The Roman world as included alterity?
Miguel John VersluysCultural Ecologies 3
“Style (-) is often used as a means of delimiting, demarcating, and cutting out: as a weapon. At the same time, style has also played an important (and too little recognized) role in the acceptance of cultural diversity.”
(Carlo Ginsburg, Wooden eyes. Nine reflections on distance (2001, original edition Occhiacci di legno, 1998) 109)
Iseum Campense, Rome.
Plan after Lembke 1994.
Meaning?
The structure of my presentation:
*Introduction: the sanctuary of Isis on the Campus Martius in Rome.
*Meanings of Aegyptiaca Romana
*Egyptian style as context? On the ‘materiality’ of the Egyptian visual language
*Conclusion 1: the uses of Egypt and the Egyptian style in longue durée perspective
*Conclusion 2: included alterity?
Aegyptiaca Romana: Egyptian and egyptianising monuments and artefacts in a Roman context, or: material culture from the Roman world bringing to mind an association with Egypt.
Meanings of Aegyptiaca Romana
1. Religious (but …)
2. Political (but…)
3. Exotic/decorative (but ...)
Michel Malaise, Pour une terminologie et une analyse des cultes isiaques (2005)
rejects the use of the term Aegyptiaca Romana and proposes to distinguish between
Aegyptiaca: objets importés en dehors du circuit isiaque
Pharaonica: oeuvres égyptiennes qui ont trouvé place dans les lieux des cultes isiaques
Nilotica: paysages nilotiques
Aegyptomania: un travail de recréation (-) et le désir d’une réutilisation, une utilité autre qu’à l’orgine, qu’elle soit religieuse, philophique, ésotérique, historique, politique ou économique
However:
Nilotic scenes, for example, seem to be interpretable at four levels, or perhaps better in four ways.
Firstly, a very factual, practical level: a nymphaeum in a Roman garden is decorated with a Nilotic landscape because the real water could thus flow over the depicted water.
Secondly, a level associated with the personal context: a nymphaeum in a Roman garden is decorated with a Nilotic scene because a follower of the Egyptian cults or a grain merchant who regularly stayed in Alexandria lived there.
Thirdly a more abstract level, determined by various social contexts that surround the material: a nymphaeum in a Roman garden is decorated with a Nilotic scene because it is a truphe motif which was appropriate for such an area.
Fourthly, a syntagmatic level, that is related to the larger narrative as it took place in time: a nymphaeum in a Roman garden is decorated with a Nilotic scene because the Romans thus expressed their attitude and thoughts in respect of Egypt in particular and the exotic Other in general.
All four interpretations are equally true and moreover are closely interrelated.
Cf. Baudrillard who distinguishes between a:
*natural stage (use)
*commodity stage (exchange)
*structural stage (sign)
Most interesting for the audience is the big difference there seems to be between the literary sources and the archaeological (material culture) sources.
The literary sources testify to a very negative Roman perception of Egypt (Cleopatra, animal worship, etc.).
The archaeological sources tell a different story: in public and private contexts ‘Egypt’ was everywhere.
Important for further research:
*Structural interpretations of the catalogues at our posession (Malaise 1972, Roullet 1972, Malaise 1984 etc.). What kind of choices are made? What kind of depictions are popular? What kind of material? What gods? What % of all Egyptian and egyptianising statues in Rome are animals?
*Clear terminology: we deal with an acculturation process, but that only is a truism. As far as the Aegyptiaca are concerned do we have to speak about addition, modification, transformation, translation or creation?
If not …, see C. Vout, Embracing Egypt, in: G. Woolf & C. Edwards, Rome the Cosmopolis (2003) 177-202 (“funerary affiliation”)
Egyptian style as context? On the ‘materiality’ of the Egyptian visual language
“What we think of as style is pervasive in human society, no matter how we may define it. And style is involved in all archaeological analysis, whether it is covertly or overtly
discussed. (-) the study of style and its place in research and interpretation in archaeology is central and determing.”
(M. Conkey & C. Hastorf, The uses of style in archaeology (New directions in archaeology) (1990) 1)
“Die Stildiagnose ist eine Differentialdiagnose”
(J. Assmann, Viel Stil am Nil? Altägypten und das Problem des Kulturstils, in: H.U. Gumbrecht & K. Ludwig Pfeiffer (eds.), Stil. Geschichten und Funktionen eines
kulturwissenschaftlichen Diskurselementes (1986) 519-537, 526)
“Le style c’est le diable”
(Paul Valéry)
From the 18th century onwards ‘style’ has been related either to a certain people or to a certain period (Volk oder Zeit)
Although post-processualism broadened our scope of possible understandings of ‘style’ (Style as communication within or between groups. Stylistic behaviour would have to do with ideologies and strategies of legitimation) it largely remained in the ‘Volk oder Zeit’ framework.
Here we encounter the inherent ambiguity of the concept: it has, of course, something to do with groups and/or specific periods, but never in the way we imagine it to be, as a kind of social index.
Another important tension is that by our style types and definitions, we create the past, not always knowing, however, how relevant these definitions were in the past.
Materiality studies may help to develop an alternative paradigm:
Materiality (in fact an archaeological truism) = “thingness’
not style IN context (signs, vehicles, bearers, components, indicators, and so on, actually what happened with the Aegyptiaca sofar)
but style AS context
A comparison with the Greek visual discourse?
