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

by Rutherford, Ian

• ISBN13: 9780199656127
• ISBN10: 0199656126
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2016-04-11
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

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.

Author Biography

Ian Rutherford is Professor of Classics at the University of Reading.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements
List of Figures
List of Contributors
1. Aegypto-Graeca: Interaction and Translation between Greek Literature and Egypt, Ian Rutherford
2. Plato's Egyptian Republic, Susan Stephens
3. Translating Gods, Interpreting Gods: On the Mechanisms behind the Interpretatio Graeca of Egyptian Gods, Alexandra von Lieven
4. The Earliest Cross-Cultural Reception of Homer? The Inaros Narratives of Greco-Roman Egypt, Ian Rutherford
5. Literary Interaction between Greece and Egypt: Manetho and Synchronism, John Dillery
6. The Hathoric Model of Queenship in Early Ptolemaic Egypt: The Case of Berenike's Lock, Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones and Stephanie Winder
7. Virtual History Egyptian Style: The Isolationist Concept of the Potter's Oracle and its Alternative, Ivan A. Ladynin
8. Different Parallels, Different Interpretations: Reading Parallels between Ancient Egyptian and Greek Works of Literature, Nikolaos Lazaridis
9. Isidorus at the Gates of the Temple, Ian Moyer
10. Good and Bad Women in Egyptian and Greek Fiction, Steve Vinson
11. Translating the Realities of Cult: The Case of the Book of the Temple, Joachim Quack
12. Mandulis Apollo: Echoes of Greek Culture and Hellenism at Talmis (Nubia) in the Roman Period, Gaelle Tallet
13. 'Between Two Waters': The Book of Thoth and the Problem of Graeco-Egyptian Interaction, Richard Jasnow
14. The Diffusion of the Greco-Egyptian Magical Tradition in Late Antiquity, Gideon Bohak
Index