Melita and the sad & bizarre lack of Egyptian iconography on ancient coinage+ luv letter to ancients

A great coin, @Sulla80. I wonder if it's really proper to call the object a canopic "jar": it's shaped and decorated like one, but it's solid.

 

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It’s a good question - as The Egypt museum describes “symbolically carried water from the Nile” perhaps even solid green Basalt can qualify as a jar - but not knowing more about how it was described by the contemporary Egyptians - I defer to the others more expert. For me “canopic” and “jar” are functionally useful as the description helps to find and recognize the shape and articles written about it. Interested if there are any more correct descriptions - I’ve also seen “vase” used, but not sure that is very literally applicable either.

 

@DonnaML, Thanks to your question & wanting to better understand this "jar" on my Alexandrian Tetradrachm, I dug a little further into this. I think the better way to describe would be:"Osiris Hydreios statues (depicting the god as a water-filled jar)" from an interesting thesis from Stefan Penders (2012) which cites Wild (1987).

 

I made a post a while back discussing some of the Isis iconography on Alexandrian coins. I had just read the Wall book, which was the source for a lot of what I wrote about! These things really are fascinating if you dig into them. I've never found a fully satisfactory answer on the significance of the different types of 'Canopi,' though.

 

Earlier in this thread, I raised the issue of identifying the headdress on the Canopus of Osiris depicted on the reverses of some
Alexandrian tetradrachms people have posted. At first glance, I thought the headdress on mine (posted above in this thread) looked like a sun disk with cow horns around it, which wouldn't make much sense, because that's associated with Isis, not Osiris. But, looking at the headdress on mine again in a more detailed closeup, I've changed my mind:



I'm now convinced that what I saw as "horns" actually curve outwards instead of inwards, and that what I saw as a sun disk between them is oblong rather than round. Therefore, I've concluded that the headdress is simply a representation of Osiris's typical feathered white Atef crown, combining the Hedjet, the crown of Upper Egypt, with curly red ostrich feathers, curling outwards on each side of the crown. In other words, it's the same type of headdress as the one on my bronze Osiris figure also posted above, minus the uraeus or upright cobra that seems to be depicted on the bronze:



I'd still like to know, however, if anyone can identify what looks sort of like a horizontal rack of antlers directly underneath the Atef crown on the coin -- not only in terms of what animal they're supposed to be from, but also what they're supposed to represent in Egyptian iconography.

 

Two more examples (one from Hadrian and the other from Antoninus Pius) of Alexandrian tetradrachms with "Canopus Jars" on the reverse. They were part of the Staffieri Collection, sold at Triton XXI in 2018. They're not mine, of course; I wish they were! Note the varying designs and headdresses:





The portion of the Triton XXI catalog including the Staffieri Collection is available online at Issuu, and is worth downloading if you're interested in Roman Alexandrian coins. The link is https://issuu.com/cngcoins/docs/cng_tritonxxi_staffieri .

 

@DonnaML, those horizontal, um, things (...'antlers' is good enough from here) just 'smell' (metaphorically, not synesthetically --nope, not there, yet) like some addition to the visual rhetoric that's post-Pharaohnic, whether Ptolemaic or later.

 

They are symbolic of rams' horns. I don't know how authoritative this web site is but it goes over the connection of the ram and Osiris.

- Broucheion

 

Every single word in that post about the Jewish religion (including the history of El and Yahweh), the Hebrew language, and the Hebrew Bible is not only untrue but complete nonsense. Real crackpot stuff. So I don't know if I would trust what it has to say about ancient Egyptian religion either!

 

Hi,

Very Sorry to have been a source of bad information. I greatly respect your knowledge on this. I am though sure that the ram of Mendes was associated with Osiris. I should have spent more time finding a better source. I will give it a go in a few days when I have more time. Again, very sorry, my bad.

- Broucheion

 

Apologies are certainly not necessary!

 

You are very gracious, but they are when haste made waste.

- Broucheion

 

...Although, clueless as I am, the mere suggestion of ram's horns has me wondering what relation Osiris originally had to Amun. ...Is that as much a red herring as the preceding?

 

Please don't be too hard on yourself. In any event, I look forward to anything further you can find when you have time to look. What seems odd to me about the connection is that these "antlers" are perfectly straight horizontally, with upward protrusions along the way, whereas ram horns are, of course, very curled.

 

Donna, as a fringe benefit, you effectively answered my question, such as it was. Thanks!

 

Here is a picture to help with "what animal" but not much on "what they represent".

It does seem that there is variation in atef crowns in details, and over time.
I haven't found a source that I find particularly strong on the subject of the atef crown.

• https://buffaloah.com/a/archsty/egypt/crowns/crowns.html
• http://www.touregypt.net/featurestories/crowns2.htm
  
• https://www.louvre.fr/en/oeuvre-notices/statue-osiris
  
• https://antiquitiesexperts.com/egypt_ptol.html

 

Thank you.

 

@Sulla80, the relief you're getting the visual from is looking early Ramessid, like, 19th Dynasty. (..."Woven wig?" mmmMaybe.)
As such, you're eloquently demonstrating an alternate visual for rams' horns that looks distinctly Pharaohnic. Can you help out with the details of the provenance?

 

source: Nekhbet, depicted as a vulture, protecting Pharaoh Ptolemy XII who wears the Atef Crown with horns and the sun disc. Entrance to the Horus Temple in Edfu Egypt.

 

Thank you, @Sulla80. ...So I only missed it by half a dozen dynasties ...without looking, that's, what, maybe half a millennium.
...Nope, the Ramessid (sp?) reliefs are the ones I'm most familiar with, effectively by default.
--Except, No, I compounded this by misreading 'Ptolemy XII' as the XIIth Pharaohnic Dynasty. ...From here, this is the point at which 'the British Public Demand (sic) to Know.' From something secondary, but responsible, in easy range of the desk, it looks like I missed it by more like a millennium and change.
...Except, from this point, I'd be wanting to find the more strictly Pharaohnic precedent for that rendering of rams' horns. Only since the process of alteration, along with appropriation, is already happening as of the Ptolemies.
...But in the present, numismatic context, your point is duly nailed in place.