Images: Louvre (MNC 1926); Yale (Whiting Palestinian Collection, 1912.311); British Museum (EA 69839); Staatliche Museen zu Berlin (nr. 6004)
Clavis number: ECMA 143
Other descriptors: none
Category: ampullae
Related literature: Acts of Paul and Thecla
Featured characters and locations: Menas, Thecla.
1. DESCRIPTION
Material: red terracotta
Size: 10.5 to 17.5 cm diam.
Image: woman, stripped to the waste, with a long skirt; her hands tied behind her back and a bear and lion at her feet. The reverse side has a depiction of St. Menas in his normal fashion (dressed in short tunic, with two camels at his feet).
Inscription: Louvre MNC 1926 reads: ΕΥΛΟΓΙΑ ΤΟΥ ΑΓΙΟΥ ΜΗΝΑ ΑΜΗ[Ν] (“Blessing of St. Menas, amen”; in a circular band around the image), and Η ΑΓΙΑ ΘΕΚΛ[Α] (St. Thecla) in the image.
Date: ca. 480–560 CE
Provenance: There are sixteen published examples of Menas flasks bearing an image of Thecla. They were manufactured at the cult centre of St. Menas in Maerotis (modern Abu Mina) in Egypt and found in 1925 excavations of the site. Their original provenance, however, is debated as it is unclear why flasks depicting Menas at one of his shrines would have a depiction of Thecla. It is not impossible that there was a community of Thecla’s followers in Egypt who had a nearby shrine so flasks were made so pilgrims could visit both. This is improbable though as Thecla ministered and died in Seleucia which is across the Mediterranean in Asia Minor. The flasks were made for pilgrims to carry oil or water drawn from a large alabaster pot beneath the altar at the saint’s church
2. RELATION TO APOCRYPHAL LITERATURE
The Acts of Paul and Thecla include a depiction of the attempted martyrdom of Thecla:
Thecla was taken from the hand of Tryphaena and stripped, given an undergarment to wear, and cast into the stadium. Lions and Bears were cast in to attack her. And a fierce lioness ran up and lay at her feet. The crowd of women uttered a great cry. A bear ran up to attack her; but the lioness ran up, met the bear, and ripped him apart. (33; trans. Bart D. Ehrman, Lost Scriptures: Books that Did Not Make It into the New Testament [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003).
3. BIBLIOGRAPHY
Anderson, William. “An Archaeology of Late Antique Pilgrim Flasks.” Anatolian Studies 54 (2004): 79–93.
Cartlidge, David R. and J. Keith Elliott. Art and the Christian Apocrypha. London and New York: Routledge, 2001 (pp. 155)
Davis, Stephen J. The Cult of Saint Thecla: A Tradition of Women’s Piety in Late Antiquity. Oxford Early Christian Studies. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008 (pp. 114–20, 194–200).
Kiss, Zsolt. Les Ampoules de St. Ménas dècouvertes à Kôm el-Dikka, 1961–1981. Warsaw: PWN-Éditions scientifiques de Pologne, 1989.
Vikan, Gary. Early Byzantine Pilgrimage Art. 1982. Rev. ed. Dumbarton Oaks Byzantine Collections Publications 5. Washington, DC: Dunbarton Oaks, 2010 (pp. 33–34).
Weitzman, Kurt, ed. Age of Spirituality: Late Antique and Early Christian Art, Third to Seventh Century. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1979 (pp. 576–78).
4. ADDITIONAL RESOURCES
Entry created by James Sullivan, under the supervision of Tony Burke, York University, 6 April 2021.