A miniature shrine, also referred to in literature as a portable shrine, pocket shrine, or a travel altar, is a small, generally moveable shrine or altar. They vary greatly in size and architectural style, and by which region or culture produced them.
History
Antiquity
Egypt
The Ikhernofret Stela, dated to the Middle Kingdom of Egypt, is the earliest extant literary reference to a portable shrine. The stela is 100 cm high and made of limestone. Osiris is depicted standing under a winged sun disk facing Senwosret III. The text is laid out below Osiris in twenty-four horizontal lines. Underneath the text, Ikhernofret, a 12th dynasty treasurer under Pharaoh Senwosret III, is depicted at an offering table with his family. It reads:
The New Kingdom Gurob Shrine Papyrus is a fragment of a workman's designs for a portable altar. It dates perhaps to the 18th Dynasty.
One of the best-known artifacts of Ancient Egypt is the Anubis Shrine, which is in a portable form, placed atop a palanquin. The statue of a recumbent jackal is attached to the roof of the shrine. The statue is made from wood, covered with black paint. The insides of the ears, the eyebrows, and the rims of the eyes, and the collar and the band knotted around the neck, are worked in gold leaf.
Phoenicia
Greece
In Greece, roadside shrines, often referred to as "kandilakia" (Greek: Kαντηλάκια) or εικονοστάσιο στην άκρη του δρόμου (ikonostásio stin akri tu drómu, literally "Shrine at the roadside") are seen throughout the country.
They are commonly built in the memory of a fatal car accident and usually include a photograph of the victim(s), their namesake/patron Saint and sometimes personal items. They may also be built from car accident survivors thanking the Saint who protected them.
Rome
By the early Imperial period, household shrines were known generically as lararia (plural lararium) because they typically housed a figure of a Lares, guardian deities in ancient Roman religion. Painted lararia from Pompeii show two Lares flanking a genius or ancestor-figure, who wears his toga in the priestly manner prescribed for sacrificers. Underneath this trio, a serpent, representing the fertility of fields or the principle of generative power, winds towards an altar. The essentials of sacrifice are depicted around and about; bowl and knife, incense box, libation vessels and parts of sacrificial animals. In households of modest means, small Lar statuettes were set in wall-niches, sometimes merely a tile-support projecting from a painted background. In wealthier households, they tend to be found in servant's quarters and working areas. The placing of Lares in the public or semi-public parts of a house, such as its atrium, enrolled them in the more outward, theatrical functions of household religion.
Medieval
Asia
In Buddhism, portable shrines were made so that devout travelers with nowhere to worship could carry their shrines with them. The shrines were two-piece, and could be shut together to preserve the artwork. Miniature buddhas and goddesses could be carried in small lacquer cases carried on the wrist.
In Tibet, shrines called gau are worn as jewelry.
The mikoshi is a Japanese type of portable shrine used mostly during Shinto religious festivals called matsuri.
Christian Europe
The Monymusk Reliquary is an eighth-century Scottish reliquary made of wood and metal characterized by an Insular fusion of Gaelic and Pictish design and Anglo-Saxon metalworking, probably by Ionan monks. It is now in the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh. It is characterised by a mixture of Pictish artistic designs and Irish artistic traditions (perhaps first brought to Scotland by Irish missionaries in the sixth century), fused with Anglo-Saxon metalworking techniques, an artistic movement now classified as Insular or Hiberno-Saxon art. The casket is wooden, but is covered with silver and copper-alloy.
A particularly well-preserved portable shrine, the Shrine of the Three Kings in the Cologne Cathedral, is archetypal of the Romanesque style of reliquaries. The shrine is about 43 inches (110 cm) wide, 60 inches (153 cm) high, and 87 inches (220 cm) long. It is modeled after a basilica. Two sarcophagi stand next to each other, with the third sarcophagus resting on their roof ridges.