The questions of the relation between style and identity, between social and cultural memory, and about Egypt's reception of its own past have stimulated the thirteen conference papers that compose this book. As one of the two editors, V. points out in ‘Understanding Egypt in Egypt and Beyond’, in the Hellenistic period ‘Egyptian’ was not only an ethnic but also a cultural concept. Hieroglyphic writing was only understood by a small group, although Egyptian temples had extensive archives that preserved and studied earlier Ramesside traditions. The Macedonian and then Roman conquest of Egypt added a further complicating factor, that is, the presence of foreign rulers, and the terms ‘Egyptian’ and ‘Hellene’ became social definitions, not ethnic ones. Also, the meaning, provenance and dating of the many ‘Egyptian-style’ artefacts that have survived is heavily disputed, as is the term Aegyptiaca. Both the Macedonian kings and the Roman emperors used the Egyptian visual language to affiliate themselves with the native pharaohs. ‘Egyptian’ in the Roman world could evoke an atmosphere of exotic luxury (e.g. the pharaonica present in Roman villas), an idea of imperial monumentality (as did the obelisks transported to Rome as symbols of imperial power) or of victory, but, at the same time, Egypt could be perceived in a negative way as the land of animal worship, of erotic and exoteric cults, and of Cleopatra, the quintessential enemy of Rome.

This collection explores from a variety of angles how the theology, iconography and understanding of Isis in Egypt in the Hellenistic and Roman period developed. It opens with a keynote paper by M. Malaise, ‘La gens isiaque de retour au pays’, which raises some of the underlying questions of the conference, such as to what extent the interpretatio graeca of Isis modified or contaminated the Egyptian iconography of the goddess, and, conversely, how the Greek pantheon was subject to interpretatio aegyptiaca, themes explored in an earlier work edited by B., V. and P.G.P. Meyboom, Nile into Tiber. Egypt in the Roman World (2007). The first part of the book provides three papers that deal with the role of Egyptian religion and tradition in Hellenistic and Roman Egypt. F. Dunand, ‘Culte d'Isis or religion isiaque?’, argues that it is improper to talk in terms of Isis religion as we are not dealing with a coherent symbolic and religious system. F. Naerebout, ‘How Do You Want Your Goddess? From the Galjub Hoard to a General Vision on Religious Choice in Hellenistic and Roman Egypt’, analyses the composition of the Galjub hoard, over a hundred bronzes that probably served as the models or stock in trade of a Hellenistic goldsmith and shows that in second-century b.c. Egypt the question ‘How do you want your goddess’ will have been asked to customers many times a day. K. Savvopoulos, ‘Alexandria in Aegypto. The Use and Meaning of Egyptian Elements in Hellenistic and Roman Alexandria’, presents recent finds from Alexandria to argue that, while in the Hellenistic period the Ptolemies used Egyptian elements to legitimise, stabilise and promote their positions in Egypt and within the Hellenistic world, and advertise Alexandria as an imperial capital, the Roman emperors used Pharaonica to turn Alexandria into a museum of the indigenous history of its country, and into a ‘provincial’ capital. This hypothesis nicely complements the most recent studies on the Greek world (e.g. A.J.S. Spawforth's Greece and the Augustan Cultural Revolution [2012], which argues for a transformation of Greece into a classicising museum as a response of the Greek elites to the impact of the Roman empire).

Part 2, ‘Case studies: Cults of Isis in Hellenistic and Roman Egypt’, consists of eight papers surveying Isis evidence in different contexts. The editors deliberately excluded Serapis as they planned to treat this topic elsewhere. M. Venit, ‘Referencing Isis in Tombs of Graeco-Roman Egypt: Tradition and Innovation’, provides an overview of the way Isis was used and displayed in tombs suggesting that the Alexandrian Tigrane Tomb and the Achmim tomb were of initiates into the mysteries of Isis, and proposing new interpretations of the paintings. L. Coulon, ‘Les formes d'Isis à Karnak à travers la prosopographie sacerdotale de l’époque Ptolémaïque’, discusses the development of the goddess in the Theban region in the Ptolemaic period and observes that a Hellenised Isis became visible only in the Roman period. O. Kaper, ‘Isis in Roman Dakhleh: Goddess of the Village, the Province, and the Country’, presents a wealth of new material from the Dakhleh Oasis and draws a detailed picture of the multi-layered occurrences and roles of Isis in that region. A. Geissen, ‘Mythologie grecque ou mystère d'Isis-Déméter?’, deals with numismatic evidence from Roman Alexandria where under Antoninus Pius a series of coins was struck showing the labours of Hercules and other mythological themes and argues that some of these representations were related to the mysteries of Isis-Demeter and evoked immortality. P. Ballet and G. Galliano, ‘Les isiaques et la petite plastique dans l’Égypte hellénistique et romaine’, present an overview of the Isiac gods in terracottas and suggest that specific types of material were deemed appropriate for specific iconographic subjects; material from Koptos shows that Harpokrates was popular there because of specific funerary rites, while he is totally absent from other sites. K. Parlasca, ‘Anubis mit dem Schlüssel in der kaiserzeitlichen Grabkunst Ägyptens’, looks at a specific iconography from Roman Egypt, that of Anubis with a key, and explains it as the creation of a Theban priest who wanted to modernise the underworld symbols of Anubis with an element of the classical world. Y. Volokhine, ‘Quelques aspects de Bès dans les temples égyptiens de l’époque Gréco-Romaine’, deals with the form and meaning of Bes in temples of the Graeco-Roman period, focusing on the dialectic between temples and ‘popular’ religion and suggesting that in Roman Egypt this deity was seen as an ‘Egyptian Silene’. P. Koemoth, ‘Couronner Souchos pour fêter le retour de la crue’, presents a rich dossier on the Egyptian god Souchos (Sobek), and acutely suggests that the dupondii from Nemausus (Nîmes) depicting a crocodile with the inscription AEGYPTO CAPTA created a subtle relation between the Nemausus fountain and the sources of the Nile, and the crocodile god evoked an idea of abundance (the Nile flood). Overall, three ‘scholarly trends’ emerge: one, that there is a need for specific, contextual analyses of individual regions in Egypt. Two, that there is a visible and substantial difference between the Hellenistic and the Roman period in how the Egyptian tradition is treated and interacted with, and, finally, that the study of Egypt in the Hellenistic and Roman periods must be done from both a local and a global perspective, and that scholars should study the use of Aegyptiaca in Egypt in connection with what happened in Rome in the same period. This third desideratum proves to be the most difficult to achieve. A point that perhaps should have been devoted more attention is the role of Cleopatra VII and her identification and worship as Isis as a possible key to understanding the changes from the Hellenistic to the Roman aspects of the goddess. How did Cleopatra's isiac identity influence the ‘classical’ iconography of the goddess in Roman Egypt? To what extent was the spread of the Isis cult in Roman Egypt a way to celebrate Egypt's Ptolemaic past? The book has no summative bibliography, which makes it less easy to consult. The reader finds little discussion of the seminal works by J. Dijkstra on Philae and Aswan (Philae and the End of Ancient Egyptian Religion. A Regional Study of Religious Transformation (298–642 ce) [2008]; Syene I: the Figural and Textual Graffiti from the Temple of Isis at Aswan [2012]). In spite of these minor criticisms, there is no doubt that the editors have been successful in producing a coherent, innovative and highly useful book that will become essential reading for all historians and archaeologists interested in the relationship between culture, society and politics in Ptolemaic and Roman Egypt.