Alexamenos graffito

The Alexamenos graffito

The Alexamenos graffito (also known as the graffito blasfemo^[1]) is an inscription on a wall near the Palatine hill in Rome. It is generally thought to be the earliest known pictorial representation of the crucifixion of Jesus^[2]^[3]^[4]^[5]^[6].

Content

Outline of the drawing

The image depicts a man with the head of a donkey who appears to be attached to a cross. To the left is a young man raising one hand in a gesture suggesting pagan worship^[7]^[8].

Beneath the cross there is a caption written in crude Greek: Αλεξαμενος ϲεβετε θεον, "Alexamenos worships [his] God". ϲεβετε appears to be a misspelling of ϲεβεται = "worships" ^[9]^[10]^[11].

Date

The general consensus is that the graffito dates from some time in the third century^[12]^[13]^[14], although dates as early as AD 85 have been suggested^[15].

Discovery and location

The graffito was discovered in 1857, when a building called the domus Gelotiana was unearthed on the Palatine Hill. The emperor Caligula had acquired the house for the imperial palace, which after Caligula died became used as a Paedagogium or boarding-school for the imperial page boys. Later the street on which the house sat was walled off to give support to extensions to the buildings above, and it thus remained sealed for centuries. ^[16]^[17]. The graffito is today housed in the Palatine antiquarium in Rome. ^[18]

Interpretation

The inscription is accepted by the vast majority of scholars to be a mocking depiction of a Christian. Both the portrayal of Jesus as having an ass's head and the depiction of him being crucified would have been considered insulting by contemporary Roman society. Crucifixion continued to be used as an execution method for the worst criminals until its abolition by the emperor Constantine in the fourth century, and the impact of seeing a figure on a cross could be compared with the impact today of portraying a man with a hangman's noose around his neck, or seated in an electric chair.^[19]

The accusation that Christians practised onolatry (worship of asses) seems to have been common at the time. Tertullian, writing in the late second or early third century, reports that Christians along with Jews were accused of worshipping a deity with the head of an ass. He also mentions an apostate Jew who carried around Carthage a caricature of a Christian with ass's ears and hooves, labeled Deus Christianorum Onocoetes ("the God of the Christians begotten of an ass") ^[20].

Others have suggested that the graffito depicts worship of the Egyptian gods Anubis^[21] or Seth^[22] or that the young man is actually engaged in a gnostic ceremony involving a horse-headed figure and a tau cross (the "Y" shape at the top right of the inscription)^[23].

Significance

There is some controversy whether the veneration of the crucifix depicted in the graffito was actually practised by contemporary Christians, or whether it was another element, like the ass's head, added to the image to ridicule Christian beliefs. According to one argument, the alleged presence of a loincloth on the crucified figure, in contrast to usual Roman procedure in which the condemned was completely naked, proves that the artist must have based his illustration on an activity he had observed Alexamenos or others performing^[24]. Against this it has been argued that the cross was not actually used in worship until the fourth and fifth centuries^[25].

"Alexamenos fidelis"

In the next chamber, another inscription in a different hand reads in Latin Alexamenos fidelis, meaning "Alexamenos is faithful" or "Alexamenos the faithful"^[26]. This has been suggested as a riposte, by Alexamenos himself or a third party, to the mockery of the graffito^[27].

References

^ Harold Bayley, Archaic England,: An essay in deciphering prehistory from megalithic monuments, earthworks, customs, coins, place-names, and faerie superstitions, Chapman & Hall, 1920, p. 393
^ Walter Lowrie, Monuments of the Early Church, Macmillan, 1901, p. 238
^ Dom Dunstan Adams, What is Prayer?, Gracewing Publishing, 1999, p. 48
^ Father John J Pasquini, John J. Pasquini, True Christianity: The Catholic Way, iUniverse, 2003, p. 105
^ Augustus John Cuthbert Hare, Walks in Rome, Volume 1, Adamant Media Corporation, 2005, p. 201
^ Viladesau, Richard (1992). The Word in and Out of Season. Paulist Press, 46. ISBN 0809136260.
^ Thomas Wright, Frederick William Fairholt, A History of Caricature and Grotesque in Literature and Art, Chatto and Windus, 1875, p. 39
^ Augustus John Cuthbert Hare, Walks in Rome, Volume 1, Adamant Media Corporation, 2005, p. 201
^ David L. Balch, Carolyn Osiek, Early Christian Families in Context: An Interdisciplinary Dialogue, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, 2003, p. 103
^ B. Hudson MacLean, An introduction to Greek epigraphy of the Hellenistic and Roman periods from Alexander the Great down to the reign of Constantine, University of Michigan Press, 2002, p. 208
^ Rodney J. Decker, The Alexamenos Graffito
^ Michael Green, Evangelism in the Early Church, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, 2004, p. 244
^ David L. Balch, Carolyn Osiek, Early Christian Families in Context: An Interdisciplinary Dialogue, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, 2003, p. 103
^ B. Hudson MacLean, An introduction to Greek epigraphy of the Hellenistic and Roman periods from Alexander the Great down to the reign of Constantine, University of Michigan Press, 2002, p. 208
^ Hans Schwarz, Christology, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, 1998, p. 207
^ Augustus John Cuthbert Hare, Walks in Rome, Volume 1, Adamant Media Corporation, 2005, p. 201
^ Edward L Cutts, History of Early Christian Art, Kessinger Publishing, 2004, p. 200
^ Rodney J. Decker, The Alexamenos Graffito
^ N. T. Wright, What Saint Paul Really Said: Was Paul of Tarsus the Real Founder of Christianity?, 1997, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, p. 46
^ Tertullian, Ad nationes, 1:11, 1:14
^ B. Hudson MacLean, An introduction to Greek epigraphy of the Hellenistic and Roman periods from Alexander the Great down to the reign of Constantine, University of Michigan Press, 2002, p. 208
^ Hasset, Maurice (1913). "The Ass (in Caricature of Christian Beliefs and Practices)". Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company. Retrieved on 13 July 2007. . "Wünsch, however, conjectures that the caricature may have been intended to represent the god of a Gnostic sect which identified Christ with the Egyptian ass-headed god Typhon-Seth (Bréhier, Les origines du crucifix, 15 sqq.). But the reasons advanced in favour of this hypothesis are not convincing."
^ Harold Bayley, Archaic England,: An essay in deciphering prehistory from megalithic monuments, earthworks, customs, coins, place-names, and faerie superstitions, Chapman & Hall, 1920, p. 393-394
^ "Archæology of the Cross and Crucifix", Catholic Encyclopedia (1917)
^ David L. Balch, Carolyn Osiek, Early Christian Families in Context: An Interdisciplinary Dialogue, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, 2003, p. 103, footnote 83
^ Hassett, Maurice M. (1913). "Graffiti". Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company. Retrieved on 13 July 2007.
^ Michael Green, Evangelism in the Early Church, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, 2004, p. 244

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