Harpocrates with a Pot: Egyptian Terracotta Figurines of Graeco-Roman Period from the Collection of the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts

Abstract

The article publishes and analyzes seven Egyptian Greek-Roman terracotta figurines depicting a child with a spherical vessel (pot) in his hands and representing Harpocrates – the child-god, the Greek version of the child-Horus. His figurines were made often in the form of a naked baby with a finger at his mouth and with a characteristic attribute – a “lock of youth” – on the side, often in Egyptian crown. Similar images are just one of the options of the iconography of Harpocrates. In the museum collections around the world there are significant number of terracottas depicting Harpocrates, not only with a pot, but also with cornucopia, and other attributes that demonstrate a wide range of iconographic features inherent in the images of the deities of the Egyptian pantheon of the Greek-Roman Period. All the items mentioned in the article are kept in the storerooms of the Department of Ancient Orient at the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts (Moscow). Six objects come from the collection of Vladimir S. Golenishchev and entered the museum in 1911; one figurine was purchased in 1981 from the collector N. G. Ter-Mikaeljan. The majority of the terracotta figurines have not been published earlier. They allow us to address the features of Harpocrates’ iconography as a god-child, the themes of child deities in Ancient Egypt and the problem of coexistence of a popular religion with the official temple cults of Egypt in Ptolemaic and Roman Periods.