Not 'between the lines'. A front view of the
Serapis on the attached, and other, coins would show an open hand in your face--a universally threatening gesture, a curse in some lands. I think I said early on that Sol's hand (did the
Colossus at Rhodes actually hold a torch? Merely curious), as we see it on coins of the
Severan age, is raised straight up, yanking
his himation up, quite differently from any speaking gesture, whether Imperial or
Christian.
Just how the straightforward
Severan Serapis reverses relate to the post-Gordianian, especially post-Aurelian, representations of
Sol, I do not know. The only link is those apparently sycretistic 'folles' with
Sol dressed and posed like
Serapis and holding the latter's
bust.
An afternoon's browsing suggests that there are too few surviving representations of Carolingian kings, or even of Ottonian ones outside of frontispieces of Gospels, to guess whether Charlemagne (for instance) held a second
scepter, with a hand, in
his left hand (as apparently Napoleon thought he did--else I doubt Ingres would have put it there). I'd have to read all of Carolingian lit. to find out whether he and
his successors
had one, mentioned in a
contemporary source!
Hans Swarzenski, BTW, dates the ivory hand itself, 11-12c, but marks its St.-Denis
provenance "(?)". He sites an article by W.
Martin Conway in
Archaeologia, 1915, p. 50. Period. As you doubtless know, Swarzenski's
Monuments of Romanesque Art is a marvelous treasury of 8th-12th c.
Kleinkunst whose text never got written: just an annotated list of illustrations.
I do not expect to find anything in A. Goldschmidt's Elfenbeinskulpturen, of which our
library has a copy (rpt). I don't recall anything there. We don't have Panofsky's
Abbot Suger, which might have a lead in a footnote. Or not. The
standard iconographic handbooks have nothing relevant. Googling does bring up scads of garbage, too!
Even mention of a 'Hand' in an account of the coronation of Charlemagne would not be more than suggestive of Charlemagne's scholars thinking it was Imperial to have one. When
Byzantine emperors are shown, it usually is endowing or presenting something and they are shown without Imperial regalia, barring a crown: they didn't go to
church carrying any
scepter or scepter-like objects.
So here is a
Serapis, to bring us round to coins, finally. All 5 fingers spread.
Pat L.
• 27 04 04 AE 30 16.42g
axis 1:00.
Serdica.
Caracalla, laureate,
head to r.
AVT K
M AVR SEV ANTONINO S.
Rev.,
Serapis stg. l., holding
scepter and wearing
kalathos. OVLPIAS SERDIKES.
Varbanov III, p. 22, no. 341.
ADDED:
• Frontal,
Rome,
Caracalla sole
augustus.