the cult of the egyptian gods in roman athens · the cult of the egyptian gods in roman athens *...

The Cult of the Egyptian Gods in Roman Athens*

Elena MUÑIZ GRIJALVO

The cult of the Egyptian gods in Attica seems to me a perfect example ofhow dangerous prejudices may be, when dealing with specific cases or what hasbeen defined in these ateliers as “local microcontexts”. As in so many otherplaces, in Athens the evidence concerning Isis, Sarapis or any other Egyptiangod is scarce, and not very telling indeed: some 43 inscriptions – none of themvery illuminating –, 107 funeral reliefs including short inscriptions, a smallnumber of fragmentary statues, a couple of coins depicting Isis, a marblematrix to make little votive reliefs... Not too bad, in principle. But all of theseobjects lack any clear cultual context, because the archaeological evidence forEgyptian shrines is even scanter: Pausanias’s short notice about a shrine ofSarapis;1 a possible Isiac temple in the south slope of the Acropolis; an evenmore hypothetic shrine in the Agora;2 and the possibility of a couple of othershrines in Theithras and Marathôn.3

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* I would like to thank the University Pablo de Olavide for its support and the Department ofClassics at Harvard University for a wonderful research period. Special thanks also to RosarioMoreno and Daniel Nisa for their help and, above all, for their closeness. 1 I, 18, 4: The only information provided by Pausanias is that Sarapis was “a god whom theAthenians received from Ptolemy”. 2 L. BRICAULT, Recueil des Inscriptions concernant les Cultes Isiaques, Paris, De Boccard, 2005(from now on RICIS), vol. 1, p. 11, comments that a certain amount of findings in the Agoraallow us to think that an Egyptian shrine was located in the surroundings: see J. PERLZWEIG,The Athenian Agora, VII. Lamps of the Roman Period, Princeton (NJ), 1961, p. 122 (several frag-ments of reliefs and statues in the Agora, together with lamps and small figurines; C.GRANDJOUAN, The Athenian Agora VI, Terracottas and Plastic Lamps of the Roman Period,Princeton (NJ), 1961, pp. 1010-1011). 3 Marathôn: I. DÉKOULAKOU, “To ierov th~ ΔIsida~ ston Maraqwvna”, Archeologia, 1991, pp.67-71; Theitras: Sylloge Inscriptionum Religionis Isiacae et Sarapiacae (from now on SIRIS) 13 =RICIS 101/0402 (middle first century A.D.): Dêmóphilos consacrated kankevlloi to Isis, sothere must have been some kind of Isiac building.

Lack of information has often been no problem when dealing with mysterycults. As the participants in the ateliers know especially well, from Cumont’sdays on, too often a priori ideas have been used to go further than bare num-bers. One of these ideas has been the essentially mysteric quality of theEgyptian cult, supposedly one of its constant features all over theMediterranean world. A second idea -and that is the main concern of thispaper-, was the growing success of the cult in Roman times, especially in thesecond century A.D.

Along the years, ideas like these have proved so powerful that even the shortAthenian evidence has been interpreted according to them. Indeed Athens ful-fils all the expectations: the number of Isiac inscriptions of Roman times is nodoubt higher than before;4 the number of theophoric names is so impressivethat even such a sensible scholar as Dow admitted that Isis should have been areally popular goddess.5 Numerically speaking, therefore, there are no surpris-es: it seems that the Egyptian cults in Athens followed the common pattern ofsuccess in Roman times. But that says nothing about why, or how, they becameso popular. Above all, it does not tell how the Egyptian cults worked withinAthenian religion.6

The problem starts when these obvious gaps are filled in with vague gener-alisations, ignoring the Athenian level to embrace what Frankfurter has called“the fallacy of depending on pan-Mediterranean ‘-isms’”.7 The result is a pic-ture that probably had little to do with Athens, but is conveniently similar toCumont’s views on Oriental religions and the reasons for their success. Thus,the growing number of Athenian inscriptions has been explained alternatively

326 ELENA MUÑIZ GRIJALVO

4 Based upon the evidence in RICIS, there are 16 Hellenistic inscriptions versus 43 fromRoman times, to which must be added the 107 ‘Isis’ reliefs in E. J. WALTERS, Attic Grave Reliefsthat represent Women in the Dress of Isis, Princeton (NJ), 1988 (Hesperia Supplementa).5 S. DOW, “The Egyptian Cults in Athens”, HTR, XXX, 1937, pp. 183-232: after preventingthe reader about the risks of using theophoric names as an evidence of the popularity of thecult, he must admit that the number of names containing “Isis” (more than 300 in Romantimes) is overwhelming. See infra, p. 327.6 R. PARKER, Polytheism and Society in Athens, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2005, p. 394, advocates for a local way of understanding religion; he was even more explicit in CR,XLVIII, 1998, pp. 511-512: “One cannot exploit the potential of a focused, localized study ifa large proportion of the religious activities of that locality are excluded”. 7 D. FRANKFURTER, Religion in Roman Egypt, Princeton (NJ), Princeton University Press,1998, p. 33. Similar warnings may be found in F. MORA, Prosopographia Isiaca, vol. 2, Leiden,E. J. Brill, 1999, p. 119.

as a result of the higher spirituality of the Egyptian cults,8 the increased powersof Isis in Roman times,9 the new soteriological aspect of the Egyptian deities,10

or more simply the capacity of Isis and Sarapis to tune with the desires of thesimple people.11

