Christianizing Egypt by Frankfurter David

Author:Frankfurter, David [Frankfurter, David]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780691176970
Publisher: PrincetonUP
Published: 2017-07-15T05:00:00+00:00

C. Painters

Painters, as masters both in the deployment of color and in producing the visual image, also sought efficacy—the power of an object to transform spaces and create “presence”—indeed, to instill power in an image. Colors and their juxtapositions, gestures, the detailing of eyes, and the general creation of otherworldly spectacle—the use of all these tools comprised the painter’s craft as it came to integrate Christian themes with traditional strategies. Like the terracotta figurines of the early Roman period, portable panel paintings of Egyptian gods developed around the same time as alternative media for worshipping Egyptian gods and interpreting them within the domestic sphere.93 The innovations in both cases came from workshops, which combined Greco-Roman styles of representation with locally valued gods to create more affordable and portable images for private shrines and votive offerings for temples.94 The versatility of these second- and third-century painters was considerable. The panel paintings, which were set in wood frames for hanging on a wall in a house or temple atrium (see plate 8), are complemented by a number of wall murals in the same style from houses in the Fayyum towns of Tebtunis and Karanis, and several of the panels seem to have functioned as doors to traditional shrine boxes, or naoi.95 All these applications of the new medium show the interests of painters in extending this medium to different domains of religious practice and experience—domains in which devotions might have taken the form of hanging garlands, placing lamps, or lighting incense, all of which are mirrored in some of the panel paintings.96 While mostly unprovenanced, the “pantheon” of painted images shows some consistency: Isis in her lactans pose with Harpocrates (an image found especially in Karanis), the military god Heron (plate 8), the crocodile god Soknebtunis as lord over other gods, a solitary Harpocrates, and several other divinities both Egyptian and Hellenistic all appear frequently. As other workshops were doing with images of the deceased (the so-called portrait mummies), the painters of these images depicted the gods in a Hellenistic style that emphasized the accoutrements of cultural prestige in dress, jewelry, crowns, hairstyles, and thrones, as well as the frontality that typically accentuated both familiarity and presence, contributing to what Elsner called a “ritual-centered” visuality.

It is in this frontality that we can begin to grasp the particular efficacy of the panel paintings as well as their likely role as the inspiration for the earliest Christian panel icons. If we recall the positions of Egyptian divinities represented outside temples, the potency of the body and of the frontal gaze was usually downplayed to stress ritual relationships, mythic accoutrements, and the presence of the pharaoh. (Relief images of Hathor and Bes offer notable exceptions.97) While the innovation of the molded terracotta figurines accentuated the body and its mysteries and potencies in the round, the panel paintings of gods brought forth the frontal gaze (even if the eyes of the subjects are often slightly averted). Indeed, except for a very few images seeking to mimic

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