(Open Access!) Egyptian Things: Translating Egypt to Early Imperial Rome (2024)

The Form and Function of Manetho’s “Second” Account of Jewish Origins

This is an extended research project completed for the course "Greek History from Alexander to Augustus" (prof. N. Luraghi), Harvard University, spring and fall, 2006. This has not been updated or edited since then, and may contain errors. But hopefully it can serve as a resource for anyone investigating the subject.

Egyptian History in the Classical Historiographers

UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, 2014

Egypt and the Limits of Hellenism

2011

NOW IN PAPERBACK! In this book I explore the ancient history and modern historiography of relations between Egypt and Greece from the fifth century BCE to the early Roman empire. Beginning with Herodotus, I analyze key encounters between Greeks and Egyptian priests, the bearers of Egypt’s ancient traditions. A series of four moments emerge as rich micro-histories of cross-cultural interaction: Herodotus’ interviews with priests at Thebes, Manetho’s composition of an Egyptian history in Greek, the struggles of Egyptian priests on Delos, and a Greek physician’s quest for magic in Egypt. In writing these histories, I move beyond Orientalizing representations of the Other and colonial metanarratives of the civilizing process to reveal interactions between Greeks and Egyptians as transactional processes in which the traditions, discourses and pragmatic interests of both sides shaped the outcome. The result is a dialogical history of cultural and intellectual exchanges between the civilizations of Greece and Egypt.

Papers of the Royal Netherlands Institute, 2019

This article explores how Tacitus, writing in the era of Trajan, reshaped the memory of Egypt in the rise of the Flavian dynasty and Vespasian’s interactions with the god of the Rhakotis Hill in Alexandria. Vespasian’s visit to Egypt actualizes in full the arcanum imperii of Histories 1.4, which has been associated primarily with Galba. Serapis emerges as a uniquely significant god in Vespasian’s rise to power, as the interaction between the usurper and the god constitutes a kind of miraculous coronation of Vespasian as pharaoh and emperor. Tacitus, however, ends his aetiology of the god of the Rhakotis Hill with an identification of that deity as Dispater. This choice may have sprung from his participation as a quindecimvir in the Secular Games of A.D. 88. The historian’s representation of Egypt and Dis-Serapis in the Histories may thus be read as a reaction to Domitianic propaganda. Through his depiction of Vespasian, Egypt, and Dis-Serapis, Tacitus crafts a rich and complex historiographical contribution to the Campus Martius as a lieu de mémoire evoking Egypt’s role in the construction of Roman empire and the making of emperors.

Reimagining the Past

2019

Greek and Latin sources

Oxford Handbook of Egyptology, 2020

A wealth of Latin and Greek sources is available for the study of Egypt, both literary texts preserved in manuscripts, and historical documents inscribed on stone, or written on pa pyrus, pottery shards, and other writing materials. Though literary texts, including an cient Greek accounts of Egyptian history, ethnography and geography must be read in the cultural context for which they were produced, they can also provide useful information on Egyptian history in the periods contemporary with classical Greek and Roman civiliza tion, as well as evidence of how Egypt was remembered and represented by Greek and Roman authors, as well as by Egyptians themselves. The volume of Greek and Latin papyrus documents and inscriptions is enormous and provides an invaluable resource for the study of Egyptian history, especially its economic and social aspects, but also for the study of cultural and ethnic relations between Egyptians and immigrant populations. Col laboration between specialists in Greek, Latin, and Egyptian materials is vital to getting the full benefit of these resources for the study of ancient Egypt.

Nectanebo in Ethiopia: A Commentary to Diod. XVI. 51.1

The exodus from Egypt played a pivotal role in Jewish-pagan polemics from the beginning of the Hellenistic period till far into the Imperial period. Pagan polemicists stood the biblical story of the liberation of the Israelites from bondage in Egypt upon its head and portrayed an extremely negative image of Israelite origins. They also pictured the Jewish people as misanthropes and atheists. Jewish-Hellenistic authors reacted to these attacks in a wide variety of ways (e.g., novels, drama, philosophical treatise).

'Virtual History Egyptian Style': The Isolationist Concept of the Potter’s Oracle and its Alternative

Greco-Egyptian Interactions. Literature, Translation, and Culture, 500 BCE – 300 CE, Oxford 2016, 163-186

http://www.reading.ac.uk/GraecoAegyptica/abstracts.htm#Ladynin

Matić, Uroš. 2020. On Typhon, red men and the tomb of Osiris: Ancient interpretations and human sacrifice in Egypt. In Mihajlovic V, Jankovic M (Eds.) Pervading empire, Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 15-28.

2020