Visualizing the Afterlife in the Tombs of Graeco-Roman Egypt

This book explores the visual narratives of a group of decorated tombs from Ptolemaic and Roman Egypt (c.300 BCE–250 CE).

Marjorie Susan Venit (Author)

9781107048089, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 24 November 2015

296 pages, 159 b/w illus. 34 colour illus.
28.7 x 22.4 x 2 cm, 1.19 kg

Lost in Egypt's honeycombed hills, distanced by its western desert, or rendered inaccessible by subsequent urban occupation, the monumental decorated tombs of the Graeco-Roman period have received little scholarly attention. This volume serves to redress this deficiency. It explores the narrative pictorial programs of a group of decorated tombs from Ptolemaic and Roman-period Egypt (c.300 BCE–250 CE). Its aim is to recognize the tombs' commonalities and differences across ethnic divides and to determine the rationale that lies behind these connections and dissonances. This book sets the tomb programs within their social, political, and religious context and analyzes the manner in which the multicultural population of Graeco-Roman Egypt chose to negotiate death and the afterlife.

1. Death, bilingualism, and biography in the 'eventide' of Egypt: the Tomb of Petosiris and its afterlife
2. Egypt as metaphor: visual bilingualism in the monumental tombs of ancient Alexandria
3. Greek myth as metaphor in the chora of Egypt
4. Tradition and innovation in the tombs of the Egyptian chora Tuna el-Gebel
5. Bricolage and Greek-collage in the tombs of the Egyptian chora
6. Intersection and interconnection in the negotiation of the afterlife in tombs of Graeco-Roman Egypt.

Subject Areas: Egyptian archaeology / Egyptology [HDDG]