy V, whose epithet mryPth, "beloved of Ptah," underscored his affiliation with the priesthood of Memphis.282

It is generally assumed on the basis of their names, their conventional Egyptian royal titles and theirsuccess in mobilizing the Egyptian priesthood and populace that Haronnophris and Chaonnophris

were themselves native Egyptians,283 although a similarity has also been observed between their namesand those of their Ethiopian royal contemporaries, Arnekhamani, Arqamani (Ergamenes) II, and

Adikhalamani.284 Their titulatures, "Beloved of Amun" (mry Imri) and "Beloved of Isis" (mry '1st),wereidentical not only with those of the ruling Ptolemy in Alexandria but also with those of the contem

porary rulers in Meroe.285 Just as "Beloved of Amun" asserted their friendly relations with the priestsof Amun at Thebes, the title "Beloved of Isis" underscored the close religious attachment that the

people of the Dodekaschoenus and Lower Nubia felt towards the great Isis Temple of Philae.286The revolt had the character of a native or nationalist movement rather than of a foreign invasion; the"bands of Nubians" mentioned in the second Philensis Decree (written in hieroglyphs tswnt Nhs.w, in

278Alfred Lucas and J. R. Harris, Ancient Egyptian Materials and Industries, 4th ed. (London, 1962), 56f.279Edouard Will and Cl. Orrieux, Ioudaismos-Hellenismos. Essai sur lejudaisme judeen a Vepoque hellenistique (Nancy, 1986), 23;

Vandorpe, City, 232; Vei'sse, Les revokes, 98-99.280

Vei'sse, Les revokes, 95-99. While some of the Thebanpopulation accepted

their seizure of thethrone,

the officialstatement of the Ptolemaic court on the Rosetta Stone labeled the rebels as asebeis ("impious"), and Chaonnophris is called the

"enemy of the gods" (pt sb? n n? ntr.w); cf. Sethe, Urk. II, 221, 8f.; Pestman, "Haronnophris," 101, 103, 120f., no. 7; Vei'sse, Lesrevokes, 221, with further discussion; Vittmann, "Feinde," 207-16. Vittmann, 210, has shown that the (northern, probably

Memphite) Egyptian scribe who drew up the hieroglyphic text for the Rosetta Decree felt an aversion to allowing the name of

Chaonnophris to contain the symbolic value of the ideograms cnh ("life") and nfr ("goodness") and thus devised the unetymological writing Hr-wn-nf for the usurper's name. One is reminded of the graffito at Abydus written phonetically in Greek letters

Hurganophor; see n. 294.281Veisse, Les revokes, 12If.282

Lanciers, "Tempelbauten, I," 84; Holbl, History, 155.283

Lanciers, "Tempelbauten, I," 83f.; Pestman, "Haronnophris," 125ff.; Vandorpe, City, 232.284

Veisse, Les revokes, 85.285wilhelm Spiegelberg, "Zwei Kaufvertrage aus der Zeit des Konigs Harmakhis (Papyrus Carnarvon I und II)," RecTrav 35

(1913), 150-61, esp. 151; Veisse, Les revokes, 86-87.286Torok, Kingdom of Rush,



386 JARCE 45 (2009)

Demotic mscn ni yIgs.w) as uniting the rebel forces were doubtless reinforcements but not the instigators of the "Egyptian" revolts.287 The light-handed manipulation of instruments of Egyptian royaldogma could suggest that they were ethnically more closely bound to the Lower Nubian peoples whowandered back and forth over the border areas of the Dodekaschoenus and Meroe.288

The sources show that the uprising began in Edfu and the Pathyrite nome, and moved from thereto Diospolis magna.289 While Ptolemy IV built substantially onto the temples of the Southern frontier?the Isis Temples at Aswan, Dakke, Philae, and Sehel, as well as in the Theban area, the buildingprogram of Ptolemy V was very limited.290 The Ptolemies' loss of control in the Thebaid and farthersouth allowed the Meroitic rulers to spread their sphere of influence into the Dodekaschoenus. In

