Cook, Arthur B.: Zeus: a study in ancient religion (Band 3,1): Zeus god of the dark sky (earthquake, clouds, wind, dew, rain, meteorits): Text and notes (Cambridge, 1940)

The holed vessel in Egypt 3 51

mountain-emblem of HA, one of the most ancient gods of the
Delta, whose priest purified the king at his coronation with the
' waters of all-satisfying life1.' But I incline to think that rosettes,
circles, and quasi-cxovm are merely loaves and cakes set out before
the goddess. In any case the Egyptian scene balances the Greek
scene; for Isis too was an earth-power2—indeed Plutarch says that
the Egyptians spoke of the earth, when flooded and fructified by
the Nile, as 'the body of Isis3.' That a Greek potter should thus
combine home ritual with foreign ritual is certainly exceptional4,
°ut not altogether surprising. If an early Ionic hydria could repre-
sent the sacrifice of Bousiris with some approach to Egyptian
Vraisemblance'°, a late local Italian (?Oscan) amphora may well
have reflected the "rowincr familiarity of the Greek world with the
observances of the Delta. In after days Egyptian spells came to be
much valued in Greek lands6. But this vase has a special interest
as affording the earliest extant Greek or quasi-Greek representation
of a 'Canopic' divinity.

The Vivenzio vase, after being drawn by Angelini in 1798,
dlsappeared from view. But thirty years later Raoul Rochette
Published an amphora of remarkably similar aspect (fig. 234)'—so
Slrnilar in fact that it must be the self-same vase—and this in 1865

1 See the important paper by P. E. Newberry 'Two Cults of the Old Kingdom' in the

A*h- Anthr. 1908 i. 24 ff.
3 ™ Drexler in Roscher Lex. Myth. ii. 442 ff.

P'out. de Is. et Os. 38 lis 5i XtiXo^'OiripiSoj airopporiv, oOrws "IcriSos aw/ia y^p txovei
"o/J-i^ovcnv, o{i -waaav d\V 6 NeiXos tiri/Saivei 0-wepp.aivuv Kai fuyvu/jitvos.

4 R- Hackl 'Mumienverehrung auf einer schwarzfigurig attischen Lekythos in the
Archio f. av. IQ0Q xii. I05_2O3 with 3 figs. (Am. /our,,. Arch. 1909 xiu. 498 with
%) publishes a black-figured Ukythos at Munich (height 0M7"': provenance unknown),
*hich in the clear but slightly careless style of c. 5oo B.C. shows three men prostrating
themselves with gestures of grief before and behind a narrow vertical oblong, covered with
a network- or trellis-pattern and surmounted by a male head in profile with wreath (?) and
P°'nted beard. The men wear loin-cloths only: two cloaks are hung in the background.

sprays are visible to left and right of the pillar-like figure. Hackl argues that this
"guie cannot be a herm (no arm-stumps, no phalUs), nor yet a Dionysos Perilaimos (tree-
stem or pillar usually clothed, Dionysos-mask above adorned with vines), but must be the
mummy of some Greek, who dying in the Delta was embalmed and lamented by his friends
ln Egyptian fashion (TrpocnciW,™, loin-cloths)—possiby as a divinised Osiris-Dionysos.

6 Furtwangler—Reichhold Gr. Vascnmalerei i. 255 ff- P1- 5*. Pfuhl MaUre' "■
^chnungd. Gr. i. ,79 ff. iii. 35 figs. l5», 153, M. H. Swindler Ancient Paintmg \ale
University Press pp. 126, 134, 163 figs. 214, 257. Supra i. 513 ' with fig- 38r"

Loukian. phi/ops. 31.

7 Raoul-Rochette Monumens inidils d'antiquiti figurie Paris 1833 p. 369 ff- P1- 6+
paty fig. 234). The learned author interprets the vase-painting as a combination of two
analogous scenes—' mcyomancie homerique' (Odysseus evoking the soul of Antikleia) and

To "wo/taKTtTw' near Cumae (Diod. 4. 22, Strab. 244) at which Demos or Choros is
c°nsulting the oracle of a ' Canopic' jar.