Fashioning a Global Goddess: The Representation of Isis across Hellenistic Seascapes
Part of Mediterranean Archaeologies of Insularity in the Age of Globalization, ed. Anna Kouremenos and Jody G. Gordon. Oxford: Oxbow 2020.
In this paper, I take a seascape-oriented approach to the study of island and main- land port connections in the Hellenistic Mediterranean that reconfigures the idea of a ‘region’. When Greek devotees began to worship the Egyptian goddess Isis in the late 4th century BCE, they chose to develop new images of the goddess. Most popular among these was a distinctive costume that featured a mantle knotted between the breasts to create an X-pattern, a type that Jan Eingartner has called the Knotenpalla. The first examples of this type, dating to the mid-Hellenistic period, were thought to come from the islands of Delos and Rhodes, but another has been found at Amphipolis, suggesting a new way of considering island and mainland connectivity in the Hellenistic period.
I begin my essay by examining the role of the port in antiquity. I argue that ports could both enable and restrict connectivity and propose that we consider ports through the metaphor of the valve: able to permit, restrict, and redirect cultural flows. Next, I define the Knotenpalla and trace the type’s cultic and social meanings. Through formal analysis, I argue that the mid-Hellenistic types from Delos, Rhodes, and Amphipolis form a cohesive enough group to suggest that their Isiac communities had a relationship with each other. I conclude by suggesting that these connections were built by migration, but also help us understand the active role geography played in community formation. Comparing these statuettes with a regional example from Beroia, I argue that the disjuncture between Isis’ representation at Hellenistic sites in Macedonia indicates that sea- based forms of regionality could have been as, or in some cases, more, influential to cultural and religious development as land-based regions. This case study helps us reposition ports as parts of island networks and see the shores of the Mediterranean more clearly as part of seascapes.
Hellenistic statuette of Isis from Delos.