From a very different point of view, but always making use of pan-Mediterranean explanations, some scholars prefer to believe that Egyptian cultswere supported by Roman emperors, and that this is a more appropiate reasonto explain their success, in Athens and elsewhere.12 Since Graindor’s study ofAthens in Hadrian’s times, it has been generally accepted that Hadrianfavoured the cult of Egyptian deities, not only in Rome, but also in his belovedGreece. Here, again, the risk of generalization has come true. One thing isadmitting, with Takács, that gods like Isis or Sarapis could be useful to elabo-rate on the concept of the divinity of emperors, because a “world structure witha monarch in the center matched the... henotheistic world of Isis”, or thatEgyptian gods were also useful as symbols of Roman rule at the boundaries ofthe empire; but a very different one is believing that, because he had decidedto build an Egyptian-like villa near Rome, Hadrian would support the spreadof the Egyptian cults all over the empire – and that he would succeed.13

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8 DOW, l.c. (n. 5), p. 231: after a sober analysis of the Athenian evidence and practically igno-ring the spiritual aspect of the Isiac cult, he concludes his article referring to it all of a sudden:“In view of her attractive spiritual aspects, this vogue of Isis in the great city of intellectualsmight take on the proportions of a major fact in the history of Western religions”.9 F. DUNAND, Le culte d’Isis dans le bassin oriental de la Méditerranée, Leiden, E. J. Brill, 1973(EPRO), vol. II, p. 131. Although somewhat reluctantly, she states: “Il ne semble pas à vrai direqu’il s’agisse d’une transformation – la plus part des traits de l’Isis impériale existent déjà dansle personnalité de l’Isis hellénistique – mais d’une sorte d’élargissement de ses pouvoirs et deses attributions”. 10 P. PAKKANEN, Interpreting Early Hellenistic Religion, Helsinki, Suomen Ateenan-instituutinsäätiö, 1996, pp. 75-80, bases her case about Athens on U. Bianchi’s general discussion aboutthe whole Mediterranean, see U. BIANCHI, “Iside dea misterica. Quando?”, Perennitas. Studi inonore di Angelo Brelich, Roma, Edizioni dell’Ateneo, 1980, pp. 9-36. Pakkanen takes as a proofof the existence of mysteries in Athens the texts of Apuleius, Plutarch, three inscriptions of dif-ferent dates from Prusa, Rome, and Panoias, and the aretalogy of Andros (first century B.C.,wrongly dated by her in the late first century A.D.). 11 L. VIDMAN, Isis und Sarapis bei den Griechen und Römern, Berlin, De Gruyter, 1970, p. 98.12 F. DUNAND, o.c. (n. 9), p. 131; S. WALKER, “A Sanctuary of Isis in the South Slope of theAthenian Acropolis”, ABSA, LXXIV, 1979, pp. 243-257. 13 See S. TAKÁCS, Isis and Sarapis in the Roman World, Leiden, E. J. Brill, 1995 (RGRW), whoanalyses the pro-Egyptian policy of the emperors from Caligula on. I do not believe that thefact that Marcus Aurelius travelled around with an Egyptian magus, Arnouphis, affected hissubjects to the point of paying more interest to Isis and Sarapis.

Just as bare political facts or imperial policies cannot account on their ownfor the increase of the Egyptian evidence, purely religious explanations, as thenew soteriological aspect of Isis, are not the key to understand her success inAthens. First and foremost, because the Athenian dossier does not support sucha thing. There is no hint of that kind of changes in Athenian material: no traceof the mysteries, not even a mere allusion to Isis as “soter”.14 To put it simply,I cannot see why, if Isis did indeed guarantee happiness in this world and in thecoming life, there are no traces of this in Athenian sources. It remains difficultfor me to explain the increase in Isiac evidence as a result of an essential changein her spiritual offer to the public, without finding any material expression ofthat fundamental change. What is more, if, with Cumont, we insist in explain-ing Isis’s success in Christian terms, and we find her irresistible mainly becauseshe offered a blissed afterlife,15 I cannot understand why she did not achieveeven greater success. If that was really what people wanted, why didn’t every-body become an Isiac?16

To all these questions, as to the lack of sound sources, one could answer, withMacMullen, that the success of mystery cults is just an illusion, created by thetides of the epigraphical habit.17 In that case, maybe there is nothing else toexplain. The thing is that, apart from the epigraphic increase, there were somesignificant changes, not only within the cult of Isis – and this is my point –,but also in other Athenian cults, which might help to understand her successin a different and more complex way.

I want to contend here that the Egyptian cults did not develop into a “uni-versal” religion, as Cumont suggested,18 but were in perpetual dialectic withlocal traditions.19 This was especially the case in places like Athens, where


14 The only one has apparently proved to be false, see RICIS vol. 1 p. 15. 15 F. CUMONT, The Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism, New York, Dover Publications,19562 [1911], p. 100: “No religion had ever brought to mankind so formal a promise of blestinmortality as these, and this, more than anything else, lent them an irresistible power of attrac-tion”.16 About the risks of using monotheistic schemes to deal with the polytheistic world, see M.DETIENNE, «Du polythéisme en général», CPh, LXXXI, 1986, pp. 47-55.17 Paganism in the Roman Empire, New Haven, Yale University Press, 1981, p. 123. However,the figures in R.A. WILD, “The Known Isis-Sarapis Sanctuaries of the Roman Period”, ANRWII.17.4, p. 18, for the number of Isiac buildings in Hellenistic and Roman times, produces thesame effect as epigraphy. 18 CUMONT, o.c. (n. 15), p. xxii. 19 FRANKFURTER, o.c. (n. 7), p. 34, citing R. REDFIELD, Peasant Society and Culture: AnAnthropological Approach to Civilization, Chicago-London, 1956. It is also one of the conclu-sions of M. MALAISE, Pour une terminologie et une analyse des cultes isiaques, Bruxelles, Académie

Egyptian devotees followed from the start the ancient ways of Athenian reli-gion.20 As other convincing explanations for the success of Isis and Sarapis arealready well-known,21 I will argue here that their increasing popularity inRoman times may also be explained as a result of the religious policy ofAthenian aristocracy, which did not only apply to Egyptian worship, but alsoto other cults as that of Asklepios. Finally, I will suggest that the Athenian reli-gious context and the elite policy may be best understood within the generalRoman context.

