Title: The appropriation of Egypt in the Roman domestic contexts of Pompeii
Speaker: Eva Mol, Leiden University
Abstract: The proposed lecture will discuss the role of Egyptian and Egyptianised artefacts (also known as Aegyptiaca) in the Roman houses of Pompeii and Campania. A great number of both imported and locally produced Egyptian objects found their way into domestic contexts. My PhD-research examines how these objects, in all their complexity and diversity, were used and experienced by the Romans and if (and how) Egypt as a cultural concept could have become appreciated and communicated through material culture. The types of artefacts and their location within the house allow addressing questions concerning their function, meaning and value. How did these ‘foreign’ objects become integrated in Roman society? Were they (still) experienced as foreign or even as Egyptian? Was there a difference experienced between Egyptian imports and Egyptianised products? What was at the base of the choice for certain objects? It is important to address such questions, because the appropriation and subsequent transformation and modification of the objects under discussion could say something valuable about social and ideological values within Roman society.
Next to the question of what role artefacts played in a Roman context, it is of equal importance to look at the effect Egypt had through material culture on a Roman context. We have to consider both how such objects were able to mediate social relationships between people and how the everyday engagement with Egyptianised artefacts could have affected society.
Eval Mol is a PhD researcher in the University of Leiden, the Netherlands, from where she also holds her BA and Mphil. Her research interests the function of Egyptian material culture in Roman private contexts, developing new methods of household archaeology by means of an integration of spatial analysis in this field.