The travel accounts, drawings, and collections of Frederic Cailliaud were an important early contribution to the birth of the new scientific discipline of Egyptology in the first half of the nineteenth century. But one of his major works-on the arts and crafts of ancient Egypt-was never published. For the first time here, his exquisite color plates are presented alongside a translation of his original French text describing them. Explanatory material by Andrew Bednarski and other scholars put the work in context.
Arriving in Egypt in 1815, Cailliaud embarked upon a series of explorations that included the rediscovery of the Roman emerald mines at Mount Zabora and ancient routes to the Red Sea, and expeditions in the Eastern and Western Deserts, and the land we know today as Ethiopia. He made copious notes on the flora and fauna, people and antiquities he saw, and took a collection of over two thousand objects back to France. Cailliaud's beautifully rendered watercolors of scenes on ancient Egyptian tombs and temples (viewed before Champollion's deciphering of Egyptian hieroglyphs) show animated scenes of ancient daily life, with which he draws parallels to the nineteenth-century activities he observed around him.
This is a work that will appeal not only to Egyptologists (professional and amateur), but also to historians, art historians, and readers interested in design. The original French text, never before published, is included in electronic form."

This volume is the second in a series of five on the Insula (city block) of the Menander at Pompeii. The first (on the structures) and the fourth (on the silver treasure) have already been published; the third, on the objects, and the fifth, on the graffiti, are in preparation. The Insula of the Menander, approximately 3500 sq. m. in area, derives its name from the House of the Menander, one of the best-known dwellings of the ancient city. This was evidently the property of one of Pompeii's leading citizens. Renowned for its architectural grandeur and for the hoard of 110 pieces of silver plate found in a cellar, it also yielded room upon room of splendid wall-paintings and mosaic pavements, ranging in date from the first century BC to the eve of the eruption of AD 79. In addition to this dominant house, the block contains several smaller houses - notably the House of the Lovers and the House of the Craftsman - most of which contain further paintings and pavements of interest. The present volume publishes these decorations in full for the first time. Its importance lies in the fact that it covers the whole block, rather than concentrating upon isolated houses (as most previous volumes have done). This enables the reader not only to look at questions of chronology and iconography room by room and house by house, but also to observe broad patterns of taste and social differentiation within a particular neighbourhood of Pompeii.

While there have been many studies devoted to the major heroes and heroines of Homeric epic, among them Achilles, Odysseus, and Helen, the figure of Menelaus has remained notably overlooked in this strand of scholarship. Menelaus in the Archaic Period is the first book-length study of the Homeric character, taking a multidisciplinary approach to his depiction in archaic Greek poetry, art, and cult through detailed analysis of ancient literary, visual, and material evidence. The volume is divided into two parts, the first of which examines the portrayal of Menelaus in the Homeric poems as a unique 'personality' with an integral role to play in each narrative, as depicted through typical patterns of speech and action and through intertextual allusion. The second part explores his representation both in other poetry of the archaic period - including lyric poetry and Simonides' 'Plataea elegy ' - and also archaic art and local Sparta cult, drawing on the literary, archaeological, and inscriptional evidence for the cult of Menelaus with Helen at Therapne. The depiction of Menelaus in archaic art is a particular focal point: Chapter 4 provides a methodology for the interpretation of heroic narrative on archaic Greek vases through iconography and inscriptions and establishes his conventional visual 'identity' on black figure Athenian vases, while an annotated catalogue of images details those that fall outside the 'norm'. Menelaus emerges from this comprehensive study as a unique and likeable character whose relationship with Helen was a popular theme in both epic poetry and vase painting, but one whose portrayal evinced a significant narrative range, with an array of continuities and differences in how he was represented by the Greeks, not only within the archaic period but also in comparison to classical Athens.

A Cyclops is popularly assumed to be nothing more than a flesh-eating, one-eyed monster. In an accessible, stylish, and academically authoritative investigation, this book seeks to demonstrate that there is far more to it than that - quite apart from the fact that in myths the Cyclopes are not always one-eyed! This book provides a detailed, innovative, and richly illustrated study of the myths relating to the Cyclopes from classical antiquity until the present day. The first part is organised thematically: after discussing various competing scholarly approaches to the myths, the authors analyse ancient accounts and images of the Cyclopes in relation to landscape, physique (especially eyes, monstrosity, and hairiness), lifestyle, gods, names, love, and song. While the man-eating Cyclops Polyphemus, famous already in the Odyssey, plays a major part, so also do the Cyclopes who did monumental building work, as well as those who toiled as blacksmiths. The second part of the book concentrates on the post-classical reception of the myths, including medieval allegory, Renaissance grottoes, poetry, drama, the visual arts, contemporary painting and sculpture, film, and even a circus performance. This book aims to explore not just the perennial appeal of the Cyclopes as fearsome monsters, but the depth and subtlety of their mythology which raises complex issues of thought and emotion.

