Sally-Ann Ashton - Petries Ptolemaic and Roman Memphis

For Sally MacDonald, Stephen Quirke and the late Barbara Adams In recognition of their support and encouragement

I am especially grateful to my colleagues at the Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology. This book is the product of two years work on the collection but also represents the encouragement and support that I received during this time and continue to receive from Stephen Quirke and Sally MacDonald. I am further grateful to Stephen for the many discussions of the material and for his comments on the early chapters of my text. I would also like to thank Ivor Pridden and Hugh Kilmister for help with the images and their management, and the photographers Dan Bell, Dan King and Frances Nutt. I am particularly grateful to the late Barbara Adams for her help with the history of the collection and its display, management and storage. Barbara was never too busy to share her experiences of the museum and this has proved invaluable with regard to the history of the objects.

I would like to thank Dorothy Thompson and David Jeffreys for allowing me to use maps of Memphis that were drawn for and by them; and I am also extremely grateful to Dorothy for her comments on the text and her suggestions. I am grateful to John Tait for his help in locating the Memphis maps and providing copies for this publication, and the Egypt Exploration Society for permission to reproduce them. I would like to thank Emily Teeter for sharing her views on the Medinet Habu terracotta figures prior to the publication of her book, Julie Dawson for her suggestions and help with the bibliography, and Jo Dillon for her comments and suggestions of how some of the plaster material might have been utilised in the casting of bronzes. I am extremely grateful to Hanna Szymanska for her comments on and for sharing her thoughts on the terracottas and their dating. I would also like to thank Peter Ucko for his interest in the project.

Finally, I would like to thank Ian Blair, Lucilla Burn, Angus Graham, Pamela Magrill and David Symons for their comments on the text and its content; their input has proved to be invaluable. Any errors, however, are my responsibility.

The types of problems that will be addressed in this publication are those commonly encountered during handling sessions in the Petrie Museum and also by students on excavations of Ptolemaic and Roman sites in Egypt. It is intended that this publication will offer an introduction to key aspects of the material culture of Ptolemaic and Roman Egypt, which will serve as a guide for students who are new to the field. The original idea for this book was to question the validity of the term Greco-Roman, which is widely used to describe material culture from a period that potentially spans nearly 1000 years, from the start of Ptolemaic rule in Egypt in 323 BCE to the Arab conquest in 642 CE . While the existence of a useful label such as Greco-Roman is understandable particularly since the two periods fall within the realms of the classical world it is rarely, if ever, used by classical scholars as a distinct chronological period in which objects and sites are placed outside Egypt. In 1970, Lewis, a papyrologist, also questioned the validity of the term Greco-Roman and concluded that it seems to me that the expression Greco-Roman Egypt has outlived its usefulness. Our literature can only gain in clarity and precision if we discard it from our professional vocabulary. The historical periods that interest us are called Ptolemaic (or Hellenistic), Roman, and Byzantine: let us call them by their right terms (Lewis 1970: 14).

In my work on the material culture (objects) from these periods, I have felt it necessary to adapt Lewiss proposal and to rename the chronological divisions as well as add new terms in order to cover the cultural or stylistic aspects. Ptolemaic in chronological terms obviously covers the period of 323 BC (after the death of Alexander and when Ptolemy was satrap of Egypt, although officially the Macedonian house ruled a fact which has led to a subdivision and the so-called Macedonian period, prior to 306/5 BCE when Ptolemy was made King of Egypt) and ends with the death of Cleopatra VII in 30 BC . Hellenistic has the same chronological boundaries because the .

My realisation that the Ptolemaic and Roman periods in Egypt were very different in both character and the materials that represented each period came largely through working on the finds from the excavations conducted by Sir William Mathew Flinders Petrie, which are presently held in the Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology at University College London (UCL). The objects from Memphis constitute the largest body of material and by far the most comprehensive selection of objects from any of the Ptolemaic and Roman sites excavated by Petrie and now housed in UCL. By focusing on the differences of manufacturing technique, iconography and style, the perceptible changes from the Ptolemaic to the early Roman period will be examined by using material from Petries excavations at Memphis, concentrating on the first and second centuries CE in the Roman period.

Memphis is a large and difficult site to understand. Strabo, a first-century BCE visitor to the site who recorded his visit in book eight of a work entitled Geographies , commented on both its size and its cosmopolitan nature. Memphis has, however, received nowhere near the same attention as Alexandria, the capital of Egypt during the Ptolemaic period, in spite of the fact that it was the main royal residence in the early years of Ptolemy Is reign and then again under Ptolemy V (204-180 BCE ).

By far the most useful profile of the city in Ptolemaic times is Dorothy Thompsons Memphis under the Ptolemies . In her publication Thompson considers economic, social and religious aspects of Egypts second city in the Ptolemaic period. It is not the intention of this present publication to repeat or compete with Thompsons work but rather to complement it. Thus the production of faience, terracottas and metal, to which the earlier publication makes reference but does not discuss in any detail (pp. 6770) will be considered more fully. Other issues which are important to Memphis and also our understanding of some of the differences between Ptolemaic and Roman Egypt such as the god Sarapis, a Hellenised version of the already existing Memphite god Osiris-Apis, will also be discussed. The ideological implications behind the treatment of the deity in the Ptolemaic period in particular is important for understanding the royal policy of reaching Greek and Egyptian communities in both Alexandria and Memphis.