Intaglio with the portrait of Silenus from Galilee and the composition of the “inverted/summary faces” in the Greco-Roman period

Bible Lands Museum; Fig. 1, a-c), namely the composition with the “inverted/sum-mary faces”. This type of composition is well known and beyond doubt in some modern artworks2, but it might not seem so evident in the Persian-Hellenistic intaglio with Silenus under discussion. To prove its permissibility, a comprehensive analysis of the composition was applied with a wide row of parallels from other kinds of Greco-Roman art, mainly from the realm of small plastics but also from the realm of ceramic and glass artifacts3.

Discussion of the decorative and iconographic features. Hybrid creatures on coins and glyptic artifacts combined with the portrait of Silenus

In contrast with the rare frontal portraits, the whole figure of Silenus was often depicted in the scenes with satyrs, maenads, and mythological animals or solely with various objects (vases, trees, etc.). More intriguing is that his well-recognizable profile or three-quarters portrait was commonly used in so-called janiform or grylloi4 (or baskania5) compositions beginning from the Archaic period and continuing into the Roman time when paganism reached its peak just before the gradual decline. The face of Silenus was presented as an integral part of the fantastic hybrid creatures, which mainly became widespread during the Roman period and was applied in different kinds of arts, including sculpture, ceramics, glass vessels, and glyptic artifacts.

One of the earliest janiform portraits comes from the Archaic rock crystal scar-aboid and cornelian scarab, on which the heads of satyr and maenad are con-joined6. H. Gitler and O. Tal have outlined a separate group of Archaic coins from Philistia with “oriental heads”, including hybrid and janiform portraits7. The Roman intaglio, with a combination of two heads of Silenus and Pan, is exhibited in the Museum of Israel.8

Grylloi are more inventive in their compositions and iconographical peculiarities than janiforms. Usually, the fantastic creatures of such gems belong to the Dionysian world and include Dionysus/Bacchus, Pan, Sileni, satyrs, masks, etc.9 By a common opinion, they have ancient near-eastern roots: “...these bizarre combinations and strange creatures have their origins in the East as early as the second millennium BC and were handed down or spontaneously recreated in Greek vase painting or Achaemenid, Greek, and Phoenician glyptics”10. There are several articles where these phenomenological compositions are collected and analyzed from different standpoints11. In Israel, grylloi compositions are very rare. One intaglio gem from Aelia Capitolina might be mentioned.12 Its composition was formed by two portraits of Sileni, conjoined to each other back-to-back in a janiform manner, and two satyr’s masks, one above the other. The other gryllos gem was found in Caesarea (or Sdot Yam). It is currently presented in the Sdot Yam Museum13. The composite image consists of two conjoining profiles: one of the youth (turned rightwards) and two others of Sileni (turned leftwards) so that both of them form a jani-form face. The third profile, depicting Silenus, was carved in the upper part. The youth might be interpreted as Dionysus or, more probably, as an actor, so two other faces might be defined as a helmet and a mask(-s) taken off after the play.

M. Henig and M. Whiting also published a group of Hellenistic and Roman gryl-loi gems from Gadara14. Their decorative compositions included the profile portrait of Silenus (sometimes attributed as satyr or Pan) conjoined with the rooster, horse, eagle, boar, ram, elephant, griffin, Eros, Pan, maenad, dolphin, hippocampus, etc. Compositions of several gems are mostly notable: red jasper intaglio of four heads (two mirror-like, two inverted15) and sard gem of three satyrs faces conjoined with elephant's head16.

The roots of such fantastic transformations lie in Silenus's dualistic cultic nature. He was frequently depicted as an intoxicated and sexually polymorphic creature in an altered state of consciousness17. At the same time, he was conceived as an inspired prophet who could see the past and predict the future18.

“Inverted”, “summary faces”, and “elusive motifs”

All these observations on Silenus's hybrid and transformative nature make the theory of the other “inverted face”, defined on an intaglio glass gem if turned upside down at 180˚, quite possible (Fig. 1, c). The duplicate of the gem from the Borowski collection19 bears the same compositional features of the inverted faces, but it was not noticed or intentionally left without a detailed discussion by the author of the catalog. By its physiognomic features, the “inverted face” presents an evil, scowling, and aggressive portrait, which opposes the kind and philosophic Silenus. The creature has thick, combed, striated hair-cut, small angry eyes, a sharp nose, and an old-age malevolent smile with clenched lips as if the mouth was toothless. His mustaches are long and curly at the ends. There is a diamond stone or a third eye on his forehead. By the potential third eye, the portrait might be attributed as Cyclop Po-lythemus, but with more probability, it is a satyr's mask.