How do we interpret ancient art created before written texts? Scholars usually put ancient art into conversation with ancient texts in order to interpret its meaning. But for earlier periods without texts, such as in the Bronze Age Aegean, this method is redundant. Using cutting-edge theory from art history, archaeology, and anthropology, Carl Knappett offers a new approach to this problem by identifying distinct actions - such as modelling, combining, and imprinting - whereby meaning is scaffolded through the materials themselves. By showing how these actions work in the context of specific bodies of material, Knappett brings to life the fascinating art of Minoan Crete and surrounding areas in novel ways. With a special focus on how creativity manifests itself in these processes, he makes an argument for not just how creativity emerges through specific material engagements but also why creativity might be especially valued at particular moments.

Statues were everywhere in the Roman world. They served as objects of cult, honours to emperors and noblemen, and memorials to the dead. Combining close attention to individual Roman texts and images with an unprecedented broad perspective on this remarkable phenomenon, Statues in Roman Society explains the impact which all kinds of statuary had on the ancient population.

One of the earliest surviving examples of 'art history', Pliny the Elder's 'chapters on art' form part of his encyclopaedic Natural History, completed shortly before its author died during the eruption of Vesuvius in AD 79. This important new work reassesses Pliny's discussion of art, revealing how art is used to expound the Roman imperial agenda which dominates the work as a whole.

The most pervasive gods in ancient Rome had no traditional mythology attached to them, nor was their worship organized by elites. Throughout the Roman world, neighborhood street corners, farm boundaries, and household hearths featured small shrines to the beloved lares, a pair of cheerful little dancing gods. These shrines were maintained primarily by ordinary Romans, and often by slaves and freedmen, to whom the lares cult provided a unique public leadership role. In this comprehensive and richly illustrated book, the first to focus on the lares, Harriet Flower offers a strikingly original account of these gods and a new way of understanding the lived experience of everyday Roman religion. Weaving together a wide range of evidence, Flower sets forth a new interpretation of the much-disputed nature of the lares. She makes the case that they are not spirits of the dead, as many have argued, but rather benevolent protectors--gods of place, especially the household and the neighborhood, and of travel. She examines the rituals honoring the lares, their cult sites, and their iconography, as well as the meaning of the snakes often depicted alongside lares in paintings of gardens. She also looks at Compitalia, a popular midwinter neighborhood festival in honor of the lares, and describes how its politics played a key role in Rome's increasing violence in the 60s and 50s BC, as well as in the efforts of Augustus to reach out to ordinary people living in the city's local neighborhoods. A reconsideration of seemingly humble gods that were central to the religious world of the Romans, this is also the first major account of the full range of lares worship in the homes, neighborhoods, and temples of ancient Rome.

The inscriptions on non-Attic Greek vases are an extremely important source for knowledge of ancient Greek, in particular colloquial language. Painted or incised before firing, this corpus of material cannot be held suspect as possible later additions. Dr Wachter provides a detailed catalogue of the inscriptions together with an epigraphical and linguistic analysis and commentary.

Although they do not survive intact, composite statues of gold and ivory were the most acclaimed art form in classical antiquity. Greek and Roman authors make their religious, social, and political importance clear. This study, the first to address the topic as a whole since 1815, presents not only literary references to lost works, but also representations of them in other media, and more importantly, fragmentary survivals that elucidate the techniques employed in their production and the quality achieved by their creators.

This book is a comprehensive study of visual humour in ancient Greece, with special emphasis on works created in Athens and Boeotia. Alexandre G. Mitchell brings an interdisciplinary approach to this topic, combining theories and methods of art history, archaeology and classics with the anthropology of humour, and thereby establishing new ways of looking at art and visual humour in particular. Understanding what visual humour was to the ancients and how it functioned as a tool of social cohesion is only one facet of this study. Mitchell also focuses on the social truths that his study of humour unveils: democracy and freedom of expression; politics and religion; Greek vases and trends in fashion; market-driven production; proper and improper behaviour; popular versus elite culture; carnival in situ; and the place of women, foreigners, workers and labourers within the Greek city. Richly illustrated with more than 140 drawings and photographs, this study amply documents the comic representations that formed an important part of ancient Greek visual language from the sixth to the fourth centuries BC.

