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.

Making Meaning on the Margins

In chapters 3 and 4, we see Nilotic imagery playing a central role in garden ensembles. However, many other Nilescapes served not as centerpieces but as peripheral elements in larger compositions. Chapter 5 examines the use of Nilotica as marginalia at the Casa del Fauno, where a Nilotic mosaic occupies the threshold between a peristyle garden and a side room showcasing the famous “Alexander mosaic.” This chapter also explores the relationships between Egyptian landscapes and marginal spaces within Pompeian homes. Even when Nilotic scenes occupy more prominent visual positions, their frequent association with gardens still locates them on the margins of household space. However, the Casa del Fauno demonstrates the ability of such peripheral visual culture to reframe viewers’ encounters with larger images. Marginality emerges as a paradoxical source of power, enabling “ornamental” elements to shape the ways viewers experience the images—and the domestic spaces—that they enclose.

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.

From Egypt to Oikoumene

Chapter 3 employs the frescoes from the garden triclinium of the Casa dell’Efebo, Pompeii, as a case study in the recontextualization of Nilotic scenes. Exploring the relationships between the various features, images, and artifacts within this eclectic garden assemblage, this chapter embeds Roman Nilescapes within broader phenomena of domestic cosmopolitanism. By evoking diverse landscapes both near and far away, and emulating earlier visual cultures, householders could turn their houses into models of empire and assert their own credentials as worldly cultural sophisticates. The appropriation and adaptation of Egyptian imagery is thus deeply intertwined with Roman appropriations and adaptations of other visual cultures. As model landscapes existing simultaneously within and beyond domestic space, gardens were appropriate places to depict other landscapes along the spectrum from foreign to familiar. In such contexts, the “meaning” of Egyptian landscapes may depend in large part on the ways these images interact with domestic evocations of other, “Greco-Roman” geographical and cultural settings.

Self, “Other,” and Beyond in the Casa del Medico

Within the general framework outlined by chapter 2, different domestic contexts might structure viewers’ encounters with Nilotic imagery in quite different ways. Chapter 4 explores this variability by examining another case study: the Casa del Medico. As at the Casa dell’Efebo, this house constructs close contextual associations between Nilotic frescoes, garden space, watery settings, and dining. Here, however, the framing and content of the imagery suggest different meanings. Among other things, this assemblage places much more emphasis on the “grotesque” potential of pygmy scenes. Although scholars often take the violent imagery of the Casa del Medico frescoes as paradigmatic for all Nilotic scenes, a close analysis points instead to the thematic multivalence of domestic Nilotica. Additionally, since the Casa del Medico is smaller and less luxurious than the Casa dell’Efebo, these two case studies enable us to compare the uses of Nilotic imagery at different points along the socioeconomic spectrum.

Imagining the Nile

Chapter 2 analyzes general patterns in the iconography and contexts of Nilotic imagery at Pompeii. A discussion of the “cultural biography” of Nilotic imagery positions these frescoes and mosaics within the broader context of Roman artistic emulation of earlier visual cultures. While Roman emulations of Greek material culture have traditionally attracted the most intense scholarly attention, this chapter argues for framing “Classicizing” art as part of a larger “retrospective” phenomenon that also included Roman adaptations of Egyptian objects and images. This chapter also provides a synthetic contextual analysis of Nilotic scenes at Pompeii, discussing the reasons for their frequent association with domestic gardens. Within gardens, Nilotic imagery is often associated with water features and installations for dining and drinking, producing an environment that mirrors many aspects of the scenes themselves. The context of the imagery thus provokes viewers to compare themselves to the figures it depicts.

Introduction: Egypt in the Garden

This introductory chapter sets out an agenda for the larger research project; investigates problems of definition and interpretation; provides a critical review of past and current scholarship on Roman “Aegyptiaca”; and makes a case for new theoretical and methodological approaches that engage with current intellectual developments in the broader fields of archaeology and art history. It is argued that research on Roman Aegyptiaca can gain much from, and is poised to contribute substantially to (1) twenty-first-century archaeology’s “material turn”; (2) the construction of new interpretive frameworks for cross-cultural interactions; and (3) increased attention to the relationships between artifacts, contexts, and assemblages.