Beyond Isis and Osiris - Alternate Sexualities in Ancient Egypt, Part 2: John J. Johnstone

This is a trail written by the late John J. Johnstone, based in part on a talk he gave at the Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology in February 2008. It was the first event recorded in a museum in London for LGBT History Month. The objects would be put out especially for the trail in February, so it doesn't really work as a trail around the museum most of the time. I have turned it into a blog but also made the trail available to download below. John J. Johnstone was a true pioneer of public engagement with LGBTQ+ history, as well as with film, TV and other forms of popular receptions of Egypt.

The New Kingdom (mainly), Ptolemaic & Roman Egypt

1. Alabaster Head of Pepy II (?), UC16876. Dynasty 6 (2345BC–2181BC)

This tiny, broken, alabaster head from a statuette bears starling similarities to others of the infant king, Neferkare Pepy II who appears to have ruled from a very young age until 94 years. In light of his great age at death, it is ironic that the majority of sculptural works to have reached us show him as a child. The Petrie Museum also holds a relief from Koptos, UC14281, showing his cartouche and the king in rather more vigorous, albeit badly damaged, form striding out with staff and mace.

A text described by the great philologist, Sir Alan Gardiner in 1961 as ‘a story quite in the spirit of Herodotus’ (p.101), reaches us from some point in the Late Period, although certain grammatical and stylistic elements suggest an earlier date.

The papyrus relates the tale of King Neferkare and his general, Sasenet. For reasons which are never explained in the damaged papyrus, one Teti, son of Henet, watches the king after dark as he clambers up a lowered ladder into the home of his unmarried general, where he remains for four hours, leaving only ‘after his Person had done what he desired with him’ (Montserrat, 2000, 143). We have no idea how the tale ends but there is a suggestion that the king should not be spending his valuable time in such frivolous ways. If King Neferkare is the historical Pepy II, it is tempting to think that the memory of Egypt’s descent into the decentralised chaos following this king’s reign might have been the spur for such a cautionary tale.

2. Alabaster cosmetic vase bearing the cartouche of Hatshepsut. UC15862. Dynasty 18 (1550BC–1295BC). Found at Deir el Bahri

   
   

This alabaster jar was intended to hold some form of cosmetic – possibly kohl for the eyes. It bears the cartouche of Hatshepsut and may have been owned by her. It was discovered at Deir el Bahri, where her mortuary temple lies and, consequently, may have formed part of her funerary assemblage. However, it appears unfinished and may have been an item which was being worked and discarded with Hatshepsut’s death and never completed.

Daughter of King Tuthmosis I, wife and half-sister of Thuthmosis II, Queen Hatshepsut reigned for some fourteen years following the untimely death of her husband and, although she originally acted as regent for her young step-son and nephew, the putative Tuthmosis III, by Year Two of her reign some interesting iconographic changes were underway as she assumed the role of king.

Although one can not describe Hatshepsut’s transformation from female to male as transsexual in the modern sense, her statuary gradually adopted more and more male attributes from the nemes headdress to the wearing of the false beard and the short shendyt kilt. Hatshepsut’s Karnak obelisk depicts her as male on two sides and female on the other two whilst her birth name, which translates, somewhat unfortunately, in the circumstances, as ‘Foremost of the Noble Ladies’, is rendered without the feminine ending.

Although we can have no knowledge as to whether this masculine demeanour was adopted in life, the Egyptian elite must have found the adaptation and subversion of masculine royal iconography to be challenging.

