Panel with Painted Image of Serapis

A.D. 100–200

Medium

Tempera on wood

Dimensions

39.1 × 19.1 cm

Status

In Museum Collection

Collect24 Art ID

C24-128435

Romano-Egyptian painted panel of the Greco-Egyptian divinity Serapis in tempera (animal glue) pigment on a fig wood panel. This panel pairs with the Isis panel ([74.AP.22](https://www.getty.edu/art/collection/objects/7146/), with which it is currently displayed) having been cut from the same piece of wood and painted by the same hand. Together with that panel, it originally served as the left door (to Isis’s right) of a small devotional shrine, the sides and back of which are missing. The panel’s good surface condition indicates it must have been protected by its closed position facing inward. It has been Carbon 14 dated to the first century BC-AD, but its stylistic date of around 180-200 indicates that a secondary use may be possible for the original wooden panel at the time it was fabricated into two doors. Serapis was a Greco-Egyptian god, having been introduced into Egypt during the early Ptolemaic period (323-30 BC). When united with Isis, as the two are here, the divine couple reflected the religious needs of a combined Greek and Egyptian culture that continued into Roman Egypt (AD 30-330). Their worship would have been centered at the Serapeum in Alexandria, long the princ…