Philae, at the time when Ptolemy V had lost control in the region of the First Cataract, the Meroiticleader Arqamani (Ergamenes II) moved into the power vacuum, as is recorded by his decoration ofthe Arensnuphis Temple, later reinscribed with cartouches of Ptolemy V.291 The same ruler built a

chapel in the Temple of Dakke.292 Adikhalimani, a Nubian leader who was probably the successor of

Arqamani/Ergamenes, is represented in his adoration of the local Egyptian gods by a stela found at

Philae,293and he built onto the

Templeof

Debod.294The

sanctuaryof

Mandulisat

Kalabsha also paidallegiance to the Meroitic rulers at the time of the native Egyptian rebellion in the Thebaid.295 The two

usurpers to the throne in Thebes were understandably preoccupied securing a tenuous hold on therule of Upper Egypt, and their collective reigns are not commemorated by building activity, while the"decoration" of the native sanctuaries in their names is limited, to our present knowledge, to one

graffito of Haronnophris in clumsy Greek lettering in the Temple of Sety I at Abydus.296 To this limited expression of revolutionary propaganda can now be added the San Jose head, but it is unknown

whether the statue to which it belonged once stood in a major native temple or in amodest?perhapsimprovised?chapel in the desert. The Ptolemies retained throughout the conflict their control of the

strategically vital border towns of Elephantine and Syene.297 The turbulent times are reflected in aBerlin Demotic

papyrus,298a letter addressed to three

Egyptian priestswho had fled the

templecom

plex on Philae during the hostilities, seeking refuge inNubia; a local authority in Elephantine assuresthem that it is now safe to return.

287Veisse, Les revokes, 84-86; Torok, Kingdom ofKush, 427f. That the rebel leaders were themselves Nubians, leading a band

of Egyptians, was argued by Sethe, "Die historische Bedeutung," 35-49. Sethe, 42, based his conclusion on the writing of

Chaonnophris in lines 7 and 13 of the Demotic text of the Raphia Decree followed by the foreign-land determinative, while the

larger corps of rebels, also characterized as slb.w ("enemies"), are determined by the beheaded, falling man but withoutindication of foreign origin. Vittmann, "Feinde," 207-9, has commented that the orthographic subtleties in this documentalone are not enough evidence to indicate that Chaonnophris, or both rebel leaders, were themselves Nubians. Nevertheless,the seemingly African physiognomy of the San Jose head is a warning that Sethe's opinion should not be unequivocally

dismissed.288Cf. Torok, Kingdom ofKush, 433.289

Veisse, Les revokes, 240-42.290

Lanciers, "Tempelbauten, I," 178, passim.291Lanciers, "Tempelbauten, I," 95f.; Veisse, Les revokes, 87f.

292Erich Winter, "Ergamenes II., seine Datierung and seine Bautatigkeit in Nubien," MDAIK 37 (1981), 510f.; Lanciers,"Tempelbauten, I," 97.

293Adel Farid, "The Stela of Adikhalamani Found at Philae," MDAIK 34 (1978), 53-56.294

Lanciers, "Tempelbauten, I," 96.295

Lanciers, "Tempelbauten, II," I76f.; Veisse, Les revokes, 92.296 pjeter \y Pestman, Jan Quaegebeur, and R. L. Vos, Receuil de textes demotiques et bilingues (Leiden, 1977), no. 11 (with

earlier bibliography); Veisse, Les revokes, lOf.297

Pestman, "Haronnophris," 134-36; Veisse, Les revokes, 18, 91f.298

Karl-Th. Zauzich, Papyri von der Insel Elephantine, DPB / (Berlin, 1978), no. 15527, vso. 2-5; Lanciers, "Tempelbauten, II,"180. Veisse, Les revokes, 221 f., expresses uncertainty about the date of the



CHESHIRE 387

The ethnic distinction of the rebel leaders seems to be confirmed by the portrait discussed above,which wears a typical pharaonic costume, the nemes and uraeus. The broad and plump face with thick

lips and a saucy expression differentiates it clearly from the Greco-Macedonian rulers in Alexandria.

