Modius (headdress)

Serapis wearing the modius

The modius is a type of flat-topped cylindrical headdress or crown found in ancient Egyptian art and art of the Greco-Roman world. The name was given by modern scholars based on its resemblance to the basket used as a Roman unit of dry measure.^[1]

The modius is worn by certain deities, including Mut,^[2] Eleusinian deities and their Roman counterparts, the Ephesian Artemis and certain other forms of the goddess,^[3] Hecate, and Serapis.^[4] On some deities it represents fruitfulness.^[5]

A tall modius is part of the complex headdress used for portraits of Egyptian queens, ornamented variously with symbols, vegetative motifs, and the uraeus.^[6] It was also the distinctive headdress of Palmyrene priests.^[7]

References

^ Judith Lynn Sebesta and Larissa Bonfante, The World of Roman Costume (University of Wisconsin Press, 2001), p. 245; Irene Bald Romano, Classical Sculpture: Catalogue of the Cypriot, Greek, And Roman Stone Sculpture in the University Of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology (University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology, 2006), p. 294.
^ Betsy M. Bryan, "A Newly Discovered Statue of a Queen from the Reign of Amenhotep III," in Servant of Mut: Studies in Honor of Richard A. Fazzini (Brill, 2007), p. 32.
^ Joseph Eddy Fontenrose, Didyma: Apollo's Oracle, Cult, and Companions pp. 131–132.
^ Brunilde Sismondo Ridgway, Hellenistic Sculpture: The Styles of ca. 331–200 B.C. (University of Wisconsin Press, 2001), p. 95.
^ Fontenrose, Didyma, p. 131.
^ Bryan, "A Newly Discovered Statue of a Queen," p 36ff.; Paul Edmund Stanwick, Portraits of the Ptolemies: Greek Kings As Egyptian Pharaohs (University of Texas Press, 2002), p. 35 et passim.
^ Romano, Classical Sculpture, p. 294; Lucinda Dirven, The Palmyrenes of Dura-Europos: A Study of Religious Interaction in Roman Syria (Brill, 1999), pp. 246–247 .

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Modius (headdress)