This view can probably be borne out by the discovery of an obscene graffito in a tomb overlooking Hatshepsut’s mortuary temple confirmed by Edward Wente in 1984 as dating from her reign. It shows a king, bent over and being entered, from behind, by another man. Although this has been interpreted as Hatshepsut being serviced by her architect and major domo, Senenmut, Wente has suggested, more plausibly, that it is a political satire on Hatshepsut’s gender role as the king being incapable of fulfilling the role suggesting that

The sexually active male may simply be an anonymous figure serving to provide the means for commenting pictorially upon the absurdity of Hatshepsut’s acting as king, unable to be a ‘Mighty Bull’. Wente, 1984, 53

3. Ivory cosmetic spoon in the form of a naked female, UC26083. Dynasty 19 (1295BC–1186BC). Found at Qau.

The evidence for lesbian behaviour in ancient Egypt is even less prevalent than we find for male homosexuality. The ‘Dream Book’ of the Papyrus Carlsberg XIII advises, ‘If a woman dreams that a woman has intercourse with her, she will come to a bad end’ (Manniche, 1987, 22). Nevertheless, in the New Kingdom, particularly, women are frequently shown enjoying female company in a relaxed and intimate atmosphere, often surrounded by nude or scantily clad female servants.

Furthermore, cosmetic jars and utensils are often adorned with naked girls during this period. Whilst there are clearly connotations with the goddess, Nut, as described by Arielle Kozloff (1998, 97–8), consideration must also be given to the intrinsic nature of the form these objects take. It is also evident from the soft woods and polished ivory used most frequently in the manufacture of these objects that the use of these items was intended to be sensual. Of course, one must remember that cosmetic items were also used by men and consequently, this interest in the female form may be entirely predictable as men would not only use but commission and fashion such items.

However, equally, from the earliest periods these same men are portrayed as handsome, athletic, and desirable in works which are usually fashioned and commissioned by other men. An article on The Guardian website, dated 6 January 2009, described the recently restored painting from the tomb of Nebamun in the British Museum as depicting ‘a rather hunky athlete hunting in the marshes’ (Bennett, 2009). One wonders, consequently, how obvious this foregrounding of the athletic male was in the minds of the men involved. Were these elegant and vigorous males, figures of aspiration or desire or, indeed, both?

A point made by Jan Assman in his article on portraiture in Egypt (1996) raises some interesting questions regarding the supposedly idealised representations of the elite, particularly in the New Kingdom. He suggests that these are not idealised images, so much as homogenised and that the levels of depilation, cosmetic application, and wig wearing amongst the fashionable elite may have substantially reduced individuality to the point, where everyone resembled a ‘type’ as is evident from artworks, which probably suggests a concomitant blurring of outward gender distinctions.

4. Relief of Akhenaten and Nefertiti. UC401. Early Akhenaten (1352BC–1336BC)

   
   

This exquisitely worked relief in alabaster from Akhenaten’s newly found city of Akhetaten, modern Tell el Amarna, shows the king, his chief wife, Nefertiti and one of their daughters, Meritaten, worshipping their sole god, the sun’s disk, the Aten.

Enough has been written about Akhenaten and his heretical beliefs to fill several libraries and yet we cannot be entirely certain about his motivation for choosing to be depicted in such an unusual fashion. Not only are we accustomed to seeing Akhenaten’s elongated and distorted facial features but as in this piece, the king’s body takes on entirely feminine dimensions. The protuberant breasts, slim waist, and wide hips are rendered almost identically to those of Nefertiti, standing beside him. Certainly, theories have not been in short supply. The combining of masculine and feminine traits was not unique in Egyptian art and mythology per se: the fecundity of the Nile god, Hapi is portrayed in a similar fashion and the sole creator god, Atum is, by reason of his actions, essentially ‘hermaphroditic’ in nature. However, the adoption of such traits by the king is without precedent save in the intermediary stages of Hatshepsut’s iconographic transformation, which were to a very different purpose and effect.

An article from 4 May 2008 details the work of a physician in Baltimore with the headline, ‘Egyptian Pharaoh May Have Been Natural Transsexual’ (Associated Press). The article states that the female form was due to a genetic mutation that caused the pharaoh’s body to convert more male hormones to female hormones than needed, Dr. Irwin Braverman believes. The pharaoh had:

‘an androgynous appearance. He had a female physique with wide hips and breasts, but he was male and he was fertile and he had six daughters. But nevertheless, he looked like he had a female physique.’

