Greco-Egyptian Interactions: Literature, Translation, and Culture, 500 BC-AD 300

by Ian Rutherford (Editor)

Hardcover, 2016

Status

Available

Call number

303.48232038

Collection

Publication

Oxford University Press (2016), Edition: 1, 440 pages

Description

Contact and interaction between Greek and Egyptian culture can be traced in different forms over more than a millennium: from the sixth century BC, when Greeks visited Egypt for the sake of tourism or trade, through to the Hellenistic period, when Egypt was ruled by the Macedonian-Greek Ptolemaic dynasty who encouraged a mixed Greek and Egyptian culture, and even more intensely in the Roman Empire, when Egypt came to be increasingly seen as a place of wonder and a source of magic and mystery. This volume addresses the historical interaction between the ancient Greek and Egyptian civilizations in these periods, focusing in particular on literature and textual culture. Comprising fourteen chapters written by experts in the field, each contribution examines such cultural interaction in some form, whether influence between the two cultures, or the emergence of bicultural and mixed phenomena within Egypt. A number of the chapters draw on newly discovered Egyptian texts, such as the Book of Thoth and the Book of the Temple, and among the wide range of topics covered are religion (such as prophecy, hymns, and magic), philosophy, historiography, romance, and translation - Publisher.… (more)

Media reviews

The study of cultural interaction as documented in the textual output of Egypt, Greece, and Rome is in flux. Egyptologists, who traditionally had paid less attention to texts written under Ptolemaic and especially Roman rule than to earlier material, have been devoting more of their energies to the
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arduous duty of editing Demotic papyri. Many such documents provide evidence of Greek-Egyptian cross-pollination, even if the exact nature of that exchange is hard to puzzle out. As the editor of one of those texts acknowledges here without despair: “Any conclusion may be overturned tomorrow” (p. 347). Classicists, on their part, have been producing less Hellenocentric readings of textual documents written in Hellenistic and Roman Egypt, and also increasingly sophisticated literary and historical analyses that are informed by theoretical trends outside of classics. Many of the contributors to this volume are directly responsible for rocking the Greco-Egyptian textual boat. In fact, beginning nearly two decades ago, the editor himself has been offering challenging studies of Greco-Egyptian literary and cultural interaction. This book is of immediate and obvious importance to those working on Greek and Roman Egypt. As I explain below, however, it may also be of interest to those studying cross-cultural contact in the ancient world more generally.
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Language

Original language

English

Physical description

xiii; 393 p.

ISBN

0199656126 / 9780199656127

Local notes

MJW
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