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From the very first moment of its arrival in Attica, Egyptian cults assumedquite an Athenian flavour.22 Sometime before 333/2 BC the demos gave permis-sion to some Egyptians to build a shrine of Isis in Piraeus.23 The sanctuary hasnot been found, nor do we know anything about the kind of worship that washeld there.

Something else can be learnt from a second decree concerning a society ofworshippers of Sarapis.24 It is not clear whether they were Athenians or not25,


Royale de Belgique, 2005, p. 228: “Il y a une coexistence possible de diverses représentationsou de lectures différentes d’un même signe, en fonction de l’identité du croyant”. 20 Let me offer just one example: if credit is to be given to Apuleius, in the cult of Isis atCenchreas the priests were appointed directly by the goddess; in Athens, the public characterof the cult, which highly resembled other public cults, left little room for this kind ofmetaphorae. 21 For an excellent overview of the question, see H. S. VERNSEL, Inconsistencies in Greek andRoman Religion, I. Ter Unus, Leiden-Boston-Köln, E. J. Brill, 19982 [1990], pp. 39-52. 22 Specific studies about Egyptian cults in Athens are not many. The most complete oneremains S. DOW, l.c. (n. 5). See also DUNAND, o.c. (n. 9), pp. 4-17 and pp. 132-153; R. SIMMS,“Isis in Classical Athens”, CJ, LXIV, 1989, pp. 216-221; D. PLÁCIDO, “Isis, la oligarquía ateniense y las tradiciones áticas”, Memorias de Historia Antigua, V, 1981, pp. 249-252; and thealready mentioned works by WALKER (n. 12), WALTERS (n. 4), and PAKKANEN (n. 10). 23 IG II/III2 337 = SIRIS 1 = RICIS 101/0101. The decree refers to an already existing shrineof Isis as a precedent to give permission to some Syrian traders to establish a shrine ofAphrodite. 24 IG II/III2 1292 = SIRIS 2 = RICIS 101/0201 (215/4 BC). See DOW, l.c. (n. 5), pp. 188-197.25 DOW, l.c. (n. 5), p. 197, was convinced that they were not, because after 300 B.C. thedecrees of private societies “either state that the decree is one of orgeones, or they specify thedemotics. The series of decrees of clubs of non-citizens (thiasôtai) begins just before 300 B.C.(...) The first inscription showing an Athenian among thiasôtai is of ca. 200 B.C.”. But it is notclear that this association was a thíasos, as the only word mentioned is koinón. On the otherhand, Bricault suggests that they could be citizens, judging from the existence of another soci-ety of Sarapiasts in Rhamnous at about the same time (RICIS 101/0502, ca. 220 B.C.).

but they were no doubt organised in the Athenian way. Among them therewere a tamías and a grammateús, two roles which were not usual outsideAthens. There was also an epimeletés, more than one hieropoiós, and a womanwho was praised as proeranístes, a role not to be found anywhere else, not evenin Athens. As Dow remarks, other clubs of Sarapiasts outside Athens offer nosignificant comparison, so one must turn to the evidence in Attica itself26.

In fact, local parallels seem to be one of the keys to understand the develop-ment of Egyptian cults in Athens. In no other way may be explained the pres-ence of a lychnáptria in an Athenian inscription of the second century A.D.:27

such a role appears nowhere else,28 so the only possible parallel – and a veryclose one – is the cult of Demeter in Eleusis, or maybe the Panathenea.29

The relationship between Isis and Demeter goes back to Classical times, longbefore the arrival of Isis into Athens.30 The character of this relationship, how-ever, is more problematic.31 Probably Demeter provided the ideological back-ground to integrate Isis, who was also a civilizing goddess, related to the cycli-cal rebirth of vegetation, and shared also Demeter’s suffering when searchingfor the beloved one.32 Be that as it may, a Greek way of understanding Isis soonfound its place among the Athenian elite.33 It is also quite possible that the Isiac


26 l.c. (n. 5), p. 91.27 IG II/III 4771 = SIRIS 16 = RICIS 101/0221 (ca. 120 A.D.), see infra. 28 Although similar roles were probably played by the lamptêrophoroi in RICIS 202/0209. 29 WALKER, l.c. (n. 12), p. 255.30 Herodotus, II, 171, 2-3; Diodorus, I, 14, 4; V, 5, 2; Plutarch, Iside, 361 E. For interestingremarks about the way in which these Greek authors interpreted the relationship between theforeign gods and their own, see J. RUDHARDT, «De l’attitude des Grecs à l’égard des religionsétrangères», RHR CCIX, 1992, pp. 219-238. 31 It has been the subject of several studies: PAKKANEN, o.c. (n. 10); BIANCHI, o.c. (n. 10),PLÁCIDO, o.c (n. 22). About the Aretalogy of Maronea, Y. GRANDJEAN, Une nouvelle arétalogied’Isis à Maronée, Leiden, E. J. Brill, 1975 (EPRO), explains that Isis must have been a mystericgoddess already by Hellenistic times, because otherwise there would not have been this kind ofconfusion between Demeter and Isis: Ai[[gupto~ ejstevrcqh: su; mavlista th~ ÔEllavdo~ ejtivmh-sa~ ta;~ / ΔAqhvna~: keiqi ga;r prwton tou;~ karpou;~ ejzevfha~: Triptovle / mo~ de; tou;~iJerou;~ dravkontav~ sou katazeuvza~ aJrmatofo / pruvmeno~ eij~ pavnta~ ”Ellhna~ dievdwketo; spevrma: toigaroun / th~ me;n JEllavdo~ ijdein speuvdomen ta;~ ΔAqhvna~, twn dV ΔAqh / (40)nwn ΔEleusi`na, th~ me;n Eujrwvph~ nomivzonte~ th;n povlin, th~ / de; povlew~ to; iJero;n kovs-mon: However, Bianchi, l.c. (n. 10), does not believe that the aretalogy proofs that Isis wasalready a mysteric goddess, and suggests instead that only to Greek eyes had she such powers. 32 V.A. TOBIN, “Isis and Demeter: Symbols of Divine Motherhood”, JARCE XXVIII, 1991,pp. 187-200.33 See Plácido’s interesting remarks about it, l.c. (n. 22): the hellenization of Isis probably hadto do with it.


