This large, accomplished figure was hollow cast
via the lost-wax method. Her eyes were
originally inlaid. She is depicted in the
contraposto pose, in which the weight of the
body is supported by the right leg while the left
leg recedes and is moved slightly to the left. Her
right arm is bent at the elbow and is held in front
of the right side of the hip. The tips of the thumb
and index finger meet to form a circle while the
remaining fingers of that hand are spread. The
circular form suggests that she was holding an
attribute now lost in that hand. Her accessories
include sandals laced high up on the ankle, an
armlet and a broad collar from which is
suspended a cordiform pendant. The pendant
may be a heart amulet. An elaborate foliate
headdress rising from a tiara-like base
completes her accessories. The predominant
form of the floral elements of the headdress are
palmettes while the tiara-like base is fronted by
an uraeus, the sacred, protecting cobra of
ancient Egypt, over which, in the centre of the
foliate elements, is a miniature composite
element consisting of double ostrich feather
plumes and a sun disc. Her long hair is parted in
the center and coiffed in waves over each side of
the head with its ends formed into cork-screw
locks, one of their luxurious and sinuous ends
resting on each shoulder.
The clue to the identification of this magnificent
but uninscribed figure resides in her accessories
and pose. The cork-screw locks, uraeus-fronted
tiara-like base, and central ornament of the
headdress in the form of twin ostrich plumes and
sun disc are insignia of the goddess Isis in the
Graeco-Roman Period. The position of the right
arm and the contraposto attitude of the nude
body with the position of the feet is a conscious
evocation of the famed Knidian Aphrodite by
Praxiteles created in the fourth century BC and
best known from a marble copy of Roman date
now in the collections of the Vatican. These
attributes and attitude taken together suggest
that the figure is a depiction of the Egyptian
goddess Isis combining characteristics and traits
of the Classical goddess Aphrodite/Venus. The
syncretistic, religious tendencies of the Roman
Imperial Period, to which time this idol is dated,
enabled the cult of the goddess Isis to
incorporate into it aspects of other goddesses of
the Graeco-Roman world. So extensive was this
incorporation of other cults into that of this
goddess, that Isis was known to the Romans as
the “goddess of a thousand names,” each name
apparently alluding to the characteristics
incorporated into her being from other deities.
The goddess may have functioned as an ex-voto
dedicated in a sanctuary in thanks for a prayer
answered or in anticipation of a prayer granted.
Her full-figure resonates with overtones of
fecundity, appropriate to Aphrodite/Venus, the
goddess of love, whom the Romans worshipped
as an alma Venus, ‘Venus the nourishing.” This
aspect of Aphrodite/Venus is consistent with the
fundamental role of Isis as the loving wife and
nurturing mother. The figure, therefore,
demonstrates the genius of the artists of the
Roman Imperial Period who could combine into
one and the same figure the body-type
associated in Greece and Rome with Aphrodite/
Venus, and the accessories specific to the
Egyptian goddess Isis.
There are several images of such figures in
public collections, that in the Brooklyn Museum
of Art, however, being somewhat less
accomplished
References:
The Brooklyn Museum, Late Egyptian and Coptic
Art. An Introducion to the Collections in The
Brooklyn Museum (Brooklyn 1943), plate 24.
R.R.R. Smith, Hellenistic Sculpture (London
1991), plate 98, figures 1-2, for the Vatican
Knidian Aphrodite.
