My MPhil thesis looks at domestic examples of 'Aegyptiac' material (i.e. objects that express stylistically and materially a distinctively ancient Egyptian-ness) from Campania. I am primarily interested in three obsidian skyphoi (cups) with Egyptian scenes inlaid in gold and mosaic and fragments of a phiale (broad flat container) with Nilotic scenes which were discovered at the Villa San Marco at Stabiae.
Despite long-standing scholarly and cultural interest in Roman Aegyptiaca, much work remains to be done to contextualize the Egyptian or Egyptian-style material culture found in Roman locales, whether Italian or provincial. Roman visual representations of Egypt remain a corpus of material that has the potential to provide a rich testing ground for research on intercultural exchange, the lived experience of empire, and the complex entanglement of people, things, and images. The single collection from the Villa San Marco raises questions of design, materiality, production, trade, and transport, suggesting that the visual language of Egypt was actively understood and invested in by the Campanian elite.