hierarchy imitated Eleusinian roles to a certain degree, as the allusion to thelychnáptria suggests.34

At least that was the case with a part of the Egyptian cult in Athens.Unfortunately, the sources do not show which kind of cult was developed ineach of the known sanctuaries in Attica. We do not know whether they fol-lowed an Egyptianising way of doing things, some kind of koiné which hasbeen advocated for the whole of the Mediterranean.35 Archaeology does nothelp: the only Egyptian shrine excavated in Attica36 does not show any specificEgyptian element (if there was such a thing at all37). All we can say is that inAthens there were the usual priests, zákoroi, oneírokritai, kanéphoroi, kleidoû-choi, stolístai,38 as in many other places outside Attica. But it does not mean thatthey performed a fixed set of rituals all over the Mediterranean. What is more,one may doubt that the wealthy lady who paid for the expensive decorations atthe Isiac shrine in the south slope of the Acropolis, and who is mentioned aslychnáptria and oneirókrita, did really exert her role as interpreter of dreams.39

The same may be said about Claudius Phôcas, eponymous archon in the thirdcentury A.D., who is mentioned as neokóros of Sarapis, but who probably neverplayed any role in the Athenian cult of this god, as Bricault has already suggest-ed.40 Similar priestly titles did not necessarily mean similar cult practices.

Rather it seems that Egyptian priesthoods, at least those controlled by thepolis, followed certain Athenian rules for public priesthoods. First, as most ofthem were Athenian citizens, inscriptions mention them in the normal epi-graphic fashion: they were to be identified by their demotic, and often also by

34 See infra. pp. 332-333.35 DUNAND, o.c. (n. 9); R. TURCAN, Les cultes orientaux dans le monde romain, Paris, Les BellesLettres, 1989, pp. 110-4. 36 WALKER, l.c. (n. 12).37 Against the temptation to think about Egyptian shrines as typologically uniform, see R.A.WILD, Water in the Cultic Worship of Isis and Sarapis, Leiden, E. J. Brill, 1981, pp. 9-24, andpp. 65-70: many sites show no evidence of water facilities (only a total of 21, three of themdoubtful; but I miss Baelo Claudia in Spain, to mention just one spot which is known to me),and there even seems to be a shift, as sanctuaries founded in the Roman period are proportion-ately far less likely to have had such facilities. On the other hand, Wild confirms that the phys-ical orientation of the sites might have had a special significance in the cult of Sarapis, seeWILD, l.c. (n. 17), pp. 18-37. 38 The stolístai do not appear until Roman times, see infra. p. 332.39 IG II/III2 4771 = SIRIS 16 = RICIS 101/0221 (ca. 120 A.D.). A further reason to doubt heractual role is that the Isis naískos was annexed to the huge shrine of Asklepios. 40 RICIS 101/0230.

their patronimic. There is nothing that tells an Isiac priest different from anyother public priest such as, say, that of Apollo, when they are included in thesame list.41 Secondly – and more significantly –, as many other public offices,up to a certain moment they were annual priesthoods, and probably the stateregulated their election.42 Thirdly, judging from an inscription from Teithras,which gave rights to the Boulé to pursue any violation of the sacred law whichregulated the Isis cult, it seems that the cult – at least part of it, sometimebefore Christ – was a public affair.

The problem here, of course, is what is meant by “public affair”, a crucialquestion which remains unresolved. As Dignas has warned recently, that thedemos regulated one aspect of the cult, does not mean that it regulated allaspects.43 To put it in other words, public cults did not have to be homogeneousperforce. All we can say is that a good amount of Athenian flavour was proba-bly to be found in most public cults, and the Isis and Sarapis cult was one ofthem.

We will probably never know how exactly the cult worked, or what was spe-cial about it. Nevertheless, we do know that Roman times brought with theman increase in the number of Egyptian documents in Athens. To give only somenumbers, using different kinds of evidence: twenty-seven inscriptions, out ofthe forty-three which form the Isiac corpus to the present day,44 are to be datedfrom the age of Augustus onwards. Even more significant than that is a hugegroup of funerary reliefs, up to 107, which depict female Isiac worshippers,dating from the end of the first century B.C. to the fourth century A.D.45 It is


41 The priests of Isis and/or Sarapis were frequently mentioned along with their colleagues:SIRIS 4 = RICIS 101/0203 (144/3 B.C.) mentions the priest of Sarapis eis asty together withthe priest of Artemis; IG II/III2 2336 = RICIS 101/0205 (103-96 B.C.), the priest of Sarapisat Delos, along with several important public officers; SIRIS 30 = RICIS 101/0215 (251/2A.D.), the priests of Harpocrates, Horus, Sarapis in Canopo and Isis Taposiris, along withthose of Apollo, Dionysos, the Mother of the Gods, Aphrodite Ourania, Eukolos, AgathosThéos, and Zeus Kasios.42 At least until Roman times, see infra. p. 339.43 As B. DIGNAS, Economy of the Sacred in Hellenistic and Roman Asia Minor, Oxford-NewYork, Oxford University Press, 2002, pp. 9-10, underlines, the question has not been discussedvery much.44 Based upon the evidence in RICIS (except for funerary reliefs).45 First published by A. CONZE, Die attischen Grabreliefs, Berlin-Leipzig, W. Spemann, 1893-1922. See E.J. WALTERS, o.c. (n. 4); J. EINGARTNER, Isis und ihre Dienerinnen in der Kunst derrömischen Kaiserzeit, Leiden-New York, E.J. Brill, 1991 (Mnemosyne Supplementa). The identi-ty of these women has been a matter of discussion. It seems that they were “the proud mem-bers of the Isis cult”, as concludes E.J. WALTERS, “Predominance of Women in the Cult of Isis


