Aphrodite in Egypt. Images of the goddess from Marina el-Alamein

Abstract

The author explores the images of Aphrodite—statuary in marble and bronze, oil lamp discus iconography—originating from the Polish excavations at the site of the ancient town at Marina el-Alamein on the Mediterranean coast of Egypt, tracing the religious syncretism (in Hellenistic and Roman Egypt, Aphrodite was linked with the Egyptian goddess Isis), concerning also other Greek gods, that obviously pervaded the affluent community living there. The marble head of Aphrodite and the lamp with a scene of Aphrodite with two Erotes were found in House 19 and they are dated, respectively, to the late Hellenistic/early Roman period and the second half of the 1st-2nd century AD. A bronze statuette of Aphrodite pudica came from a disturbed but apparently ritual context and is dated, like the lamp, to the second half of the 1st-2nd century AD. The evidence collected in the article shows that the goddess, depicted in different forms inspired by Hellenistic and even earlier, Classical, art, made of different materials and with apparently different purposes in mind, was very popular with the inhabitants of this small town on the Egyptian coast. The finds from Marina el-Alamein are an interesting example of syncretism developing in the Roman period.