Evidently the rebels felt much in common with the peoples of bordering Lower Nubia and Meroe,

althoughtheir attachment to the

Egyptiancults

remained. As Chaonnophris was able to gain thesupport of Nubian troops by 187/6,299 he was clearly compatible with the people of the South. A datein the first decades of the second century bc and amore probable attribution to the second usurperfrom the south, Chaonnophris (r. 200-186), but possibly to his predecessor, Haronnophris, can beadvocated on stylistic grounds as well as by the non-Greek physiognomic type. The conflict was

consistently characterized on the part of the Ptolemies as one of loyal subjects versus rebels, not ofHellenes versus Egyptians.300 Nevertheless, in Thebes in the first two decades of the second century,anti-Greek sentiment must have been considerable.301

Within this framework, it is possible to re-evaluate the head of an Egyptian pharaoh in Antwerp(figs. 19-22).302 The piece has a curious history. The head, which was at some time shaved down onthe

rightside of the neck to fit with a torso that

originallydid not

belongto

it,was discovered in the

eighteenth century on the property of an Antwerp resident, beneath an ancient vaulted enclosurethat would have dated back to ancient Roman or, at the latest, medieval times.303 It received its

misnomer as a "statue of Isis" in the eighteenth century, evidently since the wrap-around garmentappeared to people of that time to be a feminine costume.304 Both the head and torso were sculptedout of gray granite, but the two pieces were carved separately out of slightly different specimens ofthe stone and fitted together by an adept craftsman.305 The head portrays a plump-faced male wear

ing the royal nemes with its thin, horizontal band?now severely abraded?along the edge, to which isattached a uraeus serpent coiled in an elegant figure eight. The surface of the head cloth is smoothwithout the frequently detailed, plastic indication of lateral stripes. No traces of paint are now visible.The statue was combined,

possiblyin Roman times,306 with the torso of a man who wears a non

Egyptian, wrap-around garment and holds a book roll in his right fist in front of his abdomen, his left

299Hu6, Agypten, 507; Vei'sse, Les revoltes, 93-95.

300Trm attitude was no different from the traditional standpoint of their Pharaonic predecessors; cf. David O'Connor,"Egypt's View of 'Others'," in Tait, ed., Never Had the Like Occurred, 155-85, esp. 157-59; Vittmann, "Feinde," 198ff.

301Veisse, Les revoltes, 130f., 135.

302Antwerp,Vleeshuis A.l: Constant De Wit, "Some Remarks concerning the so-called "Isis" in the Museum Vleeshuis," CdE

39 (1964), 61-66; Berthe Rantz, "Notes sur la pseudo-Isis d'Anvers," Latomus 35 (1976), 383-98, pis. 37-39; Bothmer, EgyptianSculpture, 84. The present author has not been able to view the statue first-hand and must therefore limit the discussion to

suggestions; in this light, the statue would certainly merit an additional, close-up investigation.303Rantz, "Notes," 383, quoting early sources with a history of the investigations.304Similarly, Louvre A.93 is a Twenty-Seventh Dynasty basalt naophorous statue of an official in a Persian costume, whichwas combined incongruously with a head of Isis sculpted in Roman times; see Jacques Vandier, "La statue de Hekatefnakht,"

Revue du Louvre 14 (1964), 57ff., figs. 1-3, 8-13, dating the head erroneously "Hellenistic." The illogical montage is alreadydepicted in drawings dating to 1707, when the restored piece was in an English private collection; Vandier, "Hekatefnakht,"6If., fig. 13. A garment wrapped around the body, leaving the breasts exposed, was a favorite, exotic costume used on many

Neo-Classical sculptures of Egyptian or Nubian women, as well as on 18th and 19th century interpretations of Cleopatra the

Great; cf. Jean-Michel Humbert, Michael Patnazzi, and Christiane Ziegler, eds., Egyptomania. L'Egypte dans I'art occidental 17301930 (Paris, 1994), 284f., cat. no. 165 (ill.); 290-92 cat. No. 170 (ill.); 454 fig. 7, 578, cat. no. 390 (ill.). In these times, the association of the Persian costume with Isis was popular.305Constant DeWit, "A propos de l'Isis d'Anvers," BIFAO 58 (1959), 87, n. 6, 96; Rantz, "Notes," 386f., 395.

