The Woman Who Gave Her Breast For Hire. Notes on a Christian Wall-Painting from Tebtunis. Issue 2 (December 2019)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Zellmann-Rohrer, Michael
• Is Part Of: Journal of Egyptian archaeology. Volume 105:Issue 2(2019)
• Page Start: 297
• Page End: 303
• Publication Date: 2019-12
• Subjects: Coptic -- Christian -- Gnostic -- Mandaean -- sin -- Tebtunis -- wall-paintings -- wet-nursing -- Zoroastrian; Egypt -- Antiquities -- Periodicals; Antiquities; Egypt; Archäologie; Ägypten; Égypte -- Antiquités -- Périodiques; 6.140; Periodicals; Zeitschrift; Online-Publikation; Electronic journals; 932.005
• DOI: 10.1177/0307513319901143
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0307-5133

Abstract

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.