2025/07/01 by Isaac Soon, Isaac T. Soon
Arts and Humanities · Social Sciences · #Classical Antiquity Studies #Historical, Religious, and Philosophical Studies #Public Spaces through Art
paper · doi:10.1017/s0028688525000165
crossref issued 2025/07/01 · crossref published 2025/07/01 · crossref published-print 2025/07/01 · openalex publication_date 2025/07/01 · crossref published-online 2026/04/01 · crossref created 2026/04/01 · openalex created_date 2026/04/02 · crossref deposited 2026/05/27 · openalex updated_date 2026/05/28 · crossref indexed 2026/07/30
Abstract Against the near-universal consensus that it was created by a pagan (non-Christian) in order to satirise Christian worship, this article contends that the Alexamenos graffito can plausibly be read as a Christian self-parody, created by the enslaved Alexamenos himself. It is the first full-length treatment of the authorial origins of the Alexamenos graffito . The article first provides an overview of the visual and scholarly histories of the image since the nineteenth century. Then it addresses evidence for and against reading the text as non-Christian or Christian in origin, focusing on the apparent sexualisation of Jesus, early Christian receptions of satirical depictions of Jesus, the graffito’s use of a titulus , the solidarity of the image with enslaved workers and the relevance of nearby Christian graffiti . Finally, it places the graffito in conversation with ancient self-parody practices from wider Greek, Roman and Christian sources. While it is impossible to argue definitively about the identity of the graffito’s creator, this article contends that scholarship cannot exclude the possibility and potential likelihood that it may be Christian in origin.