For over a century, scholars have recognized an 'orientalizing period' in the history of early Greek art, in which Greek artisans fashioned works of art under the stimulus of Near Eastern imports or resident foreign artisans. Previous studies have emphasized the role of Greek and Phoenician traders in bringing about these contacts with the civilizations of the ancient Near East and Egypt, debating their duration or intensity in the Greek world. In this study, Ann Gunter interrogates the categories of 'Greek' and 'Oriental' as problematic and shifts emphasis to modes of contact and cultural transfers within a broader regional setting. Her provocative study places Greek encounters with the Near East and Egypt in the context of the Neo-Assyrian Empire, which by the 8th and 7th centuries BCE extended from southern Turkey to western Iran. Using an expanded array of archaeological and textual sources, she argues that crucial aspects of the identity and meaning of foreign works of art were constructed through circumstances of transfer, ownership and display.

Harriet Flower explores the nature and function of wax masks used in the commemoration of politically prominent family members by the elite society of Rome from the third century BC to the sixth century AD.It is by putting these masks, which were worn by actors at the funerals of the deceased, into their legal, social, and political context that Flower is able to elucidate their special meaning as symbols of power and prestige.

The invention of coinage in ancient Greece provided an arena in which rival political groups struggled to imprint their views on the world. Here Leslie Kurke analyzes the ideological functions of Greek coinage as one of a number of symbolic practices that arise for the first time in the archaic period. By linking the imagery of metals and coinage to stories about oracles, prostitutes, Eastern tyrants, counterfeiting, retail trade, and games, she traces the rising egalitarian ideology of the polis, as well as the ongoing resistance of an elitist tradition to that development. The argument thus aims to contribute to a Greek "history of ideologies," to chart the ways ideological contestation works through concrete discourses and practices long before the emergence of explicit political theory.

To an elitist sensibility, the use of almost pure silver stamped with the state's emblem was a suspicious alternative to the para-political order of gift exchange. It ultimately represented the undesirable encroachment of the public sphere of the egalitarian polis. Kurke re-creates a "language of metals" by analyzing the stories and practices associated with coinage in texts ranging from Herodotus and archaic poetry to Aristotle and Attic inscriptions. She shows that a wide variety of imagery and terms fall into two opposing symbolic domains: the city, representing egalitarian order, and the elite symposium, a kind of anti-city. Exploring the tensions between these domains, Kurke excavates a neglected portion of the Greek cultural "imaginary" in all its specificity and strangeness.

This volume follows the development of Greek gem engraving from Alexander to Augustus. Hellenistic gems are studied in their archaeological context with an assessment of the evidence of their use, significance, and value. The book focuses on subject-matter, technique, and style, as well as problems of chronology and distribution.

This 2003 book treats the historiography of ancient Near Eastern and Classical art, examining the social, intellectual and institutional contexts that have shaped the way that the history of ancient art has been and continues to be written. It demonstrates how, from the Renaissance to the time of publication, the study and interpretation of ancient art reflect contemporary ideas and practices. Among the subjects considered are the classical tradition in the post-antique West; the emergence of academic disciplines; the role of collections in the evaluation of ancient art; and issues of race, gender, and cultural authority in the interpretation of ancient civilisations.

In this book the author explores the work of the fifth-century BC Athenian vase-painter, Sotades, one of the most familiar names in vase painting. Previous scholarship has dealt mainly with questions of attribution, style, and iconographic interpretation, but Dr Hoffman concentrates on inherent meaning: what does the imagery of these decorated vases really signify? He argues that, contrary to widely held conceptions, there is an underlying unity of meaning in Greek vases and their imagery, a unity rooted in the religious beliefs and ritual practices of the society from which they spring. Each chapter discusses a specific aspect of the artist's iconology, placing it in the context of fifth-century BC Greek philosophical and religious thought.

This is the first of three volumes which offer a detailed analysis of one of the major city-blocks of ancient Pompeii, destroyed by the eruption of Vesuvius in AD 79. Excavated between 1926 and 1932, the Insula of Menander is so named after the structure that occupies over half the block's total area of 3,500 square metres, the House of the Menander, one of the grandest mansions of the city. Other, smaller houses, notably the House of the Lovers and the House of the Craftsmen, occupy outlying parts, and a number of shops and apartments are interspersed among them. The purpose of the present volume is to document a complete survey of the architecture of the block and thus trace the structural history of the Insula, with its intricate pattern of changing property-boundaries, over the 250-300 years of its existence. Subsequent volumes will examine the decorations (wall-paintings and mosaic pavements) and the objects that were found during excavation. Paradoxically, while Pompeii is one of the best known of all Roman archaeological sites, very few areas of the site have been fully published. This is the first time a global study has been undertaken of one of the major city-blocks and it shows the enormous potential of such investigations to reveal insights into the social history of the city.

