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.

Preliminary material -- HISTORICAL CONDITIONS -- TYPE AND STYLE OF THE EGYPTIAN AND EGYPTIANIZING MONUMENTS OF IMPERIAL ROME -- THE SETTING OF THE EGYPTIAN AND EGYPTIANIZING MONUMENTS IN IMPERIAL ROME -- CATALOGUE RAISONNÉ -- APPENDIX I -- APPENDIX II -- APPENDIX III -- APPENDIX IV -- ADDENDA -- CAPTIONS TO THE FIGURES -- INDEX OF PROPER NAMES -- INDEX OF MUSEUMS -- Plates I-CCXXX and Plans.

"A deluxe book produced at the point that Harroun and Bierstadt dissolved their business ... The Artotypes in this book are some of the finest produced by Bierstadt. The pictorial record of this engineering feat is remarkable in itself; casing and tilting the obelisk, loading it into the side of the ship by removing part of the hull, pulling it out on a special dock in the Hudson and then moving it by custom made rail from the river to the site next to the Metropolitan Museum. The illustrations show the hieroglyphics, now mostly lost due to New York's polluted air, bright and clear."--Hanson Collection catalog, p. 82

An interdisciplinary exploration of Roman cultural appropriation, offering new insights into the processes through which Rome made and remade itself.

Reprint of the original, first published in 1883.