Antinoüs-Osiris became a Cult

shortly after Antinous died priests named him Osiris Antinous and became a God

the remaining of Antinoopolis is almost disapeared complete.

 

Cult

Immediately after his death, Antinoüs was deified. Not only by Hadrian, but also by the Egyptians, because he had drowned in the Nile which was strongly associated with Osiris. Moreover, Antinoüs' official date of death was Oct. 24, the date of the feast of Osiris, the merciful judge of the dead, and giver of life force. Hence, Antinoüs is also sometimes depicted as Osiris. In fact, Antinoüs was now the new god Antinoüs-Osiris, to which a cult remained attached for centuries. As a deceased and reborn god, he was even a rival of Jesus Christ for a time. Origenes, a 3rd century biblical scholar, wrote "that to him almost as much honor is given as we give to Jesus." In Athens, Antinoüs fused with Dionysus, and his image even appeared on bowls and other objects.

Hadrian hastily founded a city on the Nile, Antinoöpolis, near the spot where the young man had been pulled out of the water, and had statues of Antinoüs erected all over the world. A temple dedicated to the young man also arose in the Greek town of Mantinea. Hadrian took the body of Antinoüs himself to his villa near Tivoli, where he placed his remains in a special shrine. Hadrian must have commissioned a sculptor to make an exemplary statue, expressing the young man's masculine beauty to the fullest, with broad chest and demurely lowered eyes, which was frequently copied. In the ten years after 130 AD, an estimated two thousand statues were made. One of the finest specimens still stands in the Vatican Museums.

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info from wikipedia

In October of the year 130, the Imperial flotilla of ships visited the remote, ancient city of Hermopolis, which was sacred to Thoth, the Egyptian god of writing and magic. Something mysterious must have occurred during the visit, because as the flotilla departed and made it's way around a bend in the river, Antinous mysteriously fell into the Nile and drowned. Hadrian was overcome with grief, and is said to have wept openly when the dead body of Antinous was brought before him. It was the local people who first indicated that Antinous had become a sacred being...they believed that all those who drowned in the Nile had been embraced by Osiris, that the drowned person would become Osiris, rising up from the underworld to live forever as an immortal, and that through their death, the Inundation of the Nile would be assured. Reports were brought to the grieving Emperor that the local people had begun worshiping Antinous as though he were a new god. Hadrian consulted with the local Egyptian priests in private and within a few days, emerged from his chamber to make an extraordinary declaration.

Antinoöpolis

2nd-century funeral portrait depicting two men of the cult of Antinous. Tempera painting on wooden panel, now at the Egyptian Museum

The city of Antinoöpolis was erected on the site of Hir-we. All previous buildings were razed and replaced, with the exception of the Temple of Ramses II. Hadrian also had political motives for the creation of Antinoöpolis, which was to be the first Hellenic city in the Middle Nile region, thus serving as a bastion of Greek culture within the Egyptian area. To encourage Egyptians to integrate with this imported Greek culture, he permitted Greeks and Egyptians in the city to marry and allowed the main deity of Hir-we, Bes, to continue to be worshipped in Antinoöpolis alongside the new primary deity, Osiris-Antinous.] He encouraged Greeks from elsewhere to settle in the new city, using various incentives to do so. The city was designed on a Hippodamian grid that was typical of Hellenic cities, and embellished with columns and many statues of Antinous, as well as a temple devoted to the deity.

Hadrian proclaimed that games would be held at the city in Spring 131 in commemoration of Antinous. Known as the Antinoeia, they would be held annually for several centuries, being noted as the most important in Egypt. Events included athletic competitions, chariot and equestrian races, and artistic and musical festivals, with prizes including citizenship, money, tokens, and free lifetime maintenance.

Antinoöpolis continued to grow into the Byzantine era, being Christianised with the conversion of the Empire. However, it retained an association with magic for centuries to come. Over the centuries, stone from the Hadrianic city was removed for the construction of homes and mosques. By the 18th century, the ruins of Antinoöpolis were still visible, being recorded by such European travellers as Jesuit missionary Claude Sicard in 1715 and Edme-François Jomard the surveyor c. 1800. However, in the 19th century, Antinoöpolis was almost completely destroyed by local industrial production, as the chalk and limestone was burned for powder while stone was used in the construction of a nearby dam and sugar factory.

An excavation of the city in the early twentieth century revealed a relatively realistic funeral tondo painted on wood. Although the men in the portrait are traditionally identified as brothers, there is speculation that they were lovers, the reason for this being that behind the beardless figure is a representation of Antinous-Osiris, the only pictorial representation that has survived of a statue of the deified young man.

