The Woman Who Gave Her Breast For Hire: Notes on a Christian Wall-Painting from Tebtunis

• Autores: Michael W. Zellmann-Rohrer
• Localización: Journal of egyptian archaeology, ISSN 0307-5133, Vol. 105, Nº. 2, 2019, págs. 297-303
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • This article gives a new reading and interpretation of a Coptic legend accompanying a wall-painting in a medieval church at Tebtunis, first published by C. C. Walters in this journal in 1989. Among depictions of the punishment of various sinners, the figure of a woman whose breasts are attacked by snakes can be connected with a belief in the sinfulness of wet-nursing, which is paralleled in Byzantine, Zoroastrian, and Mandaean contexts. Such scruples, foreign to Egypt in earlier times, may be owed to Gnosticism.