Hermanubis is a syncretic Roman Egyptian statue. It resides at the Vatican in room four of the Gregorian Egyptian museum. The museum was founded in 1839 by pope Gregory to help preserve artifacts from Rome and the Villa Adriana, also known as The villa of the Emperor Hadrian at Tivoli. Hermanubis was one of the artifacts moved from the Villa Adraiana. It is interesting to consider where the Hermanubis must have sat in the imperial gardens among tiles of spolia and other splendors of the empire.
The conjunction of multiple deities is called a polytheophoric and is still used in contemporary mystery schools to express concepts of deific unity between the gods of Babylon, Egypt and Jerusalem. Hermanubis is the union of two different entities the Egyptian Anubis and the Greek Hermes. Anubis is represented in his astrological context as the dog star Sirius who’s heliacal position indicated the rise of the Nile bringing life or death. He began his godhood as the god of embalming and mummification and eventually made his way into the ranks of Hermes by becoming a curator of souls in the weighing of the heart ceremony. Hermes is represented by the water star Mercury who is the fastest planet and the messenger of the slower stellar Luminaries like Jupiter. Jupiter who would be syncretized with Zeus trusts Hermes to deliver dreams to mortals. One brother of Zeus, Hades god of the under world tasks Hermes with delivering souls to the under world very much like Anubis. These coincidental similarities of mythology manifests itself in the simulacrum of Hermanubis.
The Hermanubis is estimated to be from the first to second century which makes it exceedingly older than the modern hermetic tradition. The more contemporary syncretism made is that Thoth the Egyptian god of thought and communication is more similar to Hermes.Thoth is a scribe and mediator of the gods more similarly to Hermes who for instance mediates between Zeus and Hades during the myth of Persephone and is often depicted with a scroll or messenger bag. Both entities are attributed with not only inventing writing but both have been attributed with authorship of some more or less authentic philosophical texts. Hermes is credited with the Kybalion and the emerald tablets, and Thoth is credited with the book of Thoth. What the book of Thoth actually is, is unclear and if it did exist it was likely burned or hidden. Some people suggest that the tarot is somehow related to the book of Thoth or is itself the book of Thoth. In Titus Flavius Clemens sixth book Stromata he mentions 42 volumes of Egyptian philosophy written by Hermes. Those volumes may have been the acclaimed book of Thoth as well.
The Hermanubis breaks away from the orthodox syncretism and brings together a rich vocabulary of symbols to liken these more disparate figures of Hermes and Anubis. The figure is anthropomorphic in the Egyptian style, while dressed in a toga in Roman fashion. Resting between the horns of his jackal ears are the horns of the moon and the disk of the sun. In the Romans view these are Apollo and Diana. While in the Egyptian view they were Aten and Khonsu. He holds an Egyptian instrument in his right hand called a sistrum, and a roman emblem of good health the caduceus in his left. The sistrum is a percussive instrument like the tambourine and in the statue most of the apparatus appears to have broken off. He extends his index finger downward at the end of the caduceus perhaps indicating Hades below. The caduceus itself indicates the maxim attributed to Hermes as above so below. The wings represent the birds and things in the sky above and the snakes represent the things that tread on the ground below. This motif is similar to the Egyptian Winged Disk of the Sun that is often depicted with serpents surrounding the disk and wings adorning it. The Hermanubis wears boots consistent with the character of Hermes. Below the caduceus and draped by the toga is a pillar which is intended to appear as a palm tree to give the statue a sense of location.
My own sketch feels utterly inadequate when compared to its subject. The Hermanubis is a conceptual masterpiece from end to end. It could be described as having perfect proportion and form for something completely beyond daily experience. The Hermanubis is Roman realism at its finest and abstract absurdity from the beginning of history.
I would like to leave the reader with a few curiosities I could not satisfy myself. Why was pope Gregory so concerned with Egyptology and preservation of roman Egyptian artifacts? Why would the Hermanubis motif continue on through various guilds and congregations to this day? Who sculpted it and why? If there was a cult of Hermanubis in Alexandria did their doctrine survive and what was that doctrine?
