Published Catalogue Text: Stone Sculptures: The Greek, Roman and Etruscan Collections of the Harvard University Art Museums , written 1990
50
Small Head (of Sarapis, Zeus or possibly Asklepios)
The nose is missing, and the modeling is rough. There are slight touches of a simple drill-point in the hair. The four curls across the forehead that would confirm identification as the Sarapis of Tryaxis have been rubbed away. There are the remains, broken irregularly, of a polos or modius (or crown?) on the top of the head. The hair is worked in summary fashion on the back of the head.
This head would appear to come from a small statue of Sarapis seated, based ultimately on the early Hellenistic statue by Bryaxis the Younger for the Sarapeum at Alexandria. It is characterized by the very rich head of hair and beard indicative of a late Hellenistic variation on the original; the sunken eyes have something of the flavor of the ultimate prototype, despite the figure's small scale and damaged condition. There are many variations in all media in Roman Imperial times, including figures of Sarapis reclining on a couch. A head of Sarapis of this type and only slightly larger in size, said to have been found in Rome and now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, was even carved in red jasper (Richter, 1954, p. 90, no. 165, pl. cxviii).
Small statues of Sarapis (or busts based on such images) were often made of various materials--white marble heads and black schist or red porphyry bodies--to reflect the chromatic effects of the original image in the torch-lit recesses of its temple. Priests of the Graeco-Egyptian cults of Alexandria, principally Sarapis and Isis, fanned out all over the Roman Empire carrying such little busts and statues as far afield as the Mithraeum in London. A splendid small bust in alabaster dates to the years A.D. 117-138 and is in the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (Hoffmann, 1970, pp. 72-74 under no. 22). Small statues, both in white marble (Luna and Parian), in the Liverpool collections give good illustrations of the seated Alexandrian cult image (Ashmole, 1929, pp. 21-22, nos. 38, 39).
A head in Kassel, dated in the second century AD, has been termed Zeus and shows the same style, on a larger scale, as the head at Harvard (Bieber, 1915, p. 21, no. 25, pl. XXIII). Another head of Sarapis, sold in Lucerne, is identical in style with the Harvard example and is more complete, the ends of the beard, neck, and bust being preserved (Ars Antiqua A.G., Auction v, 7 November, 1964, p. 7, no. 9, pl. v). Such heads could also be used for Graeco-Roman statues of river gods, perhaps Father Nile but probably also local streams, as an example in Bologna.
Cornelius Vermeule and Amy Brauer
