The Flavian Isea in Beneventum and Rome:The appropriation of Egyptian and Egyptianising Art in imperial Beneventum and Rome (2024)

Pfeiffer, Domitian’s Iseum Campense in context, in: M. J. Versluys u. a. (Hg.), The Iseum Campense form the Roman Empire to the Modern Age. Temple – Monument – Lieu du mémoire, Rom 2018, 179–194

2007. “Egyptian Objects, Roman Contexts: a Taste for Aegyptiaca in Italy"

2007. “Egyptian Objects, Roman Contexts: a Taste for aegyptiaca in Italy,” in. Nile into Tiber: Egypt in the Roman World, Proceedings of the IIIrd International Conference of Isis Studies, Leiden, May 