Helena of Egypt

Helena was a painter, daughter of "Timon the Egyptian." She likely worked in the period after the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BCE. Helena painted a scene of Alexander defeating the Persian ruler, Darius III, at the Battle of Issus in Southern Asia Minor.[1][2]

Helena of Egypt
Battle of Issus Mosaic, Museo Archeologico Nazionale, Naples. A later Roman copy possibly inspired by Helena's earlier mosaic of the same battle scene.
Born
Egypt
Occupationpainter

The only surviving information on Helena of Egypt exists in the 9th-century CE encyclopedic work Bibliotheka by Photios I, a patriarch of Constantinople. Bibliotheka includes more than 270 of Photios' book reviews and summaries of classical works, many of which are now lost. These summaries include one of the (now lost) New History written in the 2nd century CE by Ptolemy Chennus.[3] Here, Helena's name, along with Helen of Troy, appears in a list of women named Helena, with her passage reading: "And Helen the female painter also belongs to the list. She was the daughter of Timon the Egyptian. She painted the Battle of Issus at the time when she was at the height of her powers. The picture was displayed in the Temple of Peace under Vespasian."[4]

According to other translations, she "painted the Battle of Issus about the time of its occurrence," which dates her to 4th century BC and supports the argument that she was a contemporary of Alexander the Great.[2] The attribution is disputed because of Helena's gender; no other mosaic work known to be by a woman has ever been uncovered from this period in history.[1][5]

A mosaic reproduction depicting "The Battle of Issus" was found in Pompeii.[2] This reproduction was found as a floor mosaic in Pompeii at the House of the Faun during nineteenth century excavations, and is now located in the Museo Archeologico Nazionale in Naples.[6] Although the identity of the artist for this extant mosaic is unknown, it is thought to be a copy of an earlier work by Philoxenos of Eretria, but could very well be a copy rather of Helena's own original.[7]

(Though Pliny the Elder mentions a few female painters of antiquity in his 1st century CE Natural History, including Timarete, Irene, Aristarete, and Olympias, he does not mention Helena.[8])

References
  1. Lightman1, Marjorie; Lightman, Benjamin (2008). A to Z of ancient Greek and Roman women (Rev. ed.). New York: Facts On File. ISBN 1438107943.
  2. William Smith, ed. (1870). Dictionary of Greek and Roman antiquities. Boston: C. Little, and J. Brown.
  3. "Photius: Bibliotheca. Codices 186-222 (selected)". www.tertullian.org. Retrieved 2022-05-01.
  4. "Helena of Egypt - My Favourite Planet People". www.my-favourite-planet.de. Retrieved 2020-03-04.
  5. Arnold Hugh Martin Jones; John Robert Martindale; J. Morris, eds. (1971). The Prosopography of the Later Roman Empire, Volume 3. Cambridge University Press.
  6. "The Riviera Woman". www.therivierawoman.com. Retrieved 2020-03-04.
  7. Smith, William (1867). Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology. C.C. Little and J. Brown.
  8. Pliny the Elder. "The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Natural History of Pliny, Volume VI., by Pliny the Elder". www.gutenberg.org. Retrieved 2022-05-01.
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