Die Griechische Klassik. Idee oder Wirklichkeit, 627 on the Roman world, summarising the work by Hölscher:
“Ausgangspunt ist die Feststellung, daß es sich um eine Zeit handelt, in der die Stile verschiedener Zeiten (Archaik, Klassik, Hellenismus) zur Verfügung standen. Seit dem Hellenismus erhielt die Wahl eines Stils die Funktion, bei dem Betrachter bestimmte Assozationen hervorzurufen”.
Bestimmte Themen = Bestimmte Darstellungsformen
Classicism = the emulation of an earlier set of visual styles. Numerous earlier styles and forms serve as a kind of cultural memory bank. It is artistic appropriation with important socio-political consequences.
J. Elsner, Classicism in Roman art, in: J.I. Porter (ed.), Classical Pasts. The classical traditions of Greece and Rome (2006) 270-297 : The Egyptian tradition as part of the inherent pluralism of the Roman world, together with the Greek tradition, the Etruscan legacy, Orientalia, and so forth.
However:
Aegyptiaca were not “stripped of any indigenous meaning and reduced to being one further option in an empire-wide range of decorative choices”
The categories ‘Greek’, ‘Egyptian’ and ‘Oriental’ all look very different, also in quantity and quality. Of course they all form part of Roman ecclecticism, but their roles and functions are so different that putting them side by side adds little to explain their functioning within the Roman world.
Conclusion 1: the uses of Egypt and the Egyptian style in longue durée perspective
The uses of Egypt in Imperial Rome (evocation=active, it does something).
The Egyptian style is not only reflecting, but also is something itself.
*the evocation, by its forms and material, of a world of exotic, elite luxury (“social exoticism”)
(think of the many aegyptiaca found in horti, large estates around the centre of Rome, and the Villa Hadriana).
*the evocation of imperial connotations/monumentality(Schneider, in Ägypten-Griechenland-Rom sees obelisks “als das vielleicht spektakulärste Symbol der Identität und Ideologie des kaiserlichen Rom”)
*the evocation of conquered Egypt (“display by appropriation”) and the Augustan cultural revolution.
*the evocation of Egypt (and the East) that now was Rome: accepting and accomodating the cultural diversity of the Empire
Why is ‘a Greek style’ used?
Hellenistic Alexandria: The overcome the cultural dislocation of a Greek educated elite Hellenistic Greek East: Exploring connections to, inter alia, the Athenian pastRoman world: Expressing proximity to- or distance and autonomy from Greece (and often both of these at once)Second Sophistic: Articulating identity towards Rome (possibly)Late antiquity: Expressing newly defined paganism18th century Europe: Revolting against Christianity and the expression of Enlightenment ideas
Such a kind of ‘cultural biography’ should be made of the perception of the idea of Egypt and the Egyptian style.
Understanding the meaning of Aegyptiaca Romana in longue durée perspective
Egypt Greece – Etruria – and so on │ │600 BC Cyprus/Phoenicia │ │500 BC Greece │ │ │ │300 BC Hellenistic Anatolia │ │200 BC Ptolemaic Egypt │ │-------------------------------------------------------------------Rome’s use of other cultures │ │ │ │1500 AD Renaissance Europe │ │1850 AD France
How valid our stylistic description of something as ‘Egyptian’ is, then remains to be seen.
Minucius Felix, Octavius XXII, 1 talking about the cults of Isis:
Haec tamen Aegyptia quondam, nunc et sacra Romana sunt
It was once Egyptian, but now it is a Roman cult
Conclusion 2: Inherent pluralism?
Cultural change, and with it the concept of cultural messages, is often imagined as bi-polar. Compare the discussion on Romanisation: there are two sides and their interaction results in an amalgam we mostly call acculturation (with related concepts as dominance and resistance).
Included alterity might be a better concept to understand the Roman world. Related concepts are
-inherent pluralism
-bilingualism
-code-switching
Cf. a recent book by the German sociologist U Beck, Der kosmopolitische Blick oder: Krieg ist Frieden (2004)
Philae, Westcollonade: Nero offering to Egyptian and Nubian gods.
Cultural messages?
Hölscher
*Culture = memory: we are what we remember
*Roman culture as a specific successor culture: yes, but, how much past was powerfully active?
*Knowledge: cultural property doing something in the present, often without a clear historical dimension. It does not explicitly establish a relationship with the past. Always
*Memory: a past that is closed off and that is part of a conscious retrospective. In those days
*The historical origins of the various styles played no essential role in the semantic communication; as a rule a historical dimension is not discernible.
*Cultural knowledge = Greek
Cultural memory = Roman
Veyne
La civilisation romaine a été une partie importante de la culture hellénistique
Ce que peut vouloir dire acculturation dans le cas de Rome?
The first hellenisation already starts in the 6th century BC; this is not acculturation because Italy was then a “secteur culturel de l’hellénisme international”. The second hellenisation starts in the 3rd century BC.
Greek means actually Hellenistic = civilisation mondiale / la culture tout court
“ce civiliser voulait dire s’helléniser”.
The paradox thus only appears in the second hellenisation because then Rome is in power. Roman writers show a fascination for this paradox: many big Romans were, in aspects, very Greek.
Les techniques n’ ont pas de patrie (nor does orginality)
Hellenisation of Rome = diffusion par stimulation. Rome will do the same thing in the provinces.
Acculturation is such a good word because it shows that it is not imitation.
