Front Cover: In this fifth or sixth-century Coptic textile fragment (Inv. 10/60) in the Museum für byzantinische Kunst, part of the Bode-Museum, in Berlin, a standing figure grasps a bound and kneeling victim by a shock of hair and prepares to dispatch him with a short sword. The museum description glosses this as a “Hinrichtungsszene” (execution scene) and suggests that such scenes were common in late antique art and were understood as portrayals of “Heldentaten” (heroic deeds). Very similar depictions can indeed be found on Coptic textiles involving mythical characters from the heroic past, such as Hercules slaying the centaur Nessus (likewise holding him by the hair, cf. Hercules killing the queen of the Amazons, in this case holding her by the wrist, or killing the Nemean lion). Analogous hair-grasping execution iconography also is found in what may be a portrayal of gladiators. What is going on in the Berlin scene, however, probably has nothing to do with Centaurs, Amazons, or gladiators, but most likely is a depiction of a biblical event, Abraham’s aborted sacrifice of Isaac. A nearly exact reproduction of this scene is found on a ninth-century Coptic textile in the Musée Historique des Tissus in Lyon that specifically names Abraham and Isaac, leaving no doubt about whom the scene is intended to represent. From the perspective of late antique studies, the Berlin specimen is significant for its portrayal of contemporary secular execution practices. It depicts a carnifex or lictor, clad in a chlamys, the symbol of Roman imperial offi ce, using a short sword to perform a iugulatio, or throat slitting, on a bound prisoner. In order to have a more stable target, the carnifex grasps the prisoner’s hair, akin to the manner in which police in the modern day depress the heads of handcuff ed prisoners being loaded into police vehicles. In the late Roman period, grasping a bound individual by the hair also was the traditional iconographical means by which imperial authority over a person or people was manifested, as seen, for example, in an illustration for the “Chronograph of 354,” where the personification of Trier dompts a bound barbarian.
See Gerhart Egger, Koptische Textilien (Vienna, 1967), 19, no.39 (“Gladiatorengeschichte”, sixth or seventh century, Vienna); Marielle Martiniani-Reber, Tissus coptes (Geneva, 1991), 93 (Hercules and Nessus, Hercules and Amazons, sixth century, Athens); Marie-Hélène Rutschowscaya, Tissus coptes (Paris, 1990), 129 (Abraham and Isaac, ninth century, Lyon; similar in Baltimore and New York); Annemarie Stauffer, Textiles d’Egypte. Textilien aus Ägypten (Bern, 1991), 113 no.34 (Hercules and Nemean lion, fifth century, Fribourg); Josef Strzygowski, Die Calenderbilder des Chronographen vom Jahre 354 (Berlin, 1888), fi g. 7; also Dimiter Inkiow, Peter Kaempfe, Die Heldentaten des Herkules (Igel Records, 1997). RWM

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Ralph W. Mathisen
pp. 1-2
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/jla.2013.0003
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Anger and Adjudication: The Political Relevance of De ira dei
Kristina A. Meinking
pp. 84-107
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Hymns as Acclamations: The Case of Ambrose of Milan
Michael Stuart Williams
pp. 108-134
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Mortuary Workers, the Church, and the Funeral Trade in Late Antiquity
Sarah E. Bond
pp. 135-151
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Theoderic's Invincible Mustache
Jonathan J. Arnold
pp. 152-183
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