306 It was suspected by De Wit, "Some Remarks," 61ff., that the owner of the property where the statue was discovered, whowas an artist by trade, might have united the two fragments himself. Certainly one would assume that the statue base acquiredwith it bearing an inscription, "ISIS," inset in bronze (Rantz, "Notes," 386, 389), was the concoction of an eighteenth century

collector. There is, however,a

possibility that the head, to be identified below as a rebel usurper, as well, had been combinedconveniently in the chaotic times of the revolt with the typologically foreign statue, which had since been



388 JARCE 45



CHESHIRE 389

Figs. 23-24. Granite Fragment from a Dyad from Canopus. Alexandria, Greco-Roman Museum 11275. Photographs cour

tesy of DAIK, Neg.nos. D-DAI-KAI-F-7053 + 7054.

hand clasping his right wrist?a costume and a gesture that were conventions in Persian art, but alsoin Egypt for statues of certain officials during periods of Persian occupation (Dynasties 27-29) andsometimes later.307 The second

centuryBC

dating?in any case,of the

head?suggested byDeWit in a

1959 museum catalogue308 is defensible through comparison with the monuments from the time ofPtolemies V and VI discussed above. The fleshy lips of this ruler, pressed firmly one atop the otherlike short sausages, recall the peculiar, detached and terse rendering of the horizontally set lips of the

Brooklyn Cleopatra I (figs. 6-7)?one of several indications that the artist of the Antwerp king wasversed in native Egyptian sculpting style and techniques. The saucer-round shape of the king's large,wide open eyes is accentuated by the bold, deep cutting of the inside edges of the eyelids and appearto expand even more since the outer edges are only indicated by an indentation tomark their thickness rather than by a heavy, encircling line. The irises and pupils are plastically indicated but do notdetract from the overall pop-eyed stare reminiscent of much Ptolemaic royal portraiture. A notewor

thy subtletyis the thickened,

fleshy renderingof the inner corners of the

eyesto

suggesttear ducts.

An important argument in dating the Antwerp head is its close stylistic resemblance to the portrait head of a boy pharaoh from Canopus, now in the Alexandria Museum (figs. 23-24), whose iden

tity has been a subject of much debate.309 The companion statue fragment of his consort in

307Constant DeWit, Oudheidkundige Musea, Stad Antwerpen, Vleeshuis, Catalogus VIII, Egypte (Antwerpen, 1959), 5; Bothmer,

Egyptian Sculpture, 85.308

Oudheidkundige Musea, 5, no. 4; Rantz, "Notes," 385, 396.309Greco-Roman Museum 11275: Baudouin Van de Walle, "La 'Cleopatre' de Mariemont," CdE 24 (1949), 29ff., pi. 7; idem,

"Un nouveau document concernant le pretendu groupe d'Antoine et Cleopatre," CdE 25 (1950), 31-35; Kyrieleis, Bildnisse, 37,73f., 120, 175, cat. H5, pi. 61, 1-2; Ashton, Ptolemaic Royal Sculpture, 98f., no. 34 (ill.); Stanwick, Portraits, 18f., 23, 28, 34ff., 45,

49, 60, 79, 86, 122, cat. no. El, figs. 153f. For the identification as Ptolemy VI and not as Ptolemy XV "Kaisarion," see Bothmer,Egyptian Sculpture, 132f.; Cheshire, Ptolemies,



390 JARCE 45 (2009)

Mariemont310 has been attributed above and, in greater detail, in a separate publication,311 to Cleo

patra II, despite a growing consensus in recent scholarship that it should portray Cleopatra VII. The

popular misplacement of this important statue group in the first century bc has only contributed tothe confusion regarding the development of late Ptolemaic art. The identification of the boy king as

