Charles Ede Ltd (London), Antiquities 134 (1985) no. 6 (ill.).

D.L. Brooks Hedstrom, The Monastic Landscape of Late Antique Egypt (Cambridge 2017).

V. Drbal, Pilgerfahrt im spätantiken Nahen Osten (3./4. - 8. Jahrhundert): Paganes, christliches, jüdisches und islamisches Pilgerwesen. Fragen der Kontinuitäten (Heidelberg: Propylaeum 595, 2019).

1985.01

Flask with Moulded Decoration

Purchased. Ht 9cm; max. width 6.3cm.

Largely intact although the head of the figure is missing on one side. Very pale orange-buff clay with many small white inclusions. Manufactured rather like a lamp by joining two moulded halves together. The handles, neck and mouth were then added. The handles are of flattened circular section.

The vase is decorated in relief on each side with a scene of St. Menas standing frontally and holding up his hands, with a camel to either side.

Made in Egypt and datable to the sixth or seventh century AD.

The traditions about St Menas were confused from an early date, and it is thought that the tradition of the Egyptian Menas was conflated with that of a soldier in the Roman army who was martyred as a Christian in Phrygia in or near AD 303. He is said to have been a camel-driver and leader of camel-trains and his remains were believed to bring considerable healing from sickness. His shrine at Karm Abu Mina became a place of pilgrimage with a sanctuary and baths. Holy Oil from it was widely exported in souvenir flasks of the general kind of ours. He was regularly depicted with camels about him.

There is a good number of examples of this type of vessel, moulds for making them and a series of kilns published in C.M. Kaufmann, La découverte des Sanctuaires de Ménas dans le désert de Maréotis (Alexandria 1908); id., Zur Ikonographie der Menas-Ampullen (Cairo 1910); see also J. Drescher, Apa Mena (Publications de la Société Copte: Textes et Documents, no. 1, Cairo 1946); J.B. Ward-Perkins, “The Shrine of St Menas in Maryût,” Papers of the British School at Rome 17, 1949, 26-71 (a witty account); Z. Kiss, “Les ampoules de St. Menas découvertes à Kôm el-Dikka (Alexandrie) en 1969”, Etudes et Travaux 7, 1973, 137-154; id., Les ampoules de Saint Ménas découvertes à Kôm el Dikka (1961-1981). Alexandrie V (Warsaw 1989); J.W. Hayes, Roman Pottery in the Royal Ontario Museum (Toronto 1976) pl. 32, 274a; C. Metzger, Les ampoules à eulogie du musée du Louvre (Notes et Documents des musées de France, 3, Paris 1981) who includes a wide range of such flasks, including some like ours. There is a good, well-annotated collection published by I. Arias Sánchez and F. Novoa Portela, “Ampullae: ampollas de peregrino en el Museo Arqueológico Nacional”, Boletín del Museo Arqueológico Nacional 17, 1999, 141-174, although none of them is provenanced. There is a well-preserved example illustrated in J.W. Hayes, Handbook of Mediterranean Roman Pottery (London 1997) 88, pl. 36a.

A valuable study which puts flasks of this kind in a broader historical context is M. Seif El-Din, Die reliefierten hellenistisch-römischen Pilgerflaschen: Untersuchungen zur Zweckbestimmung und Formgeschichte der ägyptischen Pilger- und Feldflaschen während des Hellenismus und der Kaiserzeit (Etudes alexandrines, 11, Cairo 2006). For a critical look at the general background of the phenomenon of figures such as Menas, see A. Papaconstantinou, “The Cult of Saints”, in: R.S. Bagnall (ed.), Egypt in the Byzantine World, 300-700 (Cambridge 2007) 350-367, with bibl. Her fuller study, Le culte des saints en Égypte, des Byzantins aux Abbassides, l’apport des inscriptions et des papyrus grecs et coptes (Paris 2001), is now essential reading for any serious work on the topic. There is also a good overview by J.-P.Sodini, “La terre des semelles: images pieuses ramenées par les pélerins des Lieux saints (Terre saint, Martyria d’Orient)”, Journal des Savants 2011, 77-140. (He deals with the Menas sanctuary and its visitors at pp. 86-92.) Also A. Papaconstantinou, Le culte des saints en Égypte des Byzantins aux Abbassides. L'apport des inscriptions et des papyrus grecs et coptes (Paris 2001).

