EGYPT & THE CLASSICS CURRICULUM: HAECKL (con't.)

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On the theory that one could learn while teaching, I developed a course that would explore some of the complex ways in which Classical and Egyptian mores and beliefs came to clash and co-mingle from the sixth century BCE to the sixth century CE. Teaching “Multiculturalism in Greco-Roman Egypt” has not only enriched my own research, but also attracted students to a body of Classical material that pulses with possibilities for original scholarship. At last year’s CAMWS meetings, for example, one of my Kalamazoo students and I presented papers that both grew directly out of this course.

Additional reasons for creating this course were peculiar to Kalamazoo College, but could also be applicable to other institutions. To graduate from Kalamazoo, students must fulfill a college Cultures Requirement of at least three courses that “focus on the cultural traditions that help make up the complex and many-sided nature of the United States…as well as…[address] the cultural complexities of other countries.” “Courses with historical focus” are acceptable, as long as they “draw attention to how knowledge of the past deepens one’s understanding of the present” and “relate to present-day culture in some fashion.” Since there is always a demand for new Cultures courses at Kalamazoo, I designed “Multiculturalism in Greco-Roman Egypt” to those specifications. The Classics Department thereby gained a new course for its own curriculum, but also provided a new service course to the college as a whole – an economical way to please the administration of a small school. Finally, because Kalamazoo College offers no classes in Egyptology, a Classics course with “Egypt” in the title helps us lure into the study of the Greco-Roman world otherwise unsuspecting students fascinated with the “Land of the Pharaohs” and the “Gift of the Nile.” I’ve taught the course four times, to a total of 95 students; more than half of them have gone on to take other Classics courses.

The course spans a ten-week quarter, has no prerequisites and is cross-listed with the History Department. It is organized chronologically, with roughly half the quarter devoted to the Greeks and Egypt and half to Roman Egypt. Within this chronological framework, I tend to treat material topically and thematically. We begin by trying to define multiculturalism, using students’ experience of cultural diversity in the contemporary USA as a frame of reference. We examine multicultural paradigms such as the “melting pot” and “salad bowl,” and discuss the challenges, benefits, tensions, and problems faced by citizens in our increasingly pluralistic society.

For the rest of Week 1, we turn to the varied geographic and ethnographic landscape of ancient Egypt, from the cosmopolitan Mediterranean Delta, through the agrarian towns and villages in the Western oases, into the Nile Valley cities and sanctuaries of Middle and Upper Egypt, and as far as the remote mines, quarries and Red Sea ports of the Eastern Desert. I introduce the controversial Afrocentrist contention that the ancient Egyptians were “black,” a theme to which we return throughout the quarter, by illustrating how problematic it is for scholars to equate skin color in Egyptian art with race and ethnicity. We look at works of Pharaonic art in which skin color often has more to do with representations of gender and status, religious symbolism, and the aesthetics of power than with the depiction of race. However, we acknowledge the Egyptian predilection for ethnic stereotypes of foreigners (yellow-skinned, hook-nosed Asiatics; black-skinned, full-lipped, short-haired Nubians; light-skinned, wasp-waisted Mediterranean islanders), placing it in the context of the conventionalized ideal that also prevails in Egyptian self-representation. This demographic survey naturally leads to the great unifying force of Egyptian civilization, the pharaoh, whose theology, ideology and iconography remains vital throughout the millennium when Ptolemaic kings and queens and Roman emperors ruled Egypt.

Week 2 concentrates on Herodotus Book II, the obvious text through which to explore Greek perceptions of Egypt prior to its conquest by Alexander. Because Martin Bernal relies so heavily on Herodotus when he argues that Western scholars have systematically devalued the contributions of Pharaonic Egypt to the formation of Greek civilization, Book II also serves to raise contentious issues posed by Black Athena. Students see that Herodotus explicitly admits Egyptian priority in many matters concerning Greek gods and religion. But I also demonstrate that classical archaeologists have long appreciated the significant synchronicity between the establishment of a permanent Greek emporium at Naucratis in Egypt in 633 BCE and the first appearance of large-scale stone temples and statuary in the Greek world. Formal comparisons between Egyptian statues and kouroi and korai, between Egyptian plant-stem columns and the Doric Order, vividly document the profound and undeniable impact of direct contact with Egyptian monuments upon the art and architecture of Archaic Greece.

