171, Lot: 50. Estimate $200. Sold for $371. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

EGYPT, Alexandria. Hadrian. AD 117-138. Æ Drachm (33mm, 27.53 g). Dated RY 18 (AD 133/4). Laureate, draped and cuirassed bust right / Canopi of Isis and Osiris under canopic canopy; date across fields. Köln 1142; Milne 1430; Emmett 935. VF, brown and green patina, rough in spots but overall with very good detail.

The canopic jar gets its name for the port city of Canopus in the Delta. Kanopus was also the name of the pilot of Menelaos’s ship in The Iliad, and it is uncertain whether the city’s demotic name was hellenized to Canopus to reflect the Homeric myth, or whether Homer adopted the maritime name from the city. In any case the Egyptian god Osiris was worshiped in Canopus in the specific form of a jar or reliquary, and the name became attached by Egyptologists to the four jars used to hold the viscera of the mummified dead, as well as the cult objects associated with Osiris and Isis.