Model Worlds

Expanding current constructions of Nilotica, chapter 6 examines the creation of three-dimensional “Egyptian” landscapes through garden statuary and water features at the Casa di Acceptus e Euhodia. Sidestepping unproductive debates about whether garden statuary signified “religion” or “Egyptomania,” this case study shows how “Egyptianizing” statuary collaborated with the garden’s other contents to create an interactive model landscape. Some evidence from this house suggests that its inhabitants may have directed a domestic cult toward a form of Isis. However, this chapter argues that such practices should not overdetermine our understanding of the garden assemblage. Rather than a binary divide between “Isiacs” and “non-Isiacs,” evidence suggests a broad spectrum of available religious choices. Furthermore, domestic material culture does not correspond to religious identity in a simple or straightforward way. Regardless of their relationship (or lack thereof) to Egyptian-derived cults, most Pompeians appear to have employed domestic Aegyptiaca and Nilotica in fairly similar ways.

Conclusions

Chapter 7 synthesizes the major conclusions of the book. As an examination of the Egyptian themes at Hadrian’s villa in Tivoli demonstrates, these conclusions are significant not only for Pompeii in 79 CE but also for Roman visual culture more broadly. Issues considered include the use of household material culture to literally “domesticate” ideologies of empire; the relationship between “Egyptianizing” and “Classicizing” forms of Roman art; a comparison of display strategies in “elite” and “non-elite” houses; the relationship between religious identity and material culture; conceptions of order versus chaos in Roman gardens; and the agency of domestic material culture in shaping everyday practices and experiences. The garden assemblages in this book present the Pompeian house not only as a microcosm of empire but also as a workshop where individuals could work out through practice what it actually meant to live in a changing, profoundly interconnected, and increasingly interdependent world.

Training Children for Work in the Nineteenth Century

Material culture in Victorian working-class homes acted as a medium through which messages about the importance of industry, diligence, and obedience could be emphasized to children. This chapter will review the ways in which material culture scholars have approached the subject of child labour in different areas of the Victorian world, as well as elucidating the differences and similarities in children’s experiences of work in different parts of the western world during the nineteenth century. It will consider decorative motifs on mass-produced domestic material culture, the role of toys as objects for training children, and work-related artefacts with which children may have interacted, but which do not bear obvious characteristics suggesting that they were specifically made for children. Labour will be addressed in its broadest sense, including gendered differences in the material culture of labour and the broader historical driving forces behind the existence of work-related material ‘propaganda’.