Alexandria: A Cultural and Religious Melting Pot (AARHUS STUDIES IN MEDITERRANEAN ANTIQUITY)

Throughout the entire span of Graeco-Roman antiquity, Alexandria represented a meeting place for many ethnic cultures and the city itself was subject to a wide range of local developments, which created and formatted a distinct Alexandrine 'culture' as well as several distinct 'cultures'. Ancient Greek, Roman and Jewish observers communicated or held claim to that particular message. Hence, Arrian, Theocritus, Strabo, and Athenaeus reported their fascination with the Alexandrine melting pot to the wider world as did Philo, Josephus and Clement. In various fashions, the four papers of Part I of the volume, Alexandria from Greece and Egypt, deal with the relationship between Ptolemaic Alexandria and its Greek past. However, the Egyptian origin and heritage also plays important roles for the arguments. The contributions to the second part of the book are devoted to discussions of various aspects of contact and development between Rome, Judaism and Christianity. Introduction / George Hinge And Jens A. Krasilnikoff -- Alexandria As Place : Tempo-spatial Traits Of Royal Ideology In Early Ptolemaic Egypt / Jens A. Krasilnikoff -- Theatrical Fiction And Visual Bilingualism In The Monumental Tombs Of Ptolemaic Alexandria / Marjorie Susan Venit -- Language And Race : Theocritus And The Koine Identity Of Ptolemaic Egypt / George Hinge -- Homeric Scholarship In Alexandria / Minna Skafte Jensen -- Philo As A Polemist And A Political Apologist : An Investigation Of His Two Historical Treatises Against Flaccus And The Embassy To Gaius / Per Bilde -- Alexandrian Judaism : Rethinking A Problematic Cultural Category / Anders Klostergaard Petersen -- From School To Patriarchate : Aspects On The Christianisation Of Alexandria / Samuel Rubenson -- Religious Conflict In Late Antique Alexandria : Christian Responses To Pagan Statues In The Fourth And Fifth Centuries Ce / Troels Myrup Kristensen. Edited By George Hinge And Jens A. Krasilnikoff. Includes Bibliographical References.