PtolemyVI?and not one of the

youngerbrothers or the son and

co-regentof

Cleopatra VII,Ptole

mies XIII through XV?is arguable on stylistic as well as on physiognomic grounds. The rendering ofthe boy's wavy hair in energetically curving, snakelike locks, each varied in form from the next and

separated from each other by deep undercutting, was borrowed from the dramatic trend inMiddleHellenistic art as exemplified in the early part of the second century bc on the Great Altar at Pergamum.312 This style was adapted in Ptolemaic art on the portraiture of Ptolemy VI, not only on amarble bust in Hellenistic style in Alexandria,313 but also on Pharaonic-style statues in hard stone inAthens314 and Alexandria.315 Another stylistic feature of portraits of Ptolemy VI is the sharp-edged,angular cut of the eyebrows, achieving a rough-hewn effect similar to wood carving; this style appearsnot only on the two portraits of that king in Egyptian type wearing a nemes inAthens and Alexandria,but also on the

Hellenistic-stylemarble bust inAlexandria, the head of the

boy kingfrom the Alexan

drian dyad (figs. 23-24) and the head inAntwerp (figs. 19-22). The harsh simplification of Philometor's bony physiognomy to a flat frontal plane and flat cheek planes, exposed through taut skin to

adjoin at near right-angles to the frontal plane of the face like the sides of a box is common to all theabove-mentioned heads attributed to Ptolemy VI. The construction of the Antwerp head is less boxlike because of the fleshier physiognomy of a different individual, which obscures the bone structure.

A comparison of the profile view of the Antwerp king with that of the boy king from the dyad inAlexandria (figs. 19, 23), however, shows on both remarkably flat side planes and a rough-hewn,squared-off structuring of the head form. The dyad fragment at Alexandria differs from other representations of Philometor in that it portrays the king at a very young age, probably precisely at thetime of his coming-of-age, his marriage to his sister, Cleopatra II, and his coronation in 175/4.316 As

might be expected of a young boy, his head form was not yet as elongated as in later years, the eyesare wide and given a delicate, childish look through a slightly ornamental, linear outline of the inner

edges of the eyelids and a graceful tapering of the lids towards the corners?in contrast to the sterncoin portraits of his mother, his acting guardian and regent from his childhood years (fig. 3). The fe

male pendant figure of the dyad inMariemont317 bears a similar gentle, wide-eyed expression with afull fleshed, rounded countenance of youth and can only represent his sister-bride, Cleopatra II.

A basic structural similarity of the Antwerp head to the pharaoh of the Alexandrian dyad points tothe former being created in the early second century, as well. Again, with the lack of stylistic parallelsfrom the end of the third century, it is impossible to state without doubt that Chaonnophris's predecessor, Haronnophris, is not represented, but comparisons point preferably to a later dating. The

"Ptolemaic" look of the large, round eyes and the rather rough carving of the eyebrows of the Antwerphead, as well as the understated, solid sculpting style speak so clearly for a traditional royal atelier

310Musee royal B505 (= E49): B. Van de Walle, "La 'Cleopatre' de Mariemont," 29ff., pis. 6f.; idem, "Un nouveau documentconcernant le pretendu groupe d'Antoine et Cleopatre," 3Iff.; Kyrieleis, Bildnisse, 119f., 185, cat. Mil; Albersmeier, Frauenstatuen, 24Iff., 339f., etc., cat. 91, pi. 53dc. For the identification as Cleopatra II, and not Cleopatra VII, see Bothmer, EgyptianScultpure, 85; C. Derriks, Mariemont. Choix d'oeuvres 50: Egypte (1990), cat. no. 40; Cheshire (see n. 267).311 See n. 267.

312For example, Kahler, Pergamon, pis. 9, 10, 13, 18, 23, 31, 34b.313

Alexandria, Greco-Roman Museum 24092: A. Adriani, BSArchMex 32 (1928), 97ff. fig. 11, pis. 10-12; Kyrieleis, Bildnisse,59ff., 120f., 127, 174, cat. F3 (bibliog.), pis. 49, 2; 50; 51.

