Open Collections

Minniti, Caterina

University of British Columbia

Sicily has yielded roughly 260 Egyptian-looking objects, commonly referred to as Aegyptiaca, found in Archaic (ca. 776-480 BCE) archaeological contexts. These include scarabs, amulets, vessels, and funerary statuettes. The diffusion of these artifacts throughout the Mediterranean was vast, as they have been discovered in sites from Iberia to the Levant. However, the presence of these types of objects in Sicily has not been fully investigated in previous scholarship. On the one hand, many studies have focused only on the formal elements of the artifacts. On the other, works on Egyptian and Egyptianizing objects in Sicily have seldom taken into account the whole island, and even less often framed the data in the context of broader, pan-Mediterranean trends. This dissertation focuses not only on the roles that Aegyptiaca played in the lives of the inhabitants of Sicily – their physical presence, and the meaning and agency generated by them – but also on how their use can help us reassess Sicily’s position in Archaic-period networks of trade and cultural exchange across the Mediterranean. Throughout my dissertation, I address specific questions about the use of Egyptian and Egyptianizing objects, particularly the ways in which this widespread genre of material could undergo different processes of appropriation, and why. Analyzing the adaptation of objects to suit the needs of new patrons can help us gain new insight into the negotiation of practices and the functions of material culture in discourses of identity and power. Consequently, I am investigating the artifacts and their contexts to gain greater clarity on how the inhabitants of this island at the physical center of cross-Mediterranean networks were responding to international, globalizing trends, and adapting imported material culture to fit local agendas.

Text

2025-02-28

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International

http://hdl.handle.net/2429/83832

Classics

University of British Columbia

UBCV

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/