I also use Book II to encourage discussion of Herodotus as a “Father of Orientalism” as well as the “Father of History and Anthropology.” We look at ways in which Herodotus exoticizes the Egyptian Other and relate them to Greek depictions of Egyptians on vase paintings. It is difficult, for example, not to read a sense of Greek cultural superiority into scenes of Heracles and Busiris such as this slide, in which the towering, clean-limbed Hellenic hero makes mincemeat out of caricatured, pygmy-like Egyptians (note the ethnographically correct circumcised penis!) for daring to sacrifice all foreigners who entered their country. John Boardman noted that the famous vase-painter Exekios twice labeled an African attendant of the Ethiopian king Memnon as “Amasis/Amasos,” the Hellenized Egyptian name of Amasis the potter (possibly the same man as the Amasis Painter), Exekios’ most prolific rival in the Athenian potters’ quarter. In both cases, Exekios rendered the tightly curled hair and African facial features of “Amasis” in exacting detail. Are we looking at pictorial “ethnic jokes,” sixth-century BCE racial slurs against an Athenian artisan with Egyptian affiliations?

We begin Week 3 by analyzing Alexander the Great’s activities in Egypt as a template for strategies employed by the Ptolemaic Dynasty to legitimize Macedonian rule of multicultural Egypt. In his pilgrimage to the shrine of Ammon in Siwa and his coronation as pharaoh by Egyptian priests in the venerable Pharaonic capital of Memphis, Alexander deftly combined demonstrations of respect for Egyptian religion with exploitation of the native institution of divine kingship. At the same time, his foundation of Alexandria, persistently viewed by Egyptians as an alien entity grafted onto the soil of Egypt, was a visionary move toward physically integrating Egypt into the wider Hellenistic world, both economically and culturally. We spend the rest of Weeks 3 and 4 exploring later Ptolemaic permutations on Alexander’s policy of manipulating, balancing and integrating Hellenistic and Egyptian concepts of rulership and religion. Students enjoy “parsing” the iconographic language of Ptolemaic royal portraits, in which time-honored Pharaonic costumes, symbols and regalia variously contrast and combine with Hellenistic modes of portrayal. This propagandistic pluralism was mirrored in Ptolemaic architecture. For example, Greek-style temples for the worship of the Hellenized triad of Serapis, Isis and Harpocrates adorned Alexandria, while new Egyptian-style sanctuaries were erected in predominately native Upper Egypt. A literary description of the Grand Procession of Ptolemy II Philadelphus in Alexandria and the decree on the Rosetta Stone provide textual counterparts to the stylistic dualism of Ptolemaic art and architecture. The Dionysiac imagery of the former was almost exclusively Greek in cultic and visual vocabulary, while the latter adhered closely to the uniquely Egyptian theology of the pharaoh as guarantor of ma-at, cosmic justice, order, harmony and peace.

In order to encourage students to use what they have learned about the multicultural heritage of Egypt under Greek rule, their first writing assignment is to design, in a three- to five-page paper, an ideal program of “archaeologically and chronologically correct” public art and architecture to inaugurate the reign of a newly crowned Ptolemaic king and/or queen. Because this visual propaganda must communicate with native Egyptian and immigrant Greek subjects alike, students are required to consider both Pharaonic and Greek modes of representation, materials and building types when creating their official coinage, portrait statues, architecture and/or ephemeral public spectacles. They must also take the regional distribution of Ptolemaic Egypt’s population into account when deciding where to display their royal statues, institute a religious festival, or undertake construction projects like founding new towns, erecting temples, palaces, public amenities, etc. I welcome fact-based imagination and creativity, but ideas must be anchored in solid archaeological precedent. Anachronisms and wild, unsupported scenarios are unacceptable.

