Sarapis as Healer in Roman Athens: Reconsidering the Identity of Agora S 1068

This study revisits an under-life-size, Roman-period, marble statue of a draped male divinity from the excavations of the Athenian Agora (inv. S 1068) and proposes a new identification for the image as a hybridized version of Asklepios and Sarapis. The statue’s iconography illustrates the close connections between these cults in Roman Athens, particularly in their shared ability to perform cures. A contextual analysis of this statue presents an opportunity to examine the evidence for the Egyptian gods as healing deities in Hellenistic and Roman Greece, as well as the use of iconographic hybridity to integrate foreign gods with local ones.