{"id":"NAF-002","label":"Gurob papyrus rhombos, toy of Dionysus","people_or_site":"Greek Orphic / Dionysian context","country_current":"Egypt","historic_region":"Gurob / Fayum","macroregion":"Africa / North Africa","local_name":"rhombos","source_term":"bull-roarer","source_language":"English","object_description":"","function_summary":"Ritual token: one of the toys of Dionysus, cast into a basket during a Bacchic-Orphic initiation.","attestation_type":"historical_text","source_key":"hordern2000_gurob_papyrus","source_type":"academic_article_pdf","source_url":"https://www.uni-koeln.de/phil-fak/ifa/zpe/downloads/2000/129pdf/129131.pdf","page_or_plate":"ZPE 129 p. 139","map_confidence":"medium","plot_status":"plot_with_caveat","coordinate_basis":"Gurob/Fayum textual-context regional anchor from the papyrus source chain; representative classical-Egypt anchor, not the Cambridge collection location or an exact ritual-use spot.","jade_complex_role":"","blurb":"A torn Greek papyrus from Gurob in the Fayum, written in the third (probably mid-third) century BC and now the earliest surviving reference to the so-called Toys of Dionysus, preserves a Bacchic-Orphic ritual script. Near the foot of its first column, after the watchword \"as an ass I drank,\" comes a bare list of sacred tokens to be thrown into a basket: a cone, a rhombos (bull-roarer), knuckle-bones, and a mirror. Five lines earlier the same script says \"the god through the bosom\" — the golden, once living, snake drawn inside the initiate's clothing and pulled back out again, which Clement names as the token of the Sabazian mysteries and glosses flatly: this god is a serpent. The tokens in the basket are the playthings of the myth the rite re-enacts, the toys with which the Titans lured the infant Dionysus away from his Kouretes guardians before tearing him apart.","pull_quote":"]vnos rombos astragaloi / ]h esoptros","pull_quote_translation":"[...c]one, bull-roarer, knuckle-bones, / [...] mirror","pull_quote_cite":"P. Gurob 1, col. i 29-30, in Hordern 2000:135 (ZPE 129)","term_gloss":"rhombos: Greek term for the bull-roarer (also a spun rhomb or magic wheel), here one of the ritual \"toys of Dionysus\" in an Orphic initiation.","cls":"restricted","class_label":"Restricted","color":"#A43C2F","is_candidate":false,"flags":["snake","initiation","death_rebirth"],"f_jade_complex":false,"f_women_taboo":false,"f_women_special":false,"f_snake":true,"etymology":"From rhembō, 'to turn': the rhombos is simply the thing that spins, and Greek gave the same name to a child's top and to the rhombus.","literal_gloss":"bullroarer; spinning/whirled object","semantic_cluster":"classical_spinning_object","etymology_confidence":"high","sources":[{"citation":"James Hordern, “Notes on the Orphic Papyrus from Gurôb”, Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 129 (2000): 131–140","url":"https://www.uni-koeln.de/phil-fak/ifa/zpe/downloads/2000/129pdf/129131.pdf","archive":"https://web.archive.org/web/20241116213544/https://www.uni-koeln.de/phil-fak/ifa/zpe/downloads/2000/129pdf/129131.pdf"}],"source_citations":"James Hordern, “Notes on the Orphic Papyrus from Gurôb”, Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 129 (2000): 131–140","source_display":"James Hordern, “Notes on the Orphic Papyrus from Gurôb”, Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 129 (2000): 131–140","date_citation_display":"","object_display":"","function_display":"Ritual token: one of the toys of Dionysus, cast into a basket during a Bacchic-Orphic initiation.","confidence_display":"medium","attestation_label":"historical text","etymology_hedge":"","people_key":"greek orphic","display_name":"Gurob papyrus rhombos, toy of Dionysus","image":{"full":"assets/objects/HAD1898-005_gurob_papyrus_smyly1921.jpg","thumb":"assets/objects/HAD1898-005_gurob_papyrus_smyly1921_thumb.jpg","alt":"Fragment of the Gurob papyrus, with uneven frayed edges surrounding dense lines of Greek writing.","credit":"J. G. Smyly, Greek Papyri from Gurob (Dublin, 1921), pl. I no. 1 (P.Gurob 1, Trinity College Dublin)","license":"Public domain","source_page":"https://archive.org/details/greekpapyrifromg00unse","rehosted":true,"representative":false,"caption":"The Gurob papyrus, 3rd c. BC, whose list of the child Dionysus’s toys names the rhombos."},"slug":"naf-002-greek-orphic-dionysian-context"}