Budapest Régiségei 34. (2001)

STUDIEN = TANULMÁNYOK - Nagy Mihály: A female statue in the Hungarian National Museum 195-199

iconography is closely related to that of Hygieia. In this regard we may refer to two sandstone statues from Germany,

18 and two reliefs from Aquincum.

19 One of the statues, dated to the middle of the second century AD, was unearthed at the pilgrimage sanctuary of Apollo and Sirona in Hochscheid.

20 The goddess holds a cup with three eggs in her left hand, while a serpent is coiled round her right hand. The other, fragmentary statue from Mainz, shows also Sirona, with a serpent around her left hand, and holding a patera in her left hand.

21 The two reliefs from Aquincum show Aesculapius and Hygieia. One of them, dated to the beginning of the 3

rd century AD represents the goddess in a dress similar to that of our torso, holding the snake in her right hand, and a small bowl filled with eggs in her left. Aesculapius rests his right hand on his club, around which another serpent is coiled.

22 We have a fragmentary stone monument from Intercisa, which shows a schematic tree with a serpent coiled around its trunk. The fragment is quite large sized: 105 cm high and 42 cm wide at the bottom of the base. It was found probably in secondary position together with other spolia on the territory of a Late Roman cemetery. According to certain former assumptions, this stone may have belonged to a Mithraic monument, or perhaps to a large sized cultic relief of Aesculapius and Hygieia.

23 We cannot decide with surety about the identity of the goddess represented in our torso, but we may suppose that she was Hygieia or Sirona, and she formed a pair either with Aesculapius or with Apollo Grannus. We have evidences for both of these pairs from the northern part of the Pannonian limes.

24 Aesculapius or Apollo Grannus and Hygieia were extremely popular in Brigetio. Two altars dedicated to Aesculapius and Hygieia are recorded from Szőny (Brigetio), one of them found west from the legionary fortress.

25 Two stone tablets, one of which is dated to 5th June or November 217 A.D. also from Brigetio, erected by a certain Q. Ulpius Felix, augustalis municipii Brigetionensium, mentions the construction of buildings connected with Apollo Grannus and Hygieia.

26 Two other tablets bear the name of Q. Ulpius Felix from Brigetio (dated to 220 AD)

27 and from nearby Esztergom (dated to 205 AD)

28 The latter is a building inscription again, mentioning 1. Inventory number: 62.111.1. The statue now stands at the entrance of the new Lapidarium (no: 204). This article has been prepared in the framework of a project sponsored by the National Scientific Research Fund (Reg. no. T 022184). 2. HEKLER 1909. 402^05. 3. BREIN 1992A. 49-50. 4. BREIN 1992B. 115-117. 5. POCHMARSKI 1992. 184-185. 6. HEKLER 1909. 404. 7. ERDÉLYI 1954. 147, 174 and 186, no 229; ERDÉLYI 1974. 98-103. See mainly the statues of Figs. 140 and 141 dated to the 2

nd and 3

rd centuries A.D. the construction of the temple of Apollo and Hygieia. From Brigetio we know a statuette of Aesculapius made of fine Parian marble, and a local copy of the same, moreover another marble fragmentary statue.

29 Our statue may have stood in a shrine, located somewhere in the northern part of the province. As it was already mentioned, the left hand of the statue is totally missing, and on its place we can see now a hole connected with a vertical channel. These were not made secondarily

30 and the statue was designed in a way, to give enough space for the channel. For this reason, the end of the himation, hanging down from the left shoulder was thickened, in order to conceal the channel. At the moment we cannot say with surety what function this hole and channel originally had. We may exclude the possibility, that a pipe carrying water was inserted here, because, in case a stone monument is used as part of a fountain, the water nyrnphs or deities depicted there, are usually reclining on an amphora, like e.g. on monuments from Aquincum,

31 or Tác.

32 Another possible solution of this question is that the cavity was used for oracle practices, in other words, to manipulate the worshippers belonging to the lower social layers. In Roman times oracles could be associated with almost all cults.

33 From the Antiquity we have several reports of miraculous statues and statuettes which sometimes moved.

34 The credulousness was characteristic not only to the lower social layers, wonders were acknowledged in official circles as well: the best illustration of this is the Rain Miracle during one of the campaigns of Emperor Marcus Aurelius during the Marcomannic Wars.

35 The statue may have been made in the north-eastern part of Pannónia, in a local workshop, located most probably somewhere along the limes. It can be dated to the period, when the inscriptions mentioning Aesculapius and Hygieia or Apollo Grannus and Sirona were made, that is the first three decades of the 3

rd century AD. We know only one cult statue of similar quality from this region: that of Nemesis-Nike, dated to the Severan period, from the governor's palace in Aquincum.

36 This similarity also makes such a dating probable. 8. Hungarian National Museum inv. no.: 97.1913. Now in the new Lapidarium, no.: 102.; ERDÉLYI 1954. 176 and 257 no. 189.; ERDÉLYI 1974. 134-135. Fig. 178. 9. See ERDÉLYI 1974. 134-135. 10. ERDÉLYI 1954. 147, 172, 177-178, 180-181 no. 192. 11. ERDÉLYI 1954. 145-146 and 180 no. 195. 12. TOYNBEE 1977. 343-412. 13. TOYNBEE 1977. 406. 14. TOYNBEE 1977. 407. 15. TOYNBEE 1977. 375-377. 16. TOYNBEE 1977. 376, no. VII.: "a hand holding apples". 17. E. g. CROISSANT no. 78. NOTES 196