PRIESTS CARRYING ‘OSIRIS-CANOPUS/HYDREIOS’: FROM ALEXANDRIA TO THE IMPERIAL ISEA OUTSIDE EGYPT PRELIMINARY CONSIDERATIONS

The Arcos Museum in Benevento holds a collection of about fifty stone artefacts related to a temple of Isis, erected by Marcus Rutilius Lupus on the occasion of Domitian's victorious return from the Dacian wars, in the eighth year of his reign. Among the finds of particular interest are two almost life-size statues of priests holding a canopic deity or Hydreios, dated by Müller (1969) to the Hadrianic period. Subsequent literature has followed Müller's chronology for these sculptures and has placed similar statues between the mid- 1st and the beginning of the 2nd century AD, without dwelling on the (sometimes) profound differences, especially stylistic, between the various specimens. In order to provide new insights on the subject, the article presents some concise observations on canopic deities, and then makes a comparative analysis of the five stone sculptures of ‘priests with Hydreios’ known so far. The comparison starts from a new type of ‘canopus’ newly identified by the author, who will also provide some external data on these statues. These include some information on the contexts of origin, which will be useful for proposing a new chronological scanning of the analysed specimens. On the basis of the observations presented, the author finally suggests that the appearance in Italy of statues of ‘priest with canopus’ occurred earlier than commonly accepted: moving their introduction from the Hadrianic to the Flavian age.