in Roman Athens: Funerary Monuments from the Agora Excavations and Athens”, in L. BRICAULT (ed.), De Memphis à Rome. Actes du Ier Colloque International sur les études isiaques.Poitiers-Futuroscope, 8-10 avril 1999, Leiden-Boston-Köln, E.J. Brill, 2000 (RGRW), p. 88. 46 WALTERS, l.c. (n. 4), p. 86. I do not think that Pakkanen’s remarks about the restrictions infunerary fashion decreed by Demetrios of Phaleron (p. 56, n. 192), fit in here. 47 Apart from his own arguments against the significance of this kind of evidence, DOW o.c. (n.5) quoted also Sittig, who revealed that theophoric names were more common in Roman timesthan before. 48 It has been argued that the naiskos was a modest one, because there is an accumulation ofduties in the same hands (DUNAND, o.c. (n. 9), p. 137, who seems to contradict herself whenshe later affirms that the office of stolístes was only found in important sanctuaries). BRICAULT,RICIS, p. 17, adds that the sanctuary must not have been very important, because it was servedby a small number of people. On the contrary, I find that a priest, a zákoros, a stolístes, and alychnáptria-oneirokrítes, are not “a small number of people”. Also, I do not think that a shrinein the slope of the Akropolis intended to be a modest one. The archaeological analysis ofWALKER, l.c. (n. 12) reveals that the artistic and material quality of the temple was very high.Modesty definitely seems not to apply.

interesting to note that, up to Roman times, religious affiliation had never beenpromoted in grave monuments in Athens, and that it is precisely in the Isis cultwhere we find it for the first time.46 No doubt Isis had become a really populargoddess in Athens. The same may be said about the number of theophoricnames deriving from Isis. The use of theophoric names to argue for the popu-larity of any god has often been discarded as nonsense. However, the amazingamount of Isiac names (more than 300) in Roman times made an impressionon Dow, who had wisely warned against the tricky nature of this kind of evi-dence,47 but admitted that, in this specific case, the numbers point to the pop-ularity of the goddess. Finally, the reconstruction of a temple of Isis in thesouth slope of the Akropolis sometime between the first and the second cen-turies A.D., may also be evidence of her importance.48

There must have been some reason that can explain this outburst of Isis inRoman times. As we have seen, it was not just a matter of epigraphical fashion.Something was happening, and the usual recourse to the spiritual superiorityof Isis does not account for this change. Egyptian cults in Athens were alreadywell embedded in the civic life, Isis and Sarapis were old mates for theAthenians, and it is difficult to believe that radical changes were introduced intheir cult and made them more appealing all of a sudden. That could haveworked somewhere else, maybe in those places where the Egyptian gods wereintroduced in Roman times as appealing novelties, but not in Athens. At least,there are no traces of such a change.

Epigraphical evidence shows instead some very real changes, whose intro-duction coincides chronologically with the Roman empire. First of all, a changein the duration of the office of priests, and maybe in the mode of appointment,which took place at the same time not only in Egyptian priesthood, but also inother cults. Secondly, certain families established more narrow links withEgyptian cults. And finally, the cults seem to be more closely associated to highsocial status than before, and even to enhance the social level of their devotees.

Let us start with the first of these changes. Ever since the beginning of theofficial Egyptian worship in Attica, the duration of the priestly roles had beenjust one year. It seems that Egyptian cult was already public at the beginningof the second century B.C., and maybe even before that date.49 From then on,the priests were Athenian citizens,50 and the cult followed the usual publicdynamic. As in other public priesthoods, the mention of the demotic probablyhad to do with its annual character and its being elected by sortition among thetribes.51

We do not know what happened with the rest of the Egyptian priestlyoffices, such as the zákoros or the oneírokrites, mainly because they were notAthenian citizens in Hellenistic times. There was one zákoros from Chalcedon,another from Laodicea, and a third one from Miletus.52 Bricault suggests thatthe zákoros was not an annual office, as this Zôpyros of Miletus seems to haveplayed the same role in two different moments.53 However, an inscriptionfound at Theitras might shed further light on the subject. Among other things,the sacred law of Theitras forbids that the same person plays the role of záko-ros twice.54 This, as the rest of the prohibitions listed in the same law, seems tohave worried seriously the people of Athens, probably because someone hadalready ignored this rule, which must have predated our inscription. The annu-al tenure was probably intended to keep a stricter control of this office, incharge of the financial affairs of the cult.55 I would suggest that the first centu-ry B.C. was a turning point in the quality of the office of zákoros. From being


49 See supra n. 24.50 RICIS 101/0202, 0204-8, 0210, 0221, 0501. 51 DOW, l.c. (n. 5), p. 200; see S.B. ALESHIRE, “The Demos and the Priests: The Selection ofSacred Officials at Athens from Cleisthenes to Augustus”, in R. OSBORNE, S. HORNBLOWER

(edd.), Ritual, Finance, Politics. Athenian Democratic Accounts Presented to D. Lewis, Oxford,Clarendon Press, 1994, pp. 325-337. 52 Unknown provenance: IG II/III2 4692 = SIRIS 3 = RICIS 101/0202 (shortly after 200 B.C.);Chalcedon: RICIS 101/0204 (133/2 B.C.); Laodicea: RICIS 101/0206 (116/5-95/4 B.C.);Miletus: RICIS 101/0210 (end of secondcentury B.C.?). 53 RICIS p. 11.