Inasmuch as these flasks were carried away by pilgrims, they have a wide distribution. For two examples from Sicily, see A.M. Marchese, “Tre ampolle di S. Mena a Siracusa”, Quaderni dell’Istituto di Archeologia della Facoltà di Lettere e Filosofia della Università di Messina 7, 1992, 61-64, pll. 36-37. (The third mentioned is from Alexandria.) There is a Menas flask from Ugento in R. Jularo, “Su alcuni simboli vetero-cristiani e di tradizione vetero-cristina scoperti nel Salento”, in: Atti del II^o Congresso Nazionale di Archeologia Cristiana, 25-31 maggio 1969 (Rome 1971) 233-243, esp. 238-239, no. 24. For one in Sardinia, see Ceramiche. Storia, linguaggio e prospettive in Sardegna (2007) 78 fig. 134. Two examples in the State Historical Museum in Moscow were excavated in the Chersonesos and the Bosphoros (D.V. Zhuravlev, “Dve glinjanye ampuly s izobraženiem Svjatogo Miny iz Kryma”, Rossijskaja Archeologija 2012:3, 91-96); and Z. Kádár, “Die Menasampulle von Szombathely (Steinamanger, Ungarn) in Beziehung zu anderen frühchristlichen Pilgerandenken”, in: E. Dassmann and J. Engemann (eds), Akten des XII. Internationalen Kongresses für Christliche Archäologie, Bonn 22. - 28. September 1991 (Jahrbuch für Antike und Christentum Ergänzungsband, 20, Münster - Vatican 1995-1997) 886-888. Two were also found near Liverpool in England, and another at Runcorn in Cheshire: W. Anderson, “An Archaeology of Late Antique Pilgrim Flasks”, Anatolian Studies 54, 2004, 79-93; also his “Menas Flasks in the West. Pilgrimage and Trade at the End of Antiquity”, Ancient West and East 6, 2007, 221-243, esp. 235; and then S. Bangert, “Menas Ampullae and Saxon Britain: Coptic Objects in a Pagan Kingdom”, Minerva 17.4, 2006, 44-45, and the same author’s “Menas Ampullae: a Case Study of Long-Distance Contacts”, in: A. Harris (ed.), Incipient Globalization? Long-Distance Contacts in the Sixth Century (British Arch. Reports Internat. Series 1644, Oxford 2007) 27-33, listing six that seem to have been found in Britain.

On the phenomenon of pilgrimage at this period, see for example J. Stopford, “Some Approaches to the Archaeology of Christian Pilgrimage”, World Archaeology 26:1, 1994, 57-72. There is also a section on ‘The Material Culture of Roman and Early Christian Pilgrimage’ in HEROM. Journal on Hellenistic and Roman Material Culture (Leuven) 1, 2012; it includes a good and useful introduction (67-78) by Troels Myrup Kristensen who also provides a sound overview of recent scholarship on the subject.

On the shrine of Menas and its architecture, there is an overview of recent work by P. Grossmann, “The Pilgrimage Center of Abu Mina”, in: D. Frankfurter (ed.), Pilgrimage and Holy Space in Late Antique Egypt (Leiden 1998) 281-302. For a recent general overview of monastic communities at the period, see E. Wipszycka, Moines et communautés monastiques en Égypte (IVe-VIII siècles) (Journal of Juristic Papyrology, Suppl. 11, Warsaw 2009).

The flasks seem to have disappeared following the Arab conquest, towards the middle of the seventh century.

The Oxford Dictionary of Saints (ed. D.H. Farmer, Oxford 1992) 337, reports that after the Battle of El Alamein in 1943, the patriarch of Alexandria attributed the saving of Egypt to the intercession of Menas. The saint was also popular in Cyprus both in ancient times and more recently, and many taxi-drivers nowadays favour his protection.

Charles Ede Ltd (London), Antiquities 134 (1985) no. 6 (ill.).

D.L. Brooks Hedstrom, The Monastic Landscape of Late Antique Egypt (Cambridge 2017).

V. Drbal, Pilgerfahrt im spätantiken Nahen Osten (3./4. - 8. Jahrhundert): Paganes, christliches, jüdisches und islamisches Pilgerwesen. Fragen der Kontinuitäten (Heidelberg: Propylaeum 595, 2019).