The Antinoopolitan Lovers
(around 130 - 140) Egypt
Funerary portrait found at Antinoopolis, probably by Albert Jean Gayet, who unerthed numerous painted portraits in the area from 1896 to 1911, now in the Egyptian Museum of Cairo. It has been exhibited in the "Exposition Universelle" of 1900 in Paris, it is a double portrait, with a diameter of 61 cm, and dated between 130-140 AD.
Referred to as the Tondo of the Brothers, but some scholars now think that the two men depicted were lovers. But of even more significance are the small images of Greco-Egyptian gods placed above their shoulders. The older man is guarded by Hermanubis, a god of the underworld; the younger is watched over by a deity at first identified as Harpocrates, but now believed to be Osiris Antinous, the patron god of Antinoopolis. This would make the Tondo the only painting of Antinous to have survived, and the only image of two probable members of his cult, therefore lovers.
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