grandegyptianmuseum: Antinous: Boy Made God Antinous was a boy favourite of the Roman emperor Hadria
grandegyptianmuseum: Antinous: Boy Made God Antinous was a boy favourite of the Roman emperor Hadrian (AD 117-138). He was born in the Roman province of Bithynia (NW Turkey) in the 110s and was traveling with the imperial entourage in Egypt when he drowned tragically in the Nile in AD 130. A major new town, Antinopolis or Antinous City was named after him, at a bend in the river where he dead. He was most likely buried there. The sad fate and sudden fame of the beautiful boy remembered across the empire. The exhibition centres on one of his most important surviving portraits, an inscribed bust from Syria discovered in 1879. It explores the archaeology of Anitinous’s cult, his unforgettable portraits, and how a boy with no official standing become a god. The image and notoriety of Antinous reach from antiquity into modern world. This statue of Osiris-Antinous from an exhibition in the Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford. Photo via: Following Hadrian/Twitter -- source link