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It is an obvious strategy of revisionism, in Classical archaeology: to see what J. J. Winckelmann said about this or that object, or sort of object, and then to measure ‘how far we have come’, in terms of interpretative enlightenment since the late eighteenth century. With the great Nilotic mosaic of Palestrina, that strategy looks at first sight promising enough. Winckelmann's theory was that it must represent a heroic narrative – specifically, the curious variant of Helen's abduction in which Paris carries off merely an eidolon, while the real Helen is secreted by the gods to Egypt and eventually retrieved from there by Menelaus (for details of the story, see Euripides’ Helen). Winckelmann proposed Menelaus to be the foreground figure in greenish armour holding up a drinking-horn, Helen the lady attendant with a ladle – but there was little else to support his reading, and so alternative theories have multiplied (naturally enough – since the date of the mosaic is not absolutely established). In this case, however, it seems we are still short of a satisfactory resolution. By including discussion of the mosaic in her survey of Egypt in Italy, Molly Swetnam-Burland admits that it could as easily post- as pre-date Rome's annexation of the Ptolemaic kingdom; and yet she does not want it to be generically categorized as a sample of nilotica. ‘Representations of Egypt were rarely if ever to be considered in isolation’ (154). This could be the motto of her study, which explores how objects and ideas from and about Egypt became ‘recontextualized’ by the Romans. We may not have a definitive account for the Palestrina mosaic, but overall the results of this approach are worth reading. Analysis of the process whereby the first two obelisks were brought from Egypt to Rome, for example, demands that we do not content ourselves with seeing these transplanted megaliths as simply the trophies of Aegypto capta, nor just signs of Rome's attempt to rival Alexandria, but part of a claim by Augustus to pharaonic/cosmic powers. The author does not confine herself to archaeology: a substantial section of the book is devoted to an analysis of Juvenal's Satire 15.
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References
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