Home -> Articoli -> Villa Adriana

The Canopus

by Eugenia Salza Prina Ricotti

Consequence of the discovery of Antinous' tomb on the belief that the Canopus was a temple.

Antinous and the Canopus

As an unexpected development the discovery of Antinous Tomb done by the author of this article and the the excavations of Dr. Mari have changed the ideas that many scholars had about the Canopus. Up to then, many of them thought that this Nymphaeum was a temple and a sacrary. Several papers had been written on this purpose. As a matter of fact it is evident that, up to the middle of the last century and Aurigemma’s excavations, these opinions could have been excused: this section of Villa Adriana, still partially covered by earth, had not been well investigated, thus it was easy to think that the huge building at the end of the valley must have been a temple: a sacrary dedicated to Canopus, Maenelaus helmsman who died there.
Then at the beginning of the XIX cent. people noticed that such a god had never existed, thus they shifted to Serapis and in the XX cent. this idea was firmly rooted in the minds. Even when, in 1956, Aurigemma’s excavations cleared that this monumental building was only a large triclinium with adjoining individual latrinae, and when in his excavations he found only Roman copies of Greek statues, many scholars did not abandon the idea of an Egyptian temple, and they went on calling it Serapaeum: due to their theories the big nymphaeum was not only a temple, but all its area was considered as Villa Adriana’s Egyptian landmark. As a consequence it is easy to understand how the Canopus valley could have been taken as the most apt site to host Antinous’ tomb and this must have also been the reason that pushed Prof. Kähler to try to find it here. After all, as Grenier, the well famed Egyptologist, affirmed, the Canopus was the place which, after Antinous death, was consecrated as a shrine to him, and if this was his idea, why not believe him and think that also his tomb must be on this holy soil?
In the meanwhile Grenier reconstructed his idea of the Canopus setting up as a temple collecting in it all the Egyptian sculptures and all the Antinous statues that had been found in any place of Villa Adriana’s extensive area and in particular he took all the ones which came from Antinous tomb included the beautiful Antinous-Osiris which, on the XVIII cent, as it was recorded and documented, had been discovered stored in a Cento Camerelle room, and the gigantic Isis head found by Ligorio in the Palestra, 1 km and 30 m below from the Canopus.
Probably, as it had always been said that many Egyptian statues had been found by the Jesuits digging trenches to implant vineyards, and ignoring the extension of their property which up to this moment had never been investigated, they were sure that it consisted only of the Canopus and Roccabruna. Thus, for them, everything Egyptian must have been found there.
Now recent researches made by Mari in the archives reconstructed the cadastral map of the place in he XVIII cent. and it came out that the Jesuits property covered all the area starting from the Cento Camerelle up to the Canopus.
Due to this extension it was true that the Jesuits had found many Egyptian statues in their property, but it was also a fact that only some of these had been excavated in the Canopus’ area. Moreover they had not even been found in the valley or in what had been considered a temple, and this was proved by Piranesi map. It would have been sufficient to look at it to discover that this architect had marked very clearly the sites where the Canopus’ sculptures had been excavated: it is easy to see that they had been found in the gardens set up high on the hills flanking its valley, and not around the mythic Serapaeum canal or in the Nymphaeum. More than this, not one of them had anything to do with Antinous. On the canal’s banks the only sculpture vaguely connected with Egypt was the crocodile: only a fountain statue: not enough to transform the canal and the exedra in an Egyptian landmark.
Now both Piranesi plan, giving us where the Canopus’ statues were found, and the numerous and precise data about the sculptures that emerged from Antinous’ tomb enable us to clear the situation. Thus we know that the statues in the Vatican Museums emerged from the soils in the place where the tomb of Antinous was. Also this could have been known if only someone had studied the ancient documents, because, in the writings of a XVII cent. man, Bartoli, it was reported that ten statues were found in the Antinous tomb’ area just in front of the Cento Camerelle
“incontro alle cento camerelle”
and it was in the same place that a century later ten more egyprtian statues of priests, gods and goddesses were found.
The outcome of all this new developments was this: no more Canopus’ temple; no more Serapaeum; no more fantastic reconstructions collecting in the Canopus all the Egyptian statues excavated in Villa Adriana’s wherever they had been found. I can’t deny that this must have been quite a blow for many people, but as someone said after I, with a lecture delivered to the Pontificia Accademia Romana di Archeologia, gave the announcement of the tomb discovery, everything that had been written about the Canopus had to be revised. Now what I had already proclaimed in many of my papers about the real function of this nymphaeum has been accepted. It was not a temple, also because a temple with latrines does not exist, but a beautiful tricliniary area for a banquet with many guests, for one of these receptions that, from time to time, emperors used to offer to their fellows citizens. Nothing to do with Antinous, nothing to do with tombs.

Studies on the argument
E. SALZA PRINA RICOTTI Villa Adriana: il sogno di un imperatore, L’Erma di Bretschneider, Rome, 2001.
E. SALZA PRINA RICOTTI - The Importance of Water in Roman Garden Triclinia in Ancient Roman Villa Gardens (Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection), 1987, pp. 137-169, figg. 2-7, figg; 35-37.
E. SALZA PRINA RICOTTI, Adriano: architettura del verde e dell’acqua in Horti Romani, Rome , 1995, pp. 363-399.
E. SALZA PRINA RICOTTI, La ricerca della tomba di Antinoo a Villa Adriana in RPAA, vol. LXXV 2002-2003, pp. 113-144, figg. 1-19
E. SALZA PRINA RICOTTI, Antinoo o il potere della bellezza in Archeo Luglio 2003, pp. 52-65.