Le Faune et le préfet: une chambre peinte au Mons Claudianus

Publication of some mural paintings discovered in 1992 in a room of the praesidium at Mons Claudianus. The first layer, which is also the most legible, represents three registers on the four walls of the room. The registers are not all equally well preserved. They are separated by bands and show rural or Nilotic scenes, a faun and a wine-crater, Venus, divinities from the Egyptian pantheon, architectural elements, and decorative motifs with crossed branches and human heads. The dispersed composition, the uncertainty of the iconography, and the suggestive character of the figures mark this as popular painting. This first layer also contains four Greek graffiti, only one of which makes sense. It begins with the words “Ariston, baker”. This person is known from an ostracon of the Trajanic period, datable by prosopographic means to the period of peak production of columns at Mons Claudianus. This painted room, which is unique of its type among all the praesidia of the Eastern Desert, is next to the cistern-room. The lintel of the cistern-room carries a bilingual inscription similar to the one found in the Serapaeum that celebrated the inauguration of the well by Sulpicius Similis, Prefect of Egypt, who was present in person. Hence it is hypothesized that the paintings were made in view of this prefectoral visit, which is evoked by several ostraca from Mons Claudianus. These are published, along with one from Bâdiya, edited by Wilfried Van Rengen, which is an order for palms to decorate the well at Porphyrites “when the Prefect arrives”. It is thus possible that the two wells were inaugurated during the same visit of the Prefect in 108/109.