There is a somewhat cautionary tale regarding the interpretation of evidence and the concomitant long term outcomes. Towards the end of Akhenaten’s reign, Nefertiti appears to vanish from the historical record and to be replaced by a male co-regent, Smenkhkare. In 1928, Percy Newberry, perhaps one of the first to hazard an ‘alternative’ reading of an Egyptian artefact wrote, regarding Berlin Stela 17813:

[Howard] Carter has also drawn my attention to a remarkable stela in the Berlin Museum… which has always been supposed to represent Akhenaten and his queen Nefertiti, but, as Carter points out to me, the double crown worn by the one figure and the Khepresh-crown worn by the other make it clear that we have here two kings, and not a king and his consort. The two royal personages here are undoubtedly Akhenaten and his co-regent Smenkhkare. The intimate relations between Pharaoh and the boy as shown by the scene on the stela recall the relationship between the Emperor Hadrian and the youth Antinous. (Newberry, 1928, 7).

It was not until 1973 that Professor J R Harris re-identified the individuals as Akhenaten and Nefertiti although for many the debate rages on and Akhenaten is still erroneously referenced in many publications as one of the first known homosexuals in history (Montserrat, 2000, 166–182).

5. Terracotta head of Alexander the Great (?) UC49881. Ptolemaic. 3rd Century BC. Found at Memphis.

This hollow terracotta head probably represents Alexander the Great as it bears a strong resemblance to his portrait type with its full, slightly unkempt, locks brushed back from the forehead.

Alexander III of Macedon arrived in Egypt in order to rout the Persian invaders who had colonised many of the countries surrounding the Mediterranean and had ruled Egypt for some two-hundred years. As a result of his success, Alexander became the rightful ruler of Egypt, accepting the title of King of Upper and Lower Egypt. Unlike his predecessors in the role, however, Alexander was the product of a Hellenic upbringing. His tutor was the great Athenian philosopher, Aristotle and he was accustomed to the prevalent fashion of socially accepted and promoted homosexuality between elite males. Dalliances with attractive young men were to be expected. Indeed, Alexander’s father, Phillip II, was rumoured to have been murdered by a former male lover in a fit of jealous pique before the eyes of his people and his wives.

The sources tell us that Alexander had a particular bond with one of his band of companions: Hephaestion, a boyhood friend, who in many respects appears to have emulated Patroklos, as Alexander strove to emulate his Homeric hero, Achilles. Both men travelled to the site of Troy where they sacrificed to the shades of these heroes. Although Homer, in his epic, does not make the relationship between the two heroes explicit, it was generally accepted during the Classical period that the relationship had been homosexual in nature.

Alexander’s links with Egypt appear to have been considerably more than merely those of a visiting general. Whilst there, he sought the advice of the Oracle of Ammon at Siwa Oasis, travelling to that far flung outpost, after which, it is believed he believed himself to be the son of a god. He also visited the ancient fishing village of Rakhotis, where he founded the city of Alexandria. There are reliefs in the temple of Karnak, showing Alexander in typically Pharaonic poses, suggesting that he must have instituted some form of building or restoration programme at this venerable site. He then departed with Hephaestion to destroy the fleeing Persian army. Alexander sought to conquer the world and in so doing, to unite east and west. In this and many other things, Alexander was a unique thinker. Similarly, his relationship with Hephaestion continued long after the Greek tradition, which dictated that such relationships usually finished when the younger party approached his early to mid twenties.

Alexander married and begot heirs. However, Hephaestion was never far from his side and when Hephaestion died unexpectedly at Ecbatana in October 324 BC, Alexander reacted with extreme distress. He had the physician who had been tending Hephaestion executed on the spot and threatened to raze the city to the ground. We are further told that, against advice, he lay with the body for a full twenty-four hours without food or drink. He endeavoured to have Hephaestion deified but for the intervention of the Oracle of Ammon in Egypt, who decreed he should be worshipped merely as a hero.

