Date: Saturday, October 15, 2011, 3:30pm

Chapter: Pennsylvania

Presenter: Dr. Caitlin Barrett, University of Pennsylvania

Location: Classroom 2, University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology

Lectures are FREE to ARCE-PA members, $3 for University of Pennsylvania Museum Members, and $5 for the general public.

Description: “Nilotic scenes” – images of the Nile in flood – were common throughout the Mediterranean from the late Hellenistic period through the Roman Empire. The protagonists of these Egyptianizing scenes are often dark-skinned pygmies or dwarfs who do battle with hippopotami and crocodiles or engage in sexual activity. Many scholars interpret these images as ridiculous, suggesting that the artists were denigrating Egyptians as stereotypically exotic “others.” However, many of the pygmy-figures’ seemingly ludicrous acts actually find precedents in Egyptian religious iconography. Rather than mocking Egyptian culture, these scenes may actually reflect genuine engagement with the Egyptian theology of the flooding Nile.

A particularly intriguing example comes from the house of one wealthy Pompeiian freedman, P. Cornelius Tages, whose garden contained not only an elaborate sequence of Nilotic paintings but also a water installation that can be understood as a model of the Nile itself. The present paper analyzes the iconography of the Nilotic scenes in Tages’ garden, relating them to their architectural setting. The Nilotic garden complex also provides important information on strategies of competitive display in Pompeiian domestic decoration. Given his status as a nouveau-riche former slave, Tages’ numerous allusions to the architecture and decoration of upper-class villas – including his employment of Egyptianizing imagery – may represent an effort to bolster his credentials as a member of the Pompeiian elite.

About the Speaker: Caitlín Barrett (A.B. Harvard 2003, Ph.D. Yale 2009) is Assistant Professor of Classics at Cornell University. Drawing on both archaeological and textual evidence, her research examines cultural, religious, and trade connections between Greco-Roman Egypt and the rest of the ancient Mediterranean. Her book, Egyptianizing Figurines from Delos: A Study in Hellenistic Religion (Columbia Studies in the Classical Tradition 36), is forthcoming from Brill Publishers in fall 2011. Other publications have appeared in a variety of academic journals, including the Journal of Mediterranean Archaeology, the Journal of Ancient Near Eastern Religion, and a forthcoming supplement to Bulletin de Correspondance Hellénique. Her work has received grants from the Fulbright Foundation, the American Research Center in Egypt, and Sigma Xi, among other sources. She is currently working on a second book on “Nilotic scenes” in late Hellenistic and early Imperial Campania.