Greek myth-makers crafted the downfall of Troy and its rulers into an archetypal illustration of ruthless conquest, deceit, crime and punishment, and the variability of human fortunes. This book examines the major episodes in the archetypal myth - the murder of Priam, the rape of Kassandra, the reunion of Helen and Menelaos, and the escape of Aineias - as witnessed in Archaic Greek epic, fifth-century Athenian drama, and Athenian black- and red-figure vase painting. It focuses in particular on the narrative artistry with which poets and painters balanced these episodes with one another and intertwined them with other chapters in the story of Troy. The author offers the first comprehensive demonstration of the narrative centrality of the Ilioupersis myth within the corpus of Trojan epic poetry, and the first systematic study of pictorial juxtapositions of Ilioupersis scenes on painted vases.

An extensive study of Dionysian imagery found primarily in scenes on red-figure vases of the fifth-century BC but also in the architectural sculpture, coins, and theatre of the same period. Thomas Carpenter seeks to define a methodology for using this imagery as evidence for cultural and religious activity, and challenges some commonly-held views about the meaning of Dionysian iconography, at the same time pointing to problems inherent in the evidence under scrutiny.

This book is a unique, fully illustrated, and fascinating study of all the known carved reliefs decorating official inscriptions in classical and Hellenistic Athens. The author's new and illuminating work on the iconography of these reliefs shows how the gods, heroes, and other personifications were not simply decorative, but integral to the overall political message.

This book examines the textual and archaeological evidence for the history of Cyprus from 750 to 500 BC. This significant period of the island's past is examined in three parts. The first surveys what is known about the local population of Cyprus and the political and social organization of the island. The second offer a narrative account of the period within a chronological framework more detailed than any analysis currently available. It suggests that the defining feature of the Cypro-Archaic period was the way in which local kingdoms adapted to different political and economic conditions in the Near East and Egypt, and took advantage of them. It challenges the prevalent view of a succession of foreign overlords controlling the island through military means. The third part discusses the internal and external relations of Cyprus by studying specific groups of pottery, seals, and sculpture. As a whole, this book provies a more complete picture of Archaic Cyprus than ever previously attempted. Generously illustrated with plates and figures, this will be an invaluable work of reference for archaeologists and ancient historians of both the West and Near East.

It has long been thought that imperial portrait types were officially commissioned to commemorate specific historical moments and that they were made available to both the mint and the marble workshops in Rome, assuming a close correspondence between portraits on coins and in the round. All of this, however, has never been clearly proven, nor has it been disproven by a close systematic examination of the evidence on a broad material basis by those scholars who have questioned it. Through systematic case studies of Faustina the Younger's and Marcus Aurelius' portraits on coins and in sculpture, this book provides new insights into the functioning of the imperial image in Rome in the second century AD that move a difficult, much-discussed subject forward decisively. The new evidence presented here has made it necessary to adjust the established model; more flexibility is needed to describe the processes and practices behind the phenomenon of 'repeated' imperial portraits and how the imperial portrait worked in the mint of Rome and in the metropolitan marble workshops.

Eye and Art in Ancient Greece examines the art of ancient Greece through reconstructions of how the Greeks saw and understood the products of their own visual culture. The material is approached using a newly developed methodology of archaeoaesthetics by which past modes of vision and perception are examined in conjunction with prevailing notions of pleasure and judgement with the purpose of identifying the visual and psychological contexts within which the aesthetics of a culture emerge. Through a wide-ranging examination of ideas found in early written sources, the book examines various key aspects of Greek visual culture, such as continuity and change, nudity, identity, lifelikeness, mimesis, personation and enactment, symmetria, dance, harmony, and the modal representation of emotions, with the aim of comprehending how and why choices were made in the conception and making of artifacts. Special attention is given to factors contributing to the formation of taste and the emergence and transmission over time of concepts of art and beauty and the means by which they were identified and judged. The approach facilitates encounters with the material in ways that give rise to new insights into how the ancient Greeks experienced their own visual culture and how Greek art may be understood by us today.