Hellenizing Egypt

The dissertation focuses on the moment Egypt comes into currency in Greek literature and the rudiments of its historical contours begin to take shape. The appropriation of Egypt by Greeks informed the Greeks' sense of their own culture since, by invoking Egypt in their texts, the Greeks were confronting their assumptions about history, authority, cultural chauvinism and gender roles. The project divides into several chapters, each focused on a particular category through which Egypt is perceived and represented in the texts. Limited to the fifth and fourth centuries BCE, the discussion concentrates on one or two main authors within each category and the authors' construction and use of these categories. Chapter 1 contains a discussion of Herodotus' presentation of Egyptian space and time. Chapter 2 is devoted to Greek views of Egyptian writing as these appear in Plato's Phaedrus, Timaeus and Critias as well as in the works of Herodotus and Aeschylus. Chapter 3 offers an analysis of Egyptian desire for Greek women in tragedy, notably in Aeschylus' Suppliants and Euripides' Helen. Chapter 4 is an evaluation of the alleged eulogy of Egypt in Isocrates' Busiris and also reconsiders the opening sections of Plato's Timaeus and Critias from this perspective. The four chapters are set off by an introduction and a conclusion; the introduction puts forward some preliminary theoretical and historical considerations behind the analyses in the subsequent chapters, while the conclusion recapitulates the major themes of the discussions. The dissertation also argues that the Greek writings about Egypt need to be analyzed at a transcultural level rather than from a purely Hellenic point of view, and so it lays out Egyptian evidence on a comparative basis.