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Pilgrim Flask with Scenes of St. Menas (HUAM 2012.1.113)

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By Sean Gilsdorf

Courtesy of the 2 Byzantinists, Evan Freeman & Anne McClanan

An ampulla or pilgrim’s flask was designed to carry water, oil, or another substance that had been “blessed” by contact with the relics of a saint. This particular flask bears the image of a man flanked by two kneeling camels, a motif that identifies it as part of the cult of St. Menas. Menas was said to have been a Roman soldier of the late third century, who served in the army of the emperor Diocletian. After converting to Christianity, he was martyred for his faith. According to his later biography, the camel carrying his remains home from Phrygia in Asia Minor, arrived at Abu Mina in Egypt (south of Alexandria, near the mouth of the Nile River), and refused to go any farther. A spring arose at the spot, and the resulting oasis became the center of Menas’s cult. The site, first excavated in the early twentieth century by the German archaeologist Carl Maria Kaufmann, featured several churches, of which the most important was the martyrion, a structure located over the saint’s tomb. Other buildings in the complex included a baptistery, basilica, a monastery, two baths, and a hostel for visitors, likely with segregated quarters for men and women.

Although we have no direct evidence concerning its production, this flask probably was produced in Abu Mina itself in the first half of the seventh century. Remains of potters’ houses and the kilns they used are still present at the site, and archaeologists have found other ceramic items there, including dolls and tablewares. Across medieval Europe, the center of a saint’s cult was normally controlled by local church figures, such as a bishop or the canons associated with a church or cathedral. In a similar way, it is likely that officials associated with the complex at Abu Mina issued licenses to the potters who made the flasks. Pilgrims who came to worship at St. Menas’s shrine would purchase the flasks and carry them home. They may have visited cisterns at the site to fill their flasks with water made holy from the saint’s presence, or they could have purchased flasks already filled with blessed water, which was thought to have curative or apotropaic powers. The flask would have been sealed with a cork or a stopper, and it is likely that a cord was attached to the two handles so that the flask could be worn around the neck.

The cult of St. Menas spread rapidly in the fifth and sixth centuries, before Persian and Arab invasions in the seventh century led to the near destruction of the monastery and the subsequent decline of Menas’s influence. As archaeologist William Anderson has noted, flasks like this one are among the most numerous surviving late antique pilgrimage artifacts, and their dissemination closely parallels the trade movement of other Mediterranean goods, including ceramics and amphorae. Hundreds of Menas ampullae have been found all over Europe and the former Byzantine lands, from Nubia in the south to Britain in the north, and the latter finds suggest that pilgrims from late antique and early medieval England and Wales may have visited Menas’s shrine.

Suggested Reading:
Primary Sources
Drescher, James, ed. and trans. Apa Mena: A Selection of Coptic Texts Relating to St. Menas. Cairo: Institut français d’archéologie orientale, 1946; 100–104 (a Coptic account of St. Menas’s martyrdom); 126–49 (John of Alexandria’s Encomium for St. Menas, written in the seventh or eighth century CE).

Pilgrim Flask with Scenes of St. Menas (HUAM 2012.1.113)

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