Greco-Egyptian Interactions
Literature, Translation, and Culture, 500 BC-AD 300
Published on 18. February 2016
Book
Hardback
416 pages
978-0-19-965612-7 (ISBN)
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.
Reviews / Votes
a compact and very informative collection of papers, which will certainly advance the appreciation and awareness of Greco-Egyptian cultural interactions. * Matthew L. Skuse, Journal of Ancient Egyptian Interconnections *More details
Language
English
Place of publication
Oxford
United Kingdom
Target group
College/higher education
Professional and scholarly
Illustrations
10 black and white illustrations
Dimensions
Height: 222 mm
Width: 145 mm
Thickness: 25 mm
Weight
643 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-19-965612-7 (9780199656127)
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
E-Book
02/2016
1st Edition
OUP eBook
€77.49
Available for download
Person
Ian Rutherford is Professor of Classics at the University of Reading.
Content
Acknowledgements ; List of Figures ; List of Contributors ; 1. Aegypto-Graeca: Interaction and Translation between Greek Literature and Egypt ; 2. Plato's Egyptian Republic ; 3. Translating Gods, Interpreting Gods: On the Mechanisms behind the Interpretatio Graeca of Egyptian Gods ; 4. The Earliest Cross-Cultural Reception of Homer? The Inaros Narratives of Greco-Roman Egypt ; 5. Literary Interaction between Greece and Egypt: Manetho and Synchronism ; 6. The Hathoric Model of Queenship in Early Ptolemaic Egypt: The Case of Berenike's Lock ; 7. Virtual History Egyptian Style: The Isolationist Concept of the Potter's Oracle and its Alternative ; 8. Different Parallels, Different Interpretations: Reading Parallels between Ancient Egyptian and Greek Works of Literature ; 9. Isidorus at the Gates of the Temple ; 10. Good and Bad Women in Egyptian and Greek Fiction ; 11. Translating the Realities of Cult: The Case of the Book of the Temple ; 12. Mandulis Apollo: Echoes of Greek Culture and Hellenism at Talmis (Nubia) in the Roman Period ; 13. 'Between Two Waters': The Book of Thoth and the Problem of Graeco-Egyptian Interaction ; 14. The Diffusion of the Greco-Egyptian Magical Tradition in Late Antiquity ; Index