an annual post, which, as Dow suggested, gave rich metics the chance to per-form an office together with Athenians,56 it became a lifetime priesthood. Whatis more, at some point after that, or maybe at the same time, it probably start-ed to be taken up by Athenians too: in the second century A.D. we already findAthenian zákoroi, as the zákoros and carrier of the sacred objects Eukarpos, whocame from the demos of Phyle.57

As one might expect, the change from annual to lifetime offices did not takeplace only within the Egyptian cults. A close parallel is provided by theAsklepios cult. Sometime between the years 25 B.C. and 10 A.D., the priest-hood of the healer god became lifetime.58 We do not know what happened withthe zákoros of Asklepios, though it seems that, as in the Egyptian case, from thefirst century B.C. the office was restricted only to Athenian citizens.59

The chronological and formal coincidence between different cults is not sur-prising. It seems only logical that public cults went through similar and simul-taneous developments. It may be assumed that when a certain measure wasapplied to one cult, it would be also applied to others. This seems to be the casehere. On the one hand, Asklepios’ priesthood became lifetime,60 and the office


54 J.J. POLLIT, “The Egyptian Gods in Attica: Some Epigraphical Evidence”, Hesperia, XXXIV,1965, pp. 125-130; J.H. OLIVER, “Attic Text Reflecting the Influence of Cleopatra”, GRBS, VI,1965, pp. 291-294.55 POLLITT, l.c. (n. 54), p. 128, citing similar restrictions in the cult of Cybele in the secondcentury B.C. (IG II/III2 1328). 56 DOW, o.c. (n. 5), p. 201, n. 70.57 IG II/III2 4771 = SIRIS 16 = RICIS 101/0221 (ca. 120 A.D.): also her mother Kranaê wasa zákoros, as we shall see infra. It is not known whether Kranaê was also Athenian or not, asonly another women of the same name may be found, a certain Kranaê, from Miletus, marriedto Marcus Flavius and daughter of Stratôn. See supra, p. 330. 58 W.S. FERGUSON, Priests of Asklepios, Berkeley, Berkeley University Press, 19072 [1906]; R.S.J.GARLAND, “Religious Authority in Archaic and Classical Athens”, ABSA, LXXIX, 1984, pp.89-90; S.B. ALESHIRE, The Athenian Asklepieion. The People, their Dedications, and theInventories, Amsterdam, J.C. Gieben, 1989, pp. 14-16. Early examples of this: IG II2 3120,3176. Later: IG II2 3579 (post 128/9 AD).59 ALESHIRE, o.c. (n. 58), pp. 87-8.60 That was also the case not only of the Asklepios priesthood, but also of many other priest-hoods and offices, which became lifetime in Roman imperial times. Apart from the examplesanalysed by S. FOLLET, Athènes au IIe et au IIIe siècle, Paris, Les Belles Lettres, 1976, pp. 145-292), the priesthood of Apollo Delios, and the magistrates of the ephebi), the priesthoods ofthe imperial cult were lifetime, as well as several others and that of Artemis (IG II/III2 2874,first century B.C.), Apollo Patrôos (IG II/III2 3624, second century A.D.), maybe the Motherof the Gods (IG II/III2 3184, middle first century A.D.); unfortunately it is impossible to saywhether these last three were already lifetime before Roman times.

of zákoros restricted to Athenian citizens; on the other hand, also the office ofthe Isiac zákoros became restricted to Athenians at about the same time, andthere seems to have been some fight over the duration of the office, whichmight have concluded in its prolongation.61 But maybe we could take the par-allel a bit further. If the restriction to citizens had to do with the creation of amore prestigious and lifetime priesthood in the case of Asklepios,62 it would beno wonder that something similar happened in the case of Isis too.

Unfortunately, the mode of appointment for Isiac priests is unknown. Theonly hint is a series of inscriptions that mention a woman, Kranaê, who was azákoros of Isis on the south of the Akropolis, and whose son Eúkarpos playedthe same role after her. Although it is no conclusive evidence, it strongly sug-gests that the role of zákoros was linked to one same family, at least for two gen-erations. This had not been the case in Hellenistic Athens: in the second cen-tury B.C. there were at least three foreign zákoroi, who came from differentplaces outside Attica: Chalcedon, Laodicea, and Miletus,63 which excludes thepossibility that the duty remained in the hands of the same family. As we haveseen, the office of zákoros was most probably annual, and I would say that itwas also to a certain degree controlled by the demos. It might well be that,along with the rest of the changes that took place in Roman times, the modeof appointment of the zákoros did also change and started to be transmittedwithin certain families. Something similar happened in the Asklepios cult.There we also find a family closely associated to the priesthood, imitating thetypically Eleusinian citation of ancestral associations with the cult and at leastone of the Eleusinian offices, the torch-bearer.64 Maybe that was also the casewith the cult of Isis and another typically Eleusinian office not to be found any-where else outside Attica, the lychnáptria. I suggest that the priesthood of Isisemulated other more ancient, more prestigious priesthoods, in more than oneway.

Thus the first two changes in the Egyptian cults in Roman times had to dowith a change in the quality of the priesthood, which was therefore trans-formed into a more exclusive position. Those shifts fit in well with a third one,a change in the social status of the Isiac officers, which seems to be higher than


61 P. ROUSSEL, Délos, colonie athénienne, Paris, De Boccard, 1916, pp. 250-1.62 As suggested by ALESHIRE, o.c. (n. 58), p. 87.63 See supra n. 52.64 D.J. GEAGAN, “The Sarapion Monument and the Quest for Status in Roman Athens”, ZPE,LXXXV, 1991, pp. 145-165.