Nevertheless, a massive funeral pyre was constructed at enormous expense, utilising bricks from the city walls of Babylon to create a platform over 7m in height, the remains of which, which may have been discovered by Robert Koldewey in 1904 (Palagia, 2000, p.173). Thereafter, Alexander fell into a downward spiral, from which he never recovered, dying, himself, only eight months later.

However, even in death Alexander’s link with Egypt was not to be broken. His body was embalmed by Egyptians and Chaldeans, who, we are told, used honey as a preservative and would have been buried at the Macedonian royal necropolis at Vergina but for the fact that his body was intercepted en route by his former general, Ptolemy, who carried him to Egypt to serve as the ideological and political hub of his own dynastic ambition.

Alexander’s final resting place is now lost to us, although it is known that both Julius Caesar and Octavian visited his mausoleum in Alexandria, some three hundred years later.

Alexander had amassed a vast empire and enormous wealth before he died at the age of thirty-two, during which time Hephaestion rarely left his side.

6. Terracotta figurine resembling Ptolemy VIII Euergetes (Physkon). UC47632. Middle Ptolemaic Period (203BC–117BC). Found at Memphis

This tiny, terracotta figurine strongly resembles the descriptions which have reached us of the monstrous king, Ptolemy VIII Euergetes, known to the Alexandrian masses as Physkon or ‘Potbelly’. He appears to sit in a throne or chariot, with his somewhat effeminate robes diaphanously revealing his grotesque bulk beneath. If this does represent the king, then such an object would have been a dangerous item to posses during the king’s lifetime as his bloodlust and capacity for revenge were notorious.

The piece is, however, reminiscent of Diodorus Siculus’ description of Ptolemy VIII puffing and sweating through the heat of the sun en route to the harbour with the notoriously austere envoy from Rome, Scipio Aemilianus, who had deliberately eschewed the use of a litter and later commented, ‘The Alexandrians owe me one thing; they have seen their king walk’ (Ashton, 2001, 65). The incident is worth mentioning in this particular context, not only because the vision of Euergetes resembling a somewhat tacky and overweight drag act remains an amusing one but also because under the Ptolemies, Alexandria had become a hot bed of intellectual, philosophical, artistic and literary activity and was also deemed to be a rather good spot for picking up young men as exemplified in the poetry of Callimachus, Theocritus and numerous others working at the famous Library (Montserrat, 1996, 144–6).

7. Mummy Portrait of the ‘Red Youth’. UC19610. Roman Period (AD 140 -160). Found at Hawara

This portrait of painted in wax on lime wood was excavated by Petrie in 1911. It represents a muscular young man with tanned, naked shoulders and chest, rather like an athlete. Petrie, himself, christened the portrait the ‘Red Youth’. This and the other mummy boards in the museum’s substantial collection would originally have been affixed to the wrappings of the deceased in a manner similar to that of the mummy of Artemidorus, on display in the British Museum.

Dominic Montserrat placed emphasis on the erotic aspect of the fifty or so known mummy portraits of young men in their late teens to early twenties. Montserrat commented on the iconography employed in the portraits of young men ‘as being at the apogee of their sexual desirability’ (Montserrat, 1993, 225) with their slight moustaches, frequently naked torsos and garlanded hair. While this should not, necessarily, be deemed to represent homosexual desirability, it should be recalled that Roman society, at various periods, was distinctly ambivalent about one’s sexual proclivities outside of marriage providing one remained within certain rules regarding married women and freeborn girls and youths.

8. Coin of Hadrian. UC39383. Roman Period. Found at Naukratis

This badly corroded bronze coin of the Roman Emperor, Hadrian, from the site of Naukratis is one of the few representations held in the Petrie Museum of this oft-depicted emperor. Following the death of Cleopatra VII, the emperors of Rome came to rule Egypt and, for the purposes of Egyptian religion, the Kings of Upper and Lower Egypt, although few visited the country.

