Why are the rays of the Greek god Helios on the forehead of a crocodile-headed Egyptian deity? Navigating the maze of Greek and Egyptian communities and creeds, Gaëlle Tallet investigates the plasticity of material culture in the polytheistic context of Graeco-Roman Egypt. Using the Ariadneâs thread of the manufacturing of new images, suitable to new needs and new understandings of the divine, La Splendeur des dieux opens the doors of the workshops where these images were designed, ordered and crafted. Tallet offers a full re-appraisal of the cultural balance of powers in Graeco-Roman Egypt, depicting the indigenous clergies and artists as integratedactors of an Egyptian Hellenicity that helped promote and preserve their millenaries-old traditions.
Gaëlle Tallet is Associate Professor of Ancient History (Limoges University) and director of the French Archaeological Mission at el-Deir (Kharga Oasis). She has mostly published on Graeco-Egyptian religious interactions and has recently co-edited The Great Oasis of Egypt. Kharga and Dakhla during Antiquity (Cambridge University Press, 2019) with Roger Bagnall.
"In sum, this work promotes a welcome dialogue between Classical Studies and Egyptology, and there is a meaningful interdisciplinary dialogue with anthropology on how the dynamics of everyday life generate cultural updates, transforming the boundaries between identity and alterity. Its interdisciplinary approach and breadth of sources widen the scope of the debate about cultural identity in Hellenistic Egypt."
- Ronaldo G. Gurgel Pereira, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2022.02.04Â [https://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/2022/2022.02.04/]
All academics and post-graduate students interested in religious and cultural interactions in the multicultural society of Graeco-Roman Egypt, and anyone concerned with material culture, religious iconography and religious anthropology.