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Symposium on Nubian Studies <2, 1972, Warschau> [Hrsg.]; Society for Nubian Studies [Hrsg.]; Michałowski, Kazimierz [Bearb.]
Nubia: récentes recherches ; actes du Colloque Nubiologique International au Musée National de Varsovie, 19 - 22 Juin 1972 — Varsovie: Musée National, 1975

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https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.47598#0192

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and later Mars20, and also later his Celtic and other comrades in misfortune, get enclosed in
a vessel in order to calm down their fury. The actual origin of this role of the vessel—of the
pythos—was discovered by Prof. Harmatta in the relevant provision of the Hittite Laws, viz. : “If
a slave opposes his master, he shall go into the vessel”21. In this case the vessel is not the means of
capital punishment, as in certain Indian sources22; but the cell serving the purpose of shorter
punishments. In the ancient East, the big, empty pythos, to be found in every granary, was a very
suitable means that—in the natural absence of any other more severe prison—the disobedient
slave should spend a certaii time in 23.
Thus the closing of the unrestrained young gods into a vessel is undoubtedly a punishment which
is the mythological reflection of an actually existing custom, but the motive is enriched through
the religious associations of the grain storage vessels as well24. Nor is it likely that the hiding of
Eurystheus in the pythos does only record a moment of hiding itself, but is equally an indication
of his cowardly humiliated situation, viz. that of voluntary imprisonment. This can eventually be
supported by the fact that, according to Eusthatios25, the prison was called ceramos by the
early Greek inhabitants of Cyprus.
It is likely that the motive of closing into a vessel had been preserved up to the age of the
Abdallah Nirqi fresco not in the first place by some mythological-legendary tradition, but much
more by a living, concrete practice of imprisonment. The use of the primitive “prisons” mentioned
in the Hittite Law can be imagined well also later on in the ancient and late antique East. In fact,
besides the Hittite Law, we do not have any source regarding vessels as means of punishment,
but there are numerous data on such primitive prisons, which constitute an organic part of the
ergastulum of the slaves. These, accordingly, under simple circumstances, can finally also
mean a storage vessel in the granary.
The spreading of provincial private prisons in the whole Roman Empire is shown by the vain
prohibition of Hadrian26 and the enumeration of the methods serving for the punishment of
slaves27. In Egypt, Ptolemaic- and Roman-age sources indicate the continuous existence of private
prisons28. The repeated provisions, prohibiting the establishment of private prisons in Byzantine
Egypt, throw light on these prisons there. Theodosius, and Zeno, and Justinian after him also made
laws for the abolishment of the private prisons in the province. How futile these provisions were,
is shown by a papyrus from 538 A.D., according to which there were not less than 139 prisoners
in the prison of one of the Apion estates in that year29. Unfortunately, I have not found
similar data on Nubia, but to a certain extent the Abdallah Nirqi fresco itself can be such
a datum.
The nakedness of the small man enclosed in the vessel, if we might put it so, is a topos of
Early Christian and medieval iconography, viz. if the person represented is a Christian believer,
then his nakedness points to his martyr character and to his innocence, in general30. All over the
Empire, a momentum of the sentence of Christian martyrs is the deprivation of their clothes, as
this can also be seen from the papers of Phileas of Thmuis31.
20 Riemschneider., op. cit., p. 9 ff., fig. 3.
21 Hittite Laws, ΙΙ/ii coll. 58 a-b, lines 14-5; Harmatta, op. cit., p. 1.
22 W. Ruben, Gesch. d. indischen Philosophie, Berlin 1954, p. 108; Harmatta, op. cit., p. 3.
23 Riemschneider, op. cit., p. 14; Harmatta, op. cit., pp. 2 ff.
24 Harmatta, op. cit., p. 4 ff. includes the details regarding the pythos of Pandora; the pythoi of Zeus Terpiceraunos;
the vessels of the tempest gods etc.
25 Eusthatios, ad. II. V.387; Harmatta, op. cit., p. 3.
26 SHA, Hadr., 18,10; Apul. apol., 47; D. kl., Pauly, Ergastulum, col. 355.
27 Plaut. Asin., 549; H. Blümner, Die röm. Privataltertümer, Handbuch d. kl. Altertumswiss., IV./2, 2, München 1911,
pp. 292 ff.
28 R. Taubenschlag, The Law of Graeco-Roman Egypt in the Light of the Papyri 332 B.C.—640 A.D. Opera minora II,
Warsaw 1955, pp. 75 ff.
29 C.T., IX, 11/1; Cod. Just., IX, 5,1; on the prisoners of the Apion estate PSI, 953, 37, 54-60; R. Taubenschlag,
L’emprisonement dans le droit gréco-égyptien. Opera minora II, pp. 713-19; E. R. Hardy, The Large Estates of
Byzantine Egypt, New York 1931, pp. 64, 67 ff., 691; 69 ff.; 137.
30 Cf. H. Leclercq, Nudité des condamnés, in: DACL ΧΠ/2, coll. 1806 ff.
31 Euseb., Hist, eccl., VIII, X. 2-7; H. Leclercq, Martyr—Nudité des martyrs in: DACL X/2 col. 2418.

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