The cult's spread

The "Lansdowne Antinous" was found at Hadrian's Villa in 1769 (Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge)

Hadrian was keen to disseminate the cult of Antinous throughout the Roman Empire. He focused on its spread within the Greek lands, and in Summer 131 travelled these areas promoting it by presenting Antinous in a syncretised form with the more familiar deity Hermes. On a visit to Trapezus in 131, he proclaimed the foundation of a temple devoted to Hermes, where the deity was probably venerated as Hermes-Antinous. Although Hadrian preferred to associate Antinous with Hermes, he was far more widely syncretised with the god Dionysus across the Empire. The cult also spread through Egypt, and within a few years of its foundation, altars and temples to the god had been erected in Hermopolis, Alexandria, Oxyrhynchus, Tebytnis, Lykopolis, and Luxor.

The cult of Antinous was never as large as those of well established deities such as Zeus, Dionysus, Demeter, or Asclepios, or even as large as those of cults which were growing in popularity at that time, such as Isis or Serapis, and was also smaller than the official imperial cult of Hadrian himself. However, it spread rapidly throughout the Empire, with traces of the cult having been found in at least 70 cities. The cult was most popular in Egypt, Greece, Asia Minor, and the North African coast, but a large community of worshippers also existed in Italy, Spain, and northwestern Europe. Artefacts in honour of Antinous have been found in an area that spans from Britain to the Danube.

Although the adoption of the Antinous cult was in some cases done to please Hadrian, the evidence makes it clear that the cult was also genuinely popular among the different societal classes in the Empire. Archaeological finds point that Antinous was worshipped in both public and private settings. In Egypt, Athens, Macedonia, and Italy, children would be named after the deity. Part of the appeal was that Antinous had once been an ordinary human himself, and thus was more relatable than many other deities. It is also possible, however, that his cult borrowed power from parallels between Antinous and beautiful young male immortals in the Greco-Roman pantheon like Apollo, Dionysus, and Silvanus as well as mortal youths beloved by gods in classical mythology like Ganymede, Hylas, Hyacinth, and Narcissus, and that images of the sensuous youth invited imaginary erotic bonding between him and his worshippers.[8] These characteristics were common also to the cults of Attis, Endymion, and Adonis. Like the latter, Antinous was treated as a dying-and-rising god not only in Egypt, but in Rome and Greece; the Obelisk of Antinous in Rome describes the honour and, "Osirantinous" as "the Reborn" and "the Everlasting."

At least 28 temples were constructed for the worship of Antinous throughout the Empire, although most were fairly modest in design; those at Tarsos, Philadelphia, and Lanuvium consisted of a four-column portico.] It is likely however that those which Hadrian was directly involved in, such as at Antinoöpolis, Bithynion, and Mantineria, were often grander, while in the majority of cases, shrines or altars to Antinous would have been erected in or near the pre-existing temples of the imperial cult, or Dionysus or Hermes.] Worshippers would have given votive offerings to the deity at these altars; there is evidence that he was given gifts of food and drink in Egypt, with libations and sacrifices probably being common in Greece. Priests devoted to Antinous would have overseen this worship, with the names of some of these individuals having survived in inscriptions. There is evidence of oracles being present at a number of Antinoan temples.

Sculptures of Antinous became widespread, with Hadrian probably having approved a basic model of Antinous's likeness for other sculptors to follow. These sculptures were produced in large quantities between 130 and 138, with estimates being in the region of around 2000, of which at least 115 survive. 44 have been found in Italy, half of which were at Hadrian's Villa Adriana, while 12 have been found in Greece and Asia Minor, and 6 in Egypt. Over 31 cities in the Empire, the majority in Greece and Asia Minor, issued coins depicting Antinous, chiefly between the years 134–35. Many were designed to be used as medallions rather than currency, some of them deliberately made with a hole so that they could be hung from the neck and used as talismans. Most production of Antinous-based artefacts ceased following the 130s, although such items continued to be used by the cult's followers for several centuries. Later survivals of his cult largely rested in the Eastern Roman Empire, where his acceptance into the pantheon of gods was better received.

Games held in honour of Antinous were held in at least 9 cities, and included both athletic and artistic components. The games at Bythynion, Antinoöpolis, and Mantineia were still active by the early 3rd century, while those at Athens and Eleusis were still operating in 266–67. Rumours spread throughout the Empire that at Antinous's cultic centre in Antinoöpolis, there were "sacred nights" characterised by drunken revelries, perhaps including sexual orgies. The cult of Antinous endured far beyond Hadrian's reign. Local coins depicting his effigy were still being struck during Caracalla's reign, and he was invoked in a poem to celebrate the accession of Diocletian, who reigned nearly a century after Antinous' death.