The discipline of Egyptology has been criticised for being too insular,with little awareness of the development of archaeologies elsewhere. It has remained theoretically underdeveloped. For example the role of Ancient Egypt within Africa has rarely been considered jointly by Egyptologists and Africanists. Egypt's own view of itself has been neglected; views of it in the ancient past, in more recent times and today have remained underexposed. Encounters with Ancient Egypt is a series of eight books which addresses these issues. The books interrelate, inform and illuminate one another and will appeal to a wide market including academics, students and the general public interested in Archaeology, Egyptology, Anthropology, Architecture, Design and History. The allure of Egypt is not exclusive to the modern world. Egypt also held a fascination and attraction for people of the past. In this book, academics from a wide range of disciplines assess the significance of Egypt within the settings of its past. The chronological span is from later prehistory, through to the earliest literate eras of interaction with Mesopotamia and the Levant, the Aegean, Greece and Rome. Ancient Perspectives on Egypt includes both archaeological and documented evidence, which ranges from the earliest writing attested in Egypt and Mesopotamia in the late fourth millennium BC, to graffiti from Abydos that demonstrate pilgrimages from all over the Mediterranean world, to the views of Roman poets on the nature of Egypt. This book presents, for the first time in a single volume, a multi-faceted but coherent collection of images of Egypt from, and of, the past.

Table of Contents

Reconstructing the Role of Egyptian Culture in the Value Regimes of the Bronze Age Aegean: stone vessels and their social contexts; Love and War in the Late Bronze Age: Egypt and Hatti; Egypt and Mesopotamia in the Late Bronze and Iron Ages; Finding the Egyptian in Early Greek Art; Upside Down and Back to Front: Herodotus and the Greek encounter with Egypt; Encounters with Ancient Egypt: the Hellenistic Greek experience; Pilgrimage in Greco-Roman Egypt: new perspectives on graffiti from the Memnonion at Abydos; Carry-on at Canopus: the Nilotic mosaic from Palestrina and Roman attitudes to Egypt; Roman Poets on Egypt.

Author Biography

Roger Matthews is Lecturer in the Archaeology of Western Asia at the Institute of Archaeology, UCL. Cornelia Roemer is Professor of Papyrology at UCL.