A Spaniard by birth, Hadrian was fascinated by Greek history and art and by the ‘mystery religions’ of Egypt. Hadrian was philhellene – a lover of Greek Classical culture – and endowed and restored many great buildings throughout the Greek provinces and rebuilt a number of historic structures in Rome itself. He was known as Graeculus, ‘Little Greek’ and was the first Roman emperor to wear a beard in the Greek style, although, in typically scurrilous Roman fashion, it was rumoured that he only did so because beneath it, his face was blemished.

Hadrian married Vibia Sabina, the Emperor Trajan’s niece by marriage and, in so doing, secured for himself the Imperial throne. It has also been suggested that an intimacy between Hadrian and Trajan did not hinder matters. Unlike the majority of Roman emperors, Hadrian spent much of his reign away from Rome, touring the provinces. This involved a substantial train of advisers, courtiers, intellectuals, the Empress and a young man from the city of Claudiopolis, near the Black Sea, whose name was Antinous…

9. Bronze replica of the ‘Farnese Antinous’. Portico of the Wilkins Building, Main Entrance UCL on Gower St. Eighteenth Century AD

This eighteenth-century bronze copy of the so-called ‘Farnese Antinous’ was donated to University College London by Dr Robert Fellowes (1770–1847) in 1829. It, together with the ‘Diskobolos’, donated at the same time, were sited on the portico of the Wilkins Building, in 1872. The sculptor of the pieces is unknown.

Our textual knowledge of Antinous is slight: we cannot be sure when he first met Hadrian or even of his precise age. He was possibly born in AD 111 and almost certainly freeborn. A later votive text gives his date of birth as 27 November. It is likely that Hadrian encountered Antinous in Bithynia (modern Turkey) in approximately AD126 or 127. Having travelled around the Greek provinces Hadrian, Antinous, and the Empress Sabina were initiated in September AD 128 into the Eleusinian Mysteries, which were related to the myth of Demeter and Persephone and centred upon death and rebirth (Lambert, 1997, 104). As the journey progressed Hadrian became increasingly obsessed with his own impending doom, foretold by dreams and the prophecies of the sorcerers with whom Hadrian had begun to consort.

By October AD 130 the Imperial party had reached Egypt and were travelling on the Nile, possibly returning from a visit to the nearby Hermopolis, the cult site of Thoth, the Egyptian god of writing, secret wisdom and magic, which would seem to fit the Emperor’s interests at the time. On 24 October, the traditional date of Osiris’ death, the beautiful Antinous drowned in the river Nile. The Classical sources initially tell us, succinctly, ‘During a journey on the Nile [Hadrian] lost his Antinous’, and that Hadrian, ‘wept like a woman’ at the death.

Suspicions surrounding the death were raised by all ancient commentators with Aurelius Victor, writing some 150 years later providing the most information:

For when Hadrian was desiring to prolong his life by any means, the magicians proposed that someone should die voluntarily on his behalf, everyone refused, Antinous alone offered. (Lambert, 1997, 131)

Certainly, by 30 October, Hadrian had founded a city, Antinoopolis, on the banks of the Nile closest to the spot where Antinous died and named a star in the constellation of Aquila (The Eagle) after the boy. Hadrian’s mourning culminated in the unprecedented step of Antinous being created a god; the last god of the ancient world. In his worship throughout the empire, Antinous is often conflated with the Egyptian, Osiris or the Greek, Dionysos but most frequently as himself: a beautiful, ageless youth with gently downcast head.

We know that Hadrian survived his favourite by only eight unhappy years during which, he frequently but unsuccessfully sought his own death, before retreating to his villa at Tivoli, where excavators still search for the tomb of Antinous (Mari, 2006).

Bibliography

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Text © John J. Johnston 2010; Images © Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology, UCL