Jean-Marcel Humbert, the leading scholar of the subject, has defined Egyptomania as the reuse and reinterpretation of images or ornament of pharaonic Egypt by peoples of the modern western world. This talk proposes a broader view of Egyptomania, both conceptually and temporally, as it addresses the adoption and adaptation of all aspects of Egypt by peoples of the ancient Graeco-Roman world, especially those that inhabited the Egyptian city of Alexandria.

The talk considers the later western world’s adoption and adaptation of Egyptian visual themes and motifs in order to contextualize the responses of ancient Greeks and Romans and argues that Ptolemaic- and Roman-period tombs in ancient Alexandria embraced a varied and nuanced form of Egyptomania unattainable in other contexts, both ancient and modern. 

Marjorie S. Venit, Ph.D is a Thomas P. Johnson Distinguished Visiting Scholar

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image:

Anubis as a Roman soldier from the Main Tomb at Kom el-Shoqafa in Alexandria, first century CE 

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