Hugh Thomson - MSc Late Antique, Byzantine and Islamic Studies
Alexander Nesbitt, an English visitor to
Rome, acquired a small ivory box from a dealer in antiquities sometime before
15th June 1871. The box, 8 cm high and 10.7 cm across, is now in the British
Museum (British Museum accession number 1879, 1220.1). It has lost its hinged
cover, its base, and the lock which once kept its contents secure. The rim is
chipped in places and the fine carving smoothed with wear (Weitzmann 1979).
Similar small round boxes (Greek: pyxis) were used since ancient times
as containers for cosmetics. In an ecclesiastical context, a pyxis containing consecrated bread for the
sick was one of only two items allowed to be stored on a church altar (Nesbitt
and Garrucci 1874). Nesbitt’s learned friend, Padre Raffaelle Garrucci, noted
in 1871 that the iconography on this particular pyxis was inappropriate for this purpose. However, he, and others
since, overlooked a feature which suggests that this conclusion may not be
correct.
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| Figure 1. Pyxis (British Museum) |
The contents of the basket on the ground
behind the seated figure are probably loaves of bread; identical representation
occurs on a fragmentary pyxis from
Syria, also in the British Museum, which clearly shows the distribution of
bread from a similar woven basket.
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Figure 2. Daniel Pyxis (British
Museum)
|
The style of the carving on Nesbitt’s pyxis is consistent with that of
consular diptychs of the early sixth-century. Scholars disagree on the location
of the workshop in which these artefacts were produced, but “the attribution of
the diptychs to Alexandria, or at least to an atelier of Alexandrian style and
tradition operating in Constantinople, is supported by some very serious
considerations” (Morey 1941, p. 45).
The iconography on the pyxis is in three parts – a scene of judgment, an execution and the
representation of a saint standing as an orant beneath an arch, attended by two
female and two male pilgrims.
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| Figure 3. St. Menas (British Museum) |
The saint depicted is Menas, patron saint
of Coptic Egypt. In 1942 he was credited by Patriarch Christopher II with
stopping the German advance on Alexandria when it approached the site of his
original shrine, not far from El Alamein. His image, standing with arms
outstretched between two camels’ heads is “the most immediately recognisable of
all such images” (Montserrat 1998, p. 270). Clay flasks, which once contained
oil sanctified by contact with the soil above his tomb, are found throughout
the territory of the Roman empire – in Britain, Spain, Sicily, Sardinia,
France, Italy and Greece, as well as in Egypt and North Africa.
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| Figure 4. Pilgrim flask (Louvre) |
Who was this Egyptian saint and how did he
acquire his international reputation? Nothing is known about his life – a Greek
Martyrdom, written by Cyrus of Panopolis following his exile to Cotyaeum in
Phrygia in 441, presents Menas as an Egyptian soldier martyred in Asia Minor
whose remains were returned to Egypt, but “no serious scholar accepts this”
(Drescher 1946, p. i).
The pyxis
came from the church of St. Paul without the Walls, which was founded by the
Emperor Constantine, rebuilt on a much larger scale by Theodosius and
extensively modified under Pope Gregory the Great. Gregory preached a sermon in
this church, in a chapel dedicated to Menas (Nesbitt and Garrucci 1874). The
original building burned down in 1823 and it seems likely that the pyxis was acquired as salvage after the
conflagration.
Excavations at the site of Menas’ shrine at
Abu Mina, 43 km west of Alexandria, have established that local villagers
erected a small mausoleum of sun-dried mud-brick above the site of a body placed
in a pre-existing hypogaeum. During
the fourth century, Menas’ shrine, believed locally to have healing powers, was
no different from many others scattered across the Egyptian countryside.
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| Figure 5. Ruins at Abu Mina (Peter Grossmann) |
The subsequent development of the site into
a sacred city protected by a garrison of 1200 soldiers was the product of
sustained efforts during the fifth century, involving both emperors in
Constantinople and patriarchs. The principles of classical town-planning were
applied. A ceremonial approach street (embolos)
led to a large rectangular square with colonnaded porticoes on all four sides;
the street narrows as it approaches the square “to raise the tension of
pilgrims arriving for the first time” (Grossmann
1998, p.287). The two main churches were south of this square – one,
above Menas’ tomb, was built early in the fifth century. The other, the largest
in Egypt at the time, was probably constructed during the reign of Zeno. The
city provided pilgrims with lodgings, bath-houses, shops, markets and
depositories “where the multitude could leave their clothes and baggage”
(Drescher 1946, p.147-8). Hospices, rest-houses and watering-places were
established along the route from Alexandria.
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| Figure 6. Centre of Abu
Mina (Peter Grossmann) |
These major investments delivered important
practical benefits, in addition to the increase of prestige of both imperial
and patriarchal administrations. The cult was a unifying feature in an ecclesiastical
province in danger of falling apart; pilgrimages and festivals helped with
social control, a major problem in Alexandria; the shrine’s baptisteries provided
a venue for the conversion of Egypt’s remaining pagans; money contributed by
pilgrims played a significant role in financing the established Church. Indeed,
in the ninth century, the patriarch complained to the Arab governor of “the
poverty of the church, arising from the interruption of pilgrimages to the
church of St Mennas” (Drescher 1946, p. xxvi).
Evidence that cooperation between Alexandria and Constantinople delivered
benefits was particularly important after the Council of Chalcedon (451) plunged Christian Egypt into a state of confusion.
I believe that the pyxis, all that remains from Menas’ chapel in Rome, was
commissioned by the imperial chancellery from the workshop that produced
consular diptychs and other official ivories. St. Paul without the Walls was
itself a very significant destination for international pilgrims. The pyxis, perhaps a part of a set,
prominent on the chapel altar and travelling through the city to the houses of
the sick and the dying, was designed to bring the officially-sponsored Egyptian
shrine to the attention of both travellers and residents in Rome.
Works Cited
Drescher, J. (1946) Apa Mena: a selection of Coptic texts relating to St. Menas,
imprimerie de l'Institut français d'Archéologie orientale.
Grossmann, P. (1998) 'The Pilgrimage Centre
of Abu Mina' in Frankfurter, D., ed. Pilgrimage
and Holy Space in Late Antique Egypt, Leiden: Brill.
Montserrat, D. (1998) 'Pilgrimage to the
Shrine of SS Cyrus and John at Menouthis in Late Antiquity' in Frankfurter,
D., ed. Pilgrimage and Holy Space in Late
Antique Egypt, Leiden: Brill.
Morey, C. R. (1941) 'The Early Christian
Ivories of the Eastern Empire', Dumbarton
Oaks Papers, 41-60.
Nesbitt, A. and Garrucci, R. (1874)
'XVIII.—On a Box of Carved Ivory of the Sixth Century', Archaeologia, 44(02), 321-330.
Weitzmann, K. and Metropolitan Museum of
Art (1979) Age of spirituality late
antique and early Christian art, third to seventh century catalogue of the
exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, November 19, 1977, through February
12, 1978 /edited by Kurt Weitzmann, New York: The Museum.
