A grave kind of interred beauty

A great many books on ancient Egypt appear each year; the same is true of volumes dealing with Roman art and archaeology. However, there are still surprisingly few books that examine aspects of the Roman period in Egypt. The present book is therefore to be welcomed as a contribution to that literature.

In fact, this book is not focused solely on the Roman period but looks at the influences of the Greeks and Egyptians in the period immediately before the conquest of 30BC and ends in the Byzantine era. It stems from the author’s doctoral research at Oxford University and, as such, represents a growing, and laudable, trend among some scholars and institutions to focus on Egypt as part of the larger Mediterranean world.

Christina Riggs’s thesis is that previous scholars have regarded the funerary art of this period as " Mischkunst ", "mixed forms" or "hybrid work", which were artificially concocted to yield what Winifred Needler called "a crude mixed style". Riggs points out that no artist aims to produce "degenerate" work; rather, that this is the perception of scholars who have trained in either classical or Egyptian archaeology and who are therefore unused to what might better be called a fusion of styles.

To the patrons of this art it represented a norm in funerary equipage: "The choice to employ conventions and elements not traditionally included in the Egyptian artistic repertoire was a meaningful one, whether consciously or not." This raises obvious questions about identity and possibly ethnicity, but there is no straightforward correlation between the deceased appearing as Greek or Roman before Egyptian gods. Rather, the deceased can appear in both Greek and Egyptian forms. This may seem a rather ambiguous position but, as Riggs points out, there was considerable intermarriage between Greeks and Egyptians, even at the highest levels, such that "living side by side Greeks and Egyptians affected each other and even became each other, because the boundaries between the two groups were permeable".

In the words of Jonathon Hall, "ethnic identity is socially constructed and subjectively perceived". Over time, Greek took over from demotic as the legal script and those who identified with the Greek language and administration — the Hellenes — came to dominate society, irrespective of their place of birth or racial characteristics. Some of these also held Roman or Alexandrian citizenship. It is for this social elite that the "beautiful burials" came to be made.

It is not surprising then that the art does not correlate with ethnicity as such. In an attempt to see the funerary art of Roman Egypt through the eyes of its contemporary inhabitants, the author takes us through aspects of funerary religion showing how aspects of "traditional" Egyptian religion (which had, of course, evolved and developed in the period leading up to the Roman occupation) were taken up by the Hellenised/Romanised population.

To the pharaonic Egyptians the afterlife was a rebirth with all the gender and sexual connotations that entailed, and males and females were depicted differently in funerary art. From the Late Period (747-332 BC) onwards dead women were increasingly identified with Hathor, while men were identified with Osiris. This is illustrated by a group of coffins from the Kharga Oasis and Akhmim.

Like other objects these are listed in an appendix, and there is also a register of museums that include these and other objects mentioned in the text. These features are certainly to be welcomed, although I would have liked to have seen a little more on the cemeteries from which the coffins came. More details are given when discussing the masks from Meir and some of the examples from Thebes.

While this is not a book dealing with funerary archaeology in its broadest sense, a little more on the archaeology would have been welcome. Each of the three chapters dealing with aspects of religion and art are supported by case studies and are well illustrated.

As someone more accustomed to examining pharaonic material, I found this an interesting and thought-provoking study that forces us to look at these "late" burials in a new and more meaningful light. I was also pleased to see some of the theoretical concepts applied in archaeology outside Egypt being used here to enhance the study of what has wrongly been regarded as aspects of "degenerate art". It is unfortunate that the book’s price tag of £80 will put it beyond the means of many "students of Egyptology and classical archaeology" who make up part of its intended audience.

Paul Nicholson is senior lecturer in archaeology, Cardiff University.