The masks of satyrs were more prevalent among coins, gems, and glass intaglios than Silenus’s portraits. They might be engraved solely as frontal masks, as on the dozens of glass intaglii and stone gems from the British Museum and State Hermitage collections. Satyr’s mask iconography included different variations, for example, a satyr with horns20, or with punctured eyes and mouth21, or as a comic older man22. Also, the image of the satyr of the Graeco-Roman gem from Lod Montague's Collection (Vallentin 1863) is close iconographically. The rear bronze seal with the bearded man (depicted in three-quarters) with a striated haircut (Silenus?) was discovered in Khirbet Qeiyafa (dated to the Persian-Early Hellenistic period23).

Usually, the satyr's mask features were intentionally articulated and exaggerated to create an evil characteristic of the image. There is a series of gems and cameos where the satyr's mask is depicted near or conjoined with the face of Silenus, and they are primarily notable as their qualitatively opposite characters (evil and kind) are emphasized. A composite Roman cameo from the Ionides collection bears four portraits: two of them are masks of satyrs, and the other two – are bearded men resembling Sileni (Fig. 2, a24). Pairs of portraits located to each other in the antithetic manner (upside down). The horizontal border between the “kind” and “evil” sides is marked by the letters of the name of Euripides (in Greek Εὐριπίδης)25. The evil faces are located under the line, and the kind ones are above it.26 On Early Roman amber glass ring stone, two profile portraits are turned by their faces towards each other – one is a young satyr, and the other is an old satyr (Fig. 2, b; 2nd-1st centuries BCE27), evoking in memory the mythological transformation of the satyrs into Sileni, when they were becoming old. Two profile images of a horned satyr and bearded Silenus adjacent to each other by their back sides decorate the gem from the British Museum collection28. Two gems with a pair of combined tragic and comic masks are known from the museum collection in Aquileia29. Some coins were adorned with two profile portraits of two youths adjacent to each other; one face was straight, and the other inverted. One such coin from the Milesian colony Istros (western shore of the Black Sea) was published by D. Sear, who dated it to the Classical period (Fig. 3, a; 400-350 BCE30). The idea of the “inverted image” of Silenus and the satyr's mask could have emerged and developed from such types of compositions.

To strengthen the theory of iconography with the “inverted face”, a row of similar artistic ideas is mentioned. On a number of the Philistian Persian/Hellenistic coins, a monster-like creature (bes, or pazuzu) was depicted. It was characterized as a “summary face”: two faces, one turned upside down, with a common pair of eyes (Fig. 3, b31). The faces are mirror-like and symmetrical. The identical idea was also spread among the gems of the Cypriot group of the Archaic period (Fig. 3, c32). These hybrid creatures had a common pair of eyes and two separate faces, turned downwards and upwards with a general vertical axis. J. Boardman termed them “summary faces”. Also important to mention that Gitler and Tal have highlighted the particular aspects of the coins of the Persian period from Philistia, Lesbos, Myt-ilene, and Samaria, which they defined as “elusive motifs” and optical illusions33. The authors have determined three main types and noted, that “the common feature in these three coin-types is their iconographical ambiguity <...> Optical trickery is not confined to the coinage of Philistia but is also evident from earlier and from contemporary Greek coinage, notably in Lesbian and Mytilenian issues dated to the late sixth to the early fifth centuries BC”34. On these coins, human heads in profile or en-face are conjoining with the animals' faces or bodies in such a manner that they form other facing heads of any kind. The rows of examples from the Archaic period till the Roman time show these “inverted” or “summary faces” as relevant, stable, and even comparatively popular iconographic ideas that have evolved over the centuries.

The following examples are primarily efficient and will be outlined to prove the relevancy of the two “inverted faces” on the intaglio glass gem under discussion. A red glass paste gem from the collection of the British Museum, dated to the Roman period, was decorated with two “inverted faces”35 (Fig. 4, a). Those are a young man with a vertically raised haircut (young Dionysus?) and a bearded Silenus. The youth’s “standing on end” hair transformed into Silenus’s swollen beard. In this particular sample, there are no doubts that the master initially meant to depict two faces and that the “inverted” effect could not be occasional. Strangely, this feature was not outlined in the museum description. The combination of young Dionysus and old Silenus is logical and explainable if one remembers that Silenus was the foster father of a young Dionysus. On the other gem, of less importance, the bearded face of Silenus turned into a vessel with the grapes in the inverted position (this feature was noted in the museum description of the artifact; Fig. 4, b)36. The same idea seems to be meant by the artist of the gem from the collection of the State Hermitage, where the satyr with three horns, a prominent nose, and two large ears might be transformed into kantharos with loop handles on the sides leaning on the legs in an inverted position37.

Some other outstanding samples are known from the Roman period's glass and ceramic realm. The combination of two faces in their compositions is obvious and purposely emphasized.

