EGYPTIAN
ARCHAEOLOGY
Statuette of a ‘Persian Rider’. Height: 9.7cm. Fourth to third centuries BC
One of the few depictions of Serapis from Tell Basta, with the god’s bust shown on the handle of the lamp. The scene on the body shows the abduction of Europa. Length: 11.2cm. Second century AD
Obviously other deities were equally important at Bubastis, even though reverence for them might have been linked to the cultic worship of Bastet. This could be the case with Bes, whose depictions are found on at least a quarter of the recently-discovered terracottas. Some of the more elaborate figurines, showing the god naked, with a raised sword in his right hand, and a strangled snake in his left, can be dated to the early Hellenistic Period. The red paint covering some of them recalls the quotation of Wilkinson (above) whose ‘Typhon’ may have been Bes himself. Equally common at Tell Basta is the relatively homogeneous group of early horses and riders of distinctively foreign appearance (the so-called ‘Persian Riders’) which have been found at other sites such as Tanis and Memphis, and also at Tell el-Herr by the French-Egyptian Mission under the direction of Dominique Valbelle. The latter are still unpublished (information: Pascale Ballet). Concerning other iconographic clusters, the question arises as to whether they are directly connected to especially Bubastite circumstances, for example the rites described by Herodotus (Book II 60), or if they reflect other Egypt-wide customs. That is the case with the numerous figurines of Harpokrates and of women disrobing themselves (so-called Anasyrmenai). As tempting as it would be to see a connection between these ladies and the descriptions of specific rites at Bubastis, terracottas of the Anasyrmenai are known from all over Egypt. Even though the temple of Bastet itself may no longer have been in proper use in the Roman Period, religious life did not cease (see article in AfP 55 as quoted below). There is, however, a distinct lack of the Roman terracotta types familiar from elsewhere in Egypt; there are, for example, only a very few figurines representing Serapis or Isis lactans. The religious character of Roman Bubastis still remains unclear, but the continuing use of Aphrodisian iconographies
during this period may indicate that in her home town Bastet had not yet lost the reputation as a protectress of love, pregnancy and childhood for which she had become famous throughout the Mediterranean area. Sculptures bearing the provenance ‘Tell Basta’ or ‘Zagazig’ point in the same direction and among them Aphrodite seems to have been of special importance. Further research and archaeological work by the Tell Basta Project will inevitably provide more information about religious and cultural evolution at Bubastis in the later periods of its history. q Veit Vaelske is a Classical Archaeologist at Humboldt University, Berlin. He is indebted to his German and Egyptian co-workers of the Tell Basta Project and would like to express his appreciation of the Egypt Exploration Society’s long-standing engagement at Tell Basta and to EES members for their support of the current expedition. For a discussion of Tell Basta during the Roman Period, see: Veit Vaelske, ‘Bubastis/Tell Basta in römischer Zeit’, in: Festschrift für Günther Poethke zum 70. Geburtstag (P. Poethke). Archiv für Papyrusforschung 55 (2009), pp.487-98. Photographs: ©Tell Basta Project/Veit Vaelske.
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Statuette of the goddess Aphrodite. Height 12.0cm. Hellenistic Period
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