314 See n. 130.315

See n. 128.316On the child marriage of the two siblings, see Holbl, History, 172; HuB, Agypten, 541.317 See n.



CHESHIRE 391

that it is evident that the usurper inUpper Egypt sought this out, as if to ally himself with the indigenous aristocracy in exceptional circumstances. To search for comparisons among the Ptolemies of thefirst quarter of the second century, one must revert again to only two candidates. The Antwerp ruler

clearly does not have the thin facial bone structure of Ptolemy VI.318 Coin portraits representing

PtolemyV

Epiphaneslater in his life319 show him with somewhat fleshier cheeks

yetstill the same

fine-boned structure of the nose and the high, domed forehead, and a gentle, serene facial expression with a slight smile and lack of tension in his large eyes. The Antwerp head is less subtle, instead

unabashedly direct and almost intrusive?and definitely corpulent. Beneath the horizontal band ofthe nemes of the Antwerp pharaoh, hair is rendered as an unarticulated surface lying in flat relief

against the temples, a stereotype rendering from Pharaonic times. The profile of the basalt head isdifficult to reconstruct, as the nose area ismutilated; even from these views, the large eyes and the

firmly pressed lips seem to dominate the portrait, and the head form appears squat rather than elon

gated. This pharaoh does not appear to have the high, domed forehead of Ptolemy V nor the ovalface shape of Ptolemy VIII.320 An attribution of the Antwerp head to Chaonnophris must remain

tentative, due to thepaucity

of documentation of therenegade

rule of the two leaders, but it cer

tainly appears on stylistic grounds to be amore plausible attribution than to Ptolemy VIII, who wouldnot rule Egypt as an adult until 145.

As the number of royal monuments attributable to the reign of Ptolemy V Epiphanes grows, sodoes the evidence for a breakdown of the Egyptian artistic tradition. The Hellenistic media of propa

ganda?as illustrated by the bronze wrestlers' group inAthens (fig. 2) and the splendid gold and silvercoins minted to reward the Ptolemaic mercenaries for their service (fig. 1)?proclaimed an overtcommitment beyond Egypt's boundaries to the Hellenistic koine. Two Egyptian-style representationsof Cleopatra I (figs. 6-7, 10-11) wear a coiffure of long ringlets and a row of snail shell curls across

the brow that is decidedly un-Greek but was equally at home in Egypt as in the Near East. The singlecornucopia depicted on many of her coins and represented on one portrait statue (figs. 10-11) was a

Greek attribute that corresponded to the sprigs of grain in some of her Hellenistic portraits. The

motif, reverting to iconographic symbols first used for the deified Arsinoe Philadelphus, made reference to Egypt's extended relations with her neighboring kingdoms, should the Pharaoh fail to arrangeto procure ample food supplies through his appeal to the gods at home.

Based on the recent work by Stanwick, one gains the disappointing impression that the Pharaonic

style images sculpted of Ptolemy V are of remarkably mediocre quality, and the small alabaster head ofthe boy king, wearing the side-lock of childhood, in Berlin321 appears to have been more of a schematiccaricature than an attempt to create a dignified work of nationalist art. The bold, chunky portrait of therebel leader (Chaonnophris?) in San Jose (figs. 16-18) boldly asserts his provincial roots in the regionaround the Nubian frontier. It is ironic that a second portrait possibly attributable to Chaonnophris,the head inAntwerp (figs. 19-22), is the only thus far recognized native royal portrait of relatively highartistic caliber in hard stone from the time of Ptolemy V?but representing a usurper.

Independent Scholar

318YoV portraits of Ptolemy VI, see Kyrieleis, Bildnisse, 58ff., pis. 46-51.319 Svoronos II no. 1291; III pi. 94,5; IV, cols. 273ff.; Bevan, History, 253, figs. 45-46; Kyrieleis, "Portratmunzen," 225, fig. 7.

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cleopatra 'the syrian' and a couple of rebels- their images, iconography, and propaganda

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