The unique small Early Roman glass flask (1st century CE) is currently presented at the permanent exhibition at the Eretz Israel Museum in Tel Aviv38 (Fig. 5). According to the museum description, the mold-blown greenish (with sandy handle) flask belongs to the Syro-Palestinian region, apparently to Sydon. The lenticular body of the flask is framed by the beaded circles from both facets, alluding to the fact that the composition could be borrowed from the coinage world. From one facet, in the correct position of the flask, the image of the older bearded bald man is visible (Fig. 5, a), while in the inverted position, the face (on the same facet) converts into the youngster with a dense, thick hairstyle (Fig. 5, b). On the opposite facet, the same portrait is depicted, but it is turned upside down so that in the correct position, the youngster's image is traceable (Fig. 5, c). In contrast, in the inverted position, it turns into the older bearded man (Fig. 5, d). This incredible fun-gibility of the portraits is enhanced by the transparency of the glass material, which causes the overlapping and gradual convergence of the portraits into each other. The circle of transformations of a youngster into an older man and vice versa becomes endless and infinitive, reminding us of the doctrine of reincarnation (παλιγγενεσία), of which the earliest representatives were Pythagoras and the Or-phics39. The concept implied not only the idea of the rebirth of the soul but also spiritual reincarnation after the purification during the lifetime, and apparently, in such a magic flask, an exceptional ritual liquid might be kept. The pairs of eyes and ears are common, while the other facial features are individual; the noses attached by nasal bridges form a sand-clock shape. The curators noticed these “inverted faces”, and the flask is being exhibited with the mirror under it to see both of them. The iconography is close to the red glass paste gem from the British Museum described above (Fig. 4, a).

The outstanding Roman beaker from the Budapest History Museum40 bears two inverted faces of the Roman soldiers or men with African features (?) featuring a common pair of eyes but separate broad noses and plump mouths, noticeable in upright and inverted positions (Fig. 6). The faces' physiognomic features are identical as if they are reflections in the mirror of the same person. The pairs of eyes and ears are common, while the mouths, beards, necks, and noses attached by nasal bridges are duplicated. The neck of the face in one position is the rim of the pot, while on the opposite neck is the bottom.

The mythological creature bes was also molded on some Persian-Hellenistic and Roman jars. In many cases, the portraits also seem to have the potential for the elusive effect of the “summary faces”, though it is not as evident and intentional as in the cases described above. For example, on one of such jars from the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, the beard of the bes in the correct position transforms into the hem-hem crown if the vessel is turned upside down41.

Supposedly, the face of apathetic Silenus is combined with Negroid face in the same inverted iconographical manner on the Late Hellenistic-Early Roman headlamp found in Dor42. Such headlamps with the heads of satyrs, Silenus, and men with African features were excavated on Delos and in Athens. In most cases, the “summary/inverted faces” on the artifacts might be noticed only when particularly highlighted. Once they are shot or drawn, the illusive effect cannot be revealed anymore, so the row of the samples might be more considerable if only considered.

Conclusions

The glass intaglio with Silenus's portrait under discussion was decorated with two images: the frontal portraits of Silenus and Cyclop Polythemus/satyr's mask. The faces are combined in an “inverted” manner: it means that they share the same physiognomic details but interpret them alternatively. Compared to the predecessors and heirs of this iconography, the present glass intaglio is exclusively virtuously handled; the playful ambiguity of the images is seamless and flawless. There are no spare details in the ambivalent portraits; all of them are engaged in both standpoints, so it is challenging to decide which of the two emerging images predominates. The playful combination of the heads and their ambiguity are revealed only when the gem is moved upside down or around the hand, as on the majority of the grylloi and janiforms43. Such an “inverted” composition might be classified as one of the types of grylloi gems.

It is possible to assume that a ring with the transformative images of Silenus and a satyr's mask could be worn during a specific cultic ritual. Multiple coeval artifacts decorated with pictures of the Dionysiac creatures, such as pottery vessels and plates, terracotta plaques, and golden necklaces, apparently participated in the rural and city Dionysiac festivals.

The gem with such ambivalent images could also be interpreted as a charm that attracts luck and, at the same time, as an apotropaic amulet that diverts and deflects an Evil Eye. V. Dasen gave the following definition of this phenomenon: “Belief in the Evil Eye assigned a destructive power to the gaze due to envy or jealousy, called in Greek phthonos or baskania, in Latin fascinum, that arises from the view of happiness, beauty and prosperity”44. The emergence of the belief is attested by the protective image of eyes in ancient Egypt45, Mesopotamia46, and Greece47. The belief developed in Hellenistic and Roman times48 and preserved its power and influence until Late Antique Judaism49, Byzantine Christianity50, and actually even until nowadays in the form of superstition. By the opinion of C. Weiss, “…the power of repulsing the evil eye and attracting the good is the tertium comparison” of grylloi gems51.