Cultural identity in the Roman Near East: An historiographical exercise

<p>The central premise of this thesis is that the concepts of hellenisation and romanisation are no longer useful as interpretive models of the Graeco-Roman Near East. Through most of the twentieth century they did good service generating research questions and providing innovative explanations of both existing and new data. On the one hand the notion of hellenisation focused attention on the historical importance of cultural change in the Hellenistic period, while the concept of romanisation focused scholarly attention on life in the provinces rather than on the court life of the imperial city and highlighted the importance of epigraphy and archaeology as against the philological study of literary texts. But the underlying assumptions of both concepts — the superiority of Graeco-Roman culture, the 'civilising' role of the intrusive powers, the passivity of the indigenous peoples of the region, the notion that Greek, Roman and Semitic cultures are bounded entities — are now dated. In the first part of the thesis I deconstruct the concepts of hellenisation and romanisation in detail and then develop an alternative framework which is avowedly postmodern and interdisciplinary, eschews eurocentrism, and uses postcolonial concepts as well as insights from modern social theory. In the second part of the thesis I use the alternative framework to review the evidence relating to the provincial city of Gerasa in the Roman province of Arabia. Looked at through this alternative prism it has been possible to offer some different readings of the evidence not apparent in earlier interpretations. In particular, in using the concepts of resistant strategy and cultural imperialism to discuss the emergence of the Antonine period city plan, I challenge the traditional view of Hadrian's urbanisation policy.</p>

Cultural identity in the Roman Near East: An historiographical exercise

<p>The central premise of this thesis is that the concepts of hellenisation and romanisation are no longer useful as interpretive models of the Graeco-Roman Near East. Through most of the twentieth century they did good service generating research questions and providing innovative explanations of both existing and new data. On the one hand the notion of hellenisation focused attention on the historical importance of cultural change in the Hellenistic period, while the concept of romanisation focused scholarly attention on life in the provinces rather than on the court life of the imperial city and highlighted the importance of epigraphy and archaeology as against the philological study of literary texts. But the underlying assumptions of both concepts — the superiority of Graeco-Roman culture, the 'civilising' role of the intrusive powers, the passivity of the indigenous peoples of the region, the notion that Greek, Roman and Semitic cultures are bounded entities — are now dated. In the first part of the thesis I deconstruct the concepts of hellenisation and romanisation in detail and then develop an alternative framework which is avowedly postmodern and interdisciplinary, eschews eurocentrism, and uses postcolonial concepts as well as insights from modern social theory. In the second part of the thesis I use the alternative framework to review the evidence relating to the provincial city of Gerasa in the Roman province of Arabia. Looked at through this alternative prism it has been possible to offer some different readings of the evidence not apparent in earlier interpretations. In particular, in using the concepts of resistant strategy and cultural imperialism to discuss the emergence of the Antonine period city plan, I challenge the traditional view of Hadrian's urbanisation policy.</p>

The Road to Alexandria, the Paths to Siwa

Chapter 10 examines the rediscovery, between the early 1920s and the 1950s, of the Graeco-Roman Near East, particularly Egypt. It considers the writings and activities of archaeologists, explorers, modernist writers, and journalists, who experienced and represented Near Eastern remnants of a Hellenism associated with the short-lived world empire of Alexander the Great and its Ptolemaic successors. After briefly considering writings on Graeco-Roman Transjordan, the chapter looks at the imagining and representations of Ptolemaic Alexandria, focusing on the writings of E. M. Forster, Mary Butts, Henry Vollam Morton, and a host of British, American, and Egyptian intellectuals, authors, and explorers. These authors perceived and experienced modern Alexandria as a Greek rather than an Egyptian city and comprehended it by invoking a cosmopolitan Graeco-Roman past. Alexandria served as a launching board to revivals of Alexander’s travels in Egypt’s Western Desert, to the oasis of Siwa, reputed place of his deification. The chapter traces re-enactments of classical texts on Alexander, as a form of appropriation by repetition and interpretation, of an imperial Graeco-Roman past. It demonstrates how imperial visions and itineraries were coupled with technologies of mechanized mobility in the desert in specially developed desert automobiles, iconized as emblems of imperial mobility and modernity. It thus showcases the relationship between the rediscovery of antiquity, technologies, and imperial defence. These are illustrated in the activities of explorer and military man and physicist Ralph Alger Bagnold. Some of the writings examined here expand beyond the formal end of British rule in the Near East, indicating the persistence of British imperial presences in the region immediately before and after the formal end of empire.