before. Next to nothing is known about the social status of the priestly officersin Hellenistic times, apart from their being Athenian citizens or not.65 Since thebeginnings of imperial times, however, the evidence is a bit clearer. Philios,kleidoûchos of Isis and Sarapis, was honoured by the boulé and the demos forsome reason which remains obscure66; but the boulé and the demos did notusually honour irrelevant people. Better known is the priest Dionysios ofMarathôn, who was also iacchágogos and kosmetés of the ephebi.67 The sameinscription also refers to Emilios, son of Attikos, of Melite, who was stolístes atthe same moment. The fact that he enjoyed both the Athenian and the Romancitizenship points to a wealthy social status.68 These two men were related tothe unknown woman who paid for the restoration and the construction of theIsis naískos on the Akropolis, and who also must have been a woman of highsocial status, or at least a wealthy person. Egyptian devotion seems to haveattracted even high politicians such as Claudius Phôkas of Marathôn, who waseponymous archôn at the end of the second century or the beginning of thethird century A.D.69

Even more revealing than bare epigraphy is the analysis of the ‘Isis’ funeraryreliefs. And not only because some of the women have been identified as mem-bers of the Athenian aristocracy:70 the fine quality of the reliefs is a sign of sta-tus itself. It seems that Isiac affiliation had become something to be proud of.Otherwise the members of the elite would never have agreed to be immortalisedin such an explicit way: women were depicted wearing the Isis knot, and hold-ing objects related to the Isiac cult. It may be concluded that the display of Isiac


65 Only the social context of one of them, Sôsos son of Charmides, of the demos Aithalides(IG II/III2 4702 = SIRIS 6 = RICIS 101/0210 (beginning of the first century B.C.?)), is knownto us: he was a thesmotétes in 80 B.C., and his father was a hieropoiós of the Rômaia festival atDelos. 66 IG II/III2 3564 = SIRIS 19 = RICIS 101/0227 (first-second century A.D.). 67 IG II/III2 4771, 4772 = SIRIS 16-17 = RICIS 101/ 0221-0222 (ca. 120 A.D.). 68 See S.G. BYRNE, Roman Citizens of Athens, Leuven, Peeters, 2003 (Studia Hellenistica), pp.ix-xvi. There is a much less conclusive evidence about a Kassios son of Menni (RICIS101/0214, ca. 220 A.D.), who might have been the same as another Kassios, son of Menneas,epéngraphos in the year 187/8, and who probably was also the bouleutas of two other inscrip-tions.69 Although his relationship to the cult as neokóros of Sarapis may well have been only nomi-nal, as Bricault suggests: SIRIS 29 = RICIS 101/0230, RICIS 101/0231. 70 See WALTERS, l.c. (n. 45), pp. 69-77: Afrodisias’s father was a thesmotete, Mousaias’s sonbecame first an ephebe, and then prítanos and agoránomos; Lamia Vibullia belonged to a well-known family from Sounion.

membership enhanced social status in Roman times, and had almost becomeequivalent to relationship with Eleusis. Let me give just one example.According to an inscription found in Eleusis, where honor was paid to anunknown woman by the boulé, her two main merits were of equal importance,and therefore inscribed in two exactly parallel columns which read: aph’hestiasmuétheîsan / kanephorésasan Isidi (“initiated in the mysteries of Demeter “fromthe fire” / former kanéphora of Isis”).71

A further question which may point to a deeper social impact of Egyptiancults in Roman times is an increase in the number of Isiac offices. It seems thatthere were no stolístai in the cult before the first century A.D., and the firstknown kanéphora dates from the middle first century B.C. The multiplicationof offices in a different context, the ephebic one, was analysed some time agoby Follet. Interestingly she explained it as a result of the pauperization ofAthenian society. In her opinion, the lack of interest in playing public roleswould have led some members of the elite to cope with those public officeswhich nobody else wanted to play. In a similar way, Susan Walker argued thatsome Isiac secondary posts, such as stolístes or zákoros, were adequate only forpeople of lowly origin; she also recalled that the zákoros was a residential postand meant even manual work, so people of high birth would have never agreedto play such a role.72 This argument has been considered more than enough tostate that Emilios of Melite, stolístes of Isis, must not have belonged to the elite,or that Kranaê and her son, both of them zákoroi of Isis, were probably of lowlyorigin.

Once again, the implicit argument here is the belief that Egyptian cultsdeveloped in the same way, no matter where. However, we know that in Delosthe introduction of subordinate offices was linked to the increasing prestige ofthe office,73 and not to its “pauperization”. In Athens, the multiplication ofpriesthoods and its occasional accumulation in the same hands, could havebeen a result of the willingness to gain access to the hierarchy of certain cults.

Let me take once more the case of the anonymous evergetes who paid for theIsiac naiskos in the Akropolis. She was both lychnáptria and oneirokrites. It hasalready been suggested that these titles were honorary. It would be strange that


71 IG II/III2 3727 = SIRIS 9 = RICIS 101/302 (middle first century B.C.); see also IG II/III2

3498 (first century B.C.), where the boulé and the demos offer a crown to a former kanépho-ra of Sarapis, who was also “initiated from the fire”. 72 WALKER, l.c. (n. 12), pp. 254-6.73 DOW, l.c. (n. 5), pp. 203-6.

offices normally held by people of lowly origin, were regarded as an adequatehonor for such a generous evergetes. I do not think that either the zákoros orthe stolístes were posts for people without economic means. As we have seen, inHellenistic Athens the zákoros was normally a foreigner, who probably couldafford to play that role. Zôpyros of Miletos, for instance, zákoros in the secondcentury B.C., must have been a rich man, because he could afford that his sonbecame an Athenian éphebos.74 The economic status of this office seems to beequally high later on: Eukarpos, zákoros in the second century A.D., was ableto pay for a statue of Asklepios.75

