Guess what, everyone?! We have a new exhibition going up right now: Ancient Color. Co-curated by my conservation compatriot Carrie Roberts, it features one her favorite Egyptian gods. Yes, you guessed it, HARPOCRATES RETURNS!
If you read this blog series with any regularity you will know that Carrie has a thing for Harpocrates. And it's not because he's really, really good-looking. Although when you know a little bit about him, you'd think he would be. Son of Isis (who we all know is gorgeous) and Horus (not bad if you're into birds), he symbolizes the newborn sun (nice, right?). He also has magical healing and protective powers, exerted especially on behalf of women and children. This all sounds pretty great, and yet if you wanted a figurine of this god for your house (who wouldn't?), it would look like this:
Painted terracotta figurine of Harpocrates. Egypt, 2nd century CE. Height 21.3 cm. KM 6947.
Yes, obviously this has seen better days. But imagine it with all the paint still on it! It would be very colorful, but would you really want to look at it every day? I know I wouldn't, but figurines like this were very popular in Roman Egypt.
Carrie likes this figurine because she is crazy for ancient paint. But I'm not going to tell you about the traces of paint on this little guy, because that would spoil your Ancient Color exhibition experience.
I like this figurine for a different reason: it makes me contemplate two different but equally intriguing possibilities. One: that my decorative taste is very different from that of the typical Roman Egyptian. Would I have hated their interior decorating schemes? I feel like I would have, but I like to imagine what they'd have looked like, all the same. Two: that figurines like this — which were mass-produced by pressing clay into molds, firing the figurines, and then slapping on some paint (I have never seen one of these that was carefully painted) — were meaningful regardless of how they looked. The magical powers of this figurine are not dependent on beauty, in other words. Harpocrates can be messily made and slapdashily painted, and still heal your snake bites. He doesn't have to look good to take care of business.
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Learn more about this figurine by visiting the Kelsey's new exhibition Ancient Color, here in Ann Arbor beginning February 8, or anytime online.
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