This archaeological study investigates the meaning of the Egyptian and egyptianising artefacts that have been preserved from the Roman world in different ways. Its point of departure is a detailed study on the so-called Nilotic scenes or Nilotic landscapes. The book presents a comprehensive and illustrated catalogue of the genre that was popular all around the Mediterranean from the Hellenistic period to the Christian era as well as a contextualisation and interpretation. Drawing on the conclusions thus reached the whole group of Aegyptiaca Romana is subsequently studied. Based on a general overview of this material in the Roman world and, moreover, a case-study of the Aegyptiaca from the city of Rome the different meanings of this cultural phenomenon are mapped. Together with other Egyptian deities popular in the Roman world, the goddess Isis plays an important role in this discussion. Aegyptiaca Romana, among them the Nilotic scenes, are part of the reflection of the Roman attitude towards and thoughts on Egypt, Egyptian culture and the East. The concluding part of the book illustrates and tries to explain this Roman discourse on Egypt.

This is the first monograph of the well-known genre of Nilotic landscapes in the Roman world providing new conclusions on the genre itself as well as discussing the role and meaning of Aegyptiaca Romana in general.

"Egypt in the Roman world" --- Studies on the meaning of Aegyptiaca Romana and the understanding of the cults of Isis in their local context.

The diffusion of the cults of Isis is recently again intensively studied. Research on this fascinating phenomenon has traditionally been characterised by its focus on L'Égypte hors d'Égypte, while developments in Hellenistic and Roman Egypt itself were often seen as belonging to a different domain. This volume tries to overcome that unhealthy dichotomy by studying the cults of Isis in Hellenistic and Roman Egypt itself in relation to developments in the Mediterranean at large. The book not only presents an overview of the most important deities, often based on new or unpublished material, but also pays ample attention to the cultural processes behind Isis on Nile, like relations between style and identity, religious choice, social- and cultural memory and Egypt’s view of its own past.

Roman Egypt is a critical area of interdisciplinary research, which has steadily expanded since the 1970s and continues to grow. Egypt played a pivotal role in the Roman empire, not only in terms of political, economic, and military strategies, but also as part of an intricate cultural discourse involving themes that resonate today - east and west, old world and new, acculturation and shifting identities, patterns of language use and religious belief, and the management of agriculture and trade. Roman Egypt was a literal and figurative crossroads shaped by the movement of people, goods, and ideas, and framed by permeable boundaries of self and space. This handbook is unique in drawing together many different strands of research on Roman Egypt, in order to suggest both the state of knowledge in the field and the possibilities for collaborative, synthetic, and interpretive research. Arranged in seven thematic sections, each of which includes essays from a variety of disciplinary vantage points and multiple sources of information, it offers new perspectives from both established and younger scholars, featuring individual essay topics, themes, and intellectual juxtapositions.

In The Egyptian Elite as Roman Citizens: Looking at Ptolemaic Private Portraiture Giorgia Cafici offers the analysis of private, male portrait sculptures as attested in Egypt between the end of the Ptolemaic and the beginning of the Roman Period.

This volume considers the relationship between architectural form and different layers of identity assertion in Roman Egypt. It stresses the sophistication of the concept of identity, and the complex yet close association between architecture and identity.

From gleaming hardstone statues to bright frescoes, the unexpected and often spectacular Egyptian objects discovered in Roman Italy have long presented an interpretive challenge. How they shaped and were shaped by religion, politics, and identity formation has now been well researched. But one crucial function of these objects remains to be explored: their role as precious goods in a collector’s economy. The Romans imported and recreated Egyptian goods in the most opulent materials available – gold, gems, expensive wood, ivory, luxurious textiles – and displayed them like true treasures. This is due in part to the way Romans encountered these items, as argued in this book: first as dazzling spolia from the war against Cleopatra, then as costly wares exchanged over the expanding Roman trade routes. In this respect, Romans treated Egyptian art surprisingly similarly to Greek art. By examining the concrete mechanisms through which Egyptian objects were acquired and displayed in Rome, this book offers a new understanding of this impressive material at the crossroads of Hellenistic, Roman, and Egyptian culture.

This book examines the appetite for Egyptian and Egyptian-looking artwork in Italy during the century following Rome's annexation of Aegyptus as a province. In the early imperial period, Roman interest in Egyptian culture was widespread, as evidenced by works ranging from the monumental obelisks, brought to the capital over the Mediterranean Sea by the emperors, to locally made emulations of Egyptian artifacts found in private homes and in temples to Egyptian gods. Although the foreign appearance of these artworks was central to their appeal, this book situates them within their social, political, and artistic contexts in Roman Italy. Swetnam-Burland focuses on what these works meant to their owners and their viewers in their new settings, by exploring evidence for the artists who produced them and by examining their relationship to the contemporary literature that informed Roman perceptions of Egyptian history, customs, and myths.

The study of Roman sculpture has been an essential part of the disciplines of Art History and Classics since the eighteenth century. Famous works like the Laocoön, the Arch of Titus, and the colossal portrait of Constantine are familiar to millions. Again and again, scholars have returned to sculpture to answer questions about Roman art, society, and history. Indeed, the field of Roman sculptural studies encompasses not only the full chronological range of the Roman world but also its expansive geography, and a variety of artistic media, formats, sizes, and functions. Exciting new theories, methods, and approaches have transformed the specialized literature on the subject in recent decades. Rather than creating another chronological catalogue of representative examples from various periods, genres, and settings, The Oxford Handbook of Roman Sculpture synthesizes current best practices for studying this central medium of Roman art, situating it within the larger fields of Art History, Classical Archaeology, and Roman Studies. This comprehensive volume fills the gap between introductory textbooks and highly focused professional literature. The Oxford Handbook of Roman Sculpture conveniently presents new technical, scientific, literary, and theoretical approaches to the study of Roman sculpture in one reference volume while simultaneously complementing textbooks and other publications that present well-known works in the corpus. The contributors to this volume address metropolitan and provincial material from the early republican period through late antiquity in an engaging and fresh style. Authoritative, innovative, and up-to-date, The Oxford Handbook of Roman Sculpture will remain an invaluable resource for years to come.