To sum up, the evidence for Egyptian cults in Athens points to a real changein the quality of their priesthoods and in their social context in Roman times.Moreover, the change does not constitute an isolated phenomenon: as we haveseen, it also took place in other cults. It is true that scholars have never paidmuch attention to this kind of evidence. It is quite usual to ignore anythingthat has to do with civic priests in Roman times, especially when they wereGreek, and even more if they were Athenian. Athens has too often beendescribed as a museum of rigid traditions which did not tell a word about thereal life. It is only recently that late civic polytheism and official priesthoods arebeing taken seriously. It is again Dignas who suggests that things such as theterms of priestly tenure and modes of appointment do have a crucial signifi-cance. In her words, “the character of a priesthood, its influence and powerwere fundamentally different when held by the same person for life as opposedto a single year.” 76

From this point of view, therefore, the situation of the Athenian priesthoodsdeserves at least a second thought. I have argued elsewhere that the deepchanges which took place in several religious circles, including the Isiac priest-hoods, were one of the many consequences of the growing oligarchization ofRoman Athens.77 Priesthoods had long ago ceased to be a really “public” affair,in the Classical sense. But only when Roman emperors ceased to support theGreek democratic fiction, did the Athenian elites take stronger hold than everof any possible source of social prestige, as for example popular priesthoods.


74 IG II/III2 4702 = SIRIS 6 = RICIS 101/0210. 75 SIRIS 17 = RICIS 101/0222 (ca. 120 A.D.). 76 O.c. (n. 43), p. 267.77 E. MUÑIZ GRIJALVO, “Elites and Religious Change in Roman Athens”, Numen, LII, 2005,pp. 255-282.

Annual priesthoods became lifetime positions, and a number of wealthy fami-lies which had traditionally been excluded from religious life, took advantageof the situation and started to display their generosity from some privilegedstages, as the priesthoods of Asklepios or Isis.

In short, the local context accounts for a general religious change, whichbrings us closer to the knowledge of the Egyptian cults in Athens, and may helpto understand their increasing success. But it is also the other way around: onlythe inner development of these cults helps to understand why Isis – after all aforeigner in Attica – would be a source of prestige for anyone. In my view, thereare several reasons for this. One of them is quite obvious: as any public priest-hood, Isiac duties probably gave access to social symbols of status.78 Not alwaysso obvious is the economic side of the question: maybe it generated even somesort of income, and being a mystery cult, probably more than did a regularpriesthood.79

A third reason has to do directly with Isis’s character. One may give more orless credit to the mysteric dimension of the Egyptian cults. It is crucial toremember that Isiac initiation is only known in Apuleius’s version, and that, ifwe give credit to his account, mystery rites were not affordable to everyone.80

Notwithstanding this, it is a fact that Isis was a very popular goddess. Probablyher success had to do not only with her mystery character, which was anappealing possibility especially for the Greeks, but also with her healingaspect,81 which might explain her close relationship with Asklepios. Healingdivinities were very popular in Roman Athens, as everywhere else. Around thefirst century AD their number increased, either as a consequence of this addedcapacity in some traditional gods (Cybele, for example, as ijatrivnh82), or because


78 Up to now, however, an Isiac proedria, one of the traditional symbols of prestige in Athens,has not been found in the theater of Dionysos. But there were 67 seats, and only 54 inscrip-tions have been deciphered. The most accurate description and dating of the seats of the the-ater in M. MAASS, Die Prohedrie des Dionysostheaters in Athen, Munich, Beck, 1972 (Vestigia). 79 W. BURKERT, Ancient Mystery Cults, Cambridge (Mass.), Harvard University Press, 1987, p.31; DIGNAS, o.c. (n. 43), p. 257.80 XI, 19-24. For a well-balanced overview of Isiac initiation, see J. ALVAR, Los misterios,Barcelona, Cátedra, 2001 and J. ALVAR and Richard GORDON, Romanising Oriental Gods.Myth, Salvation and Ethics in the Cults of Cybele, Isis and Mithras. Leiden, E.J. BRILL, 2008(RGRW, 165).81 BURKERT, o.c. (n. 79), p. 15.82 Corpus Cultus Cybelae Attidisque, Leiden, E.J. Brill, 1977, 275, 276.

of the arrival of new gods in Attica, like Zeus Hypsistos.83 The possibility toinvoke Isis as a healer guaranteed a large and constant number of devotees,itself a good reason to see her priesthood as a possible source of prestige.

In my opinion, the popular success of Isis depended heavily on the supportof the elite. To put it in other words, there was a feedback between the popu-lar and the aristocratic side of the cult. The more aristocratic support the cultenjoyed, the more popular favour it gained; and viceversa. According to this,the increasing popularity of Isis had much to do with the change in the char-acter of her priesthoods. The shift to lifetime offices involved the priests moredeeply in the cult, as their personal prestige was closely tied to its success. In away, the flowering of the cult was now something personal, or maybe a con-cern of the family. Lifetime tenures gave the possibility to become an expert inthe cult, and even to enhance its prestige by adding new features whichincreased its popularity.

In this paper I have tried to show that looking beyond bare numbers andavoiding a priori assumptions, one finds local religious contexts, which maycontribute to give a deeper insight of change. I am ready to admit that none ofthe small pieces of evidence brought into light here – the changes in theappointment of priests, or the aristocratization of the Isis cult- are especiallybreath-taking; and, of course, they do not explain on their own such a hugeissue as the growing popularity of oriental cults in the Roman Empire.However, they should always be included in the game.

Universidad Pablo de Olavide, [email protected]


83 On Zeus Hypsistos in Athens, see A.D. NOCK, “The Guild of Zeus Hypsistos”, HTR, XXIX,1936, pp. 39-88, especially pp. 62-66; B. FORSÉN, “The Sanctuary of Zeus Hypsistos and theAssembly Place of the Pnyx”, Hesperia, LXII, 1993, pp. 507-521; id., “The Sanctuary of ZeusHypsistos and the Date of Construction of Pnyx III”, in id. and Greg Stanton (edd.), Papersand Monographs of the Finnish Institute at Athens, vol. II, Helsinki, 1996, pp. 47-55.

the cult of the egyptian gods in roman athens · the cult of the egyptian gods in roman athens *...

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