Week 5 is devoted to the multivalent figure of Cleopatra VII, who presided over the epochal historical transition of Egypt from independent dynastic kingdom to Roman province. Reading Mary Lefkowitz and Shelley Haley on the contentious question “was Cleopatra black?” focuses Afrocentrist arguments upon a single individual, and sparks discussion about why Cleopatra remains even today such an attractive icon for multicultural appropriation. Horace’s Nunc est bibendum and excerpts from Plutarch’s Life of Antony reveal how the Romans turned proto-Orientalist stereotypes of Egyptians to their own political ends, particularly when the Egyptian in question was a Ptolemaic queen who subverted Roman constructs of masculinity and power.

In Weeks 6 through 8, we shift away from lifestyles of the cosmopolitan rich and famous to those of the mundane and middle-class in the Roman countryside. The wealth of material culture excavated at Roman sites in the Fayum suggests that a genuinely multicultural mind-set was taking root in the private lives of ordinary people. Despite hierarchical distinctions in the legal status of Romans, Hellenes and Egyptians, citizens and non-citizens of various ethnicities seemed to share tastes in personal names, fashionable dress and coiffure, popular religion and burial practices to a greater degree than under the Ptolemaic Dynasty. For example, although Augustus reportedly sneered that “Romans worship gods, not animals,” crocodile cults continued to flourish in Roman temples throughout the Fayum. Recent high-profile archaeological discoveries like the “Valley of the Golden Mummies” in the Bahariya Oasis document the widespread abandonment of Classical funerary rites in favor of Egyptian-style embalming during the Roman period.

Our unit on daily life in the Roman chora sets the stage for a second writing assignment, which is to analyze a “Fayum portrait” of the student’s choice as a mode of self-presentation in Roman Egypt. The majority of such portraits once belonged to mummies, with obvious multicultural implications for funerary practice in Roman Egypt. In an effort to determine whether their subject is portrayed as an Egyptian, a Greek, a Roman or a multicultural mosaic of identities, students consider skin color, gender, age, hair/beard style, costume, ornamentation, attributes and accessories as indices of social status and ethnicity. If the portrait is labeled, they must take into account the ethnic significance of the person’s name, and are encouraged to contextualize the portrait with citations of personal documents presented in Rowlandson’s sourcebook of primary texts, Women and Society in Greek and Roman Egypt. The goal is for students to engage directly with the ways in which native Egyptian heritage and imported Classical traditions could merge in the lives of the individual men, women and children who created antiquity’s most well-documented and diverse African and Mediterranean culture.

I make my own fieldwork at Berenike the subject of Week 9. Berenike’s key role in the Mediterranean world’s Red Sea trade with Southern Africa, Arabia, India and beyond adds a further international dimension to the multicultural milieu of Roman Egypt. I outline the diverse responsibilities of the Roman army in the Eastern Desert, from maintaining garrisons along caravan routes to the administration of imperial quarries at Mons Claudianus and Mons Porphyrites. We also look at ways in which Berenike and Red Sea commerce may have figured in two of the most debilitating crises to afflict the Roman Empire in the late second and third centuries CE, the Antonine plague and the rise of Zenobia of Palmyra.

These intimations of doom lead to our final week, a unit on tensions between pagans and monotheists in Greco-Roman Egypt. Discussion of the Jewish and Early Christian experience in Egypt presents students with an ancient multicultural society where religious rather than racial difference seems to have provoked intolerance and recurrent urban riots. Here is an undeniable dark side of Greco-Roman Egypt; when monotheism enters the picture, all is not ma’at and moonbeams. It is unfortunate, but I find that recent outbreaks of racial violence in American cities like Los Angeles and Cincinnati make it easy for students to relate to ancient accounts of ethnic and sectarian conflict in Alexandria. For example, they always seem to find the emperor Claudius’ Letter to the Alexandrians on the pagan “disturbances and rioting, or rather, to speak the truth, the war, against the Jews” startlingly modern in tone and relevant in message. The last class of the term is spent discussing whether and in what ways Greco-Roman Egypt – a society where Egyptians, Nubians, Jews, Greeks, and Romans coexisted for centuries, with cooperation and conflict, to produce an art and architecture and to practice cults and customs rich in Pharaonic survivals, revivals and transformations as well as Classical responses, assimilations and innovations -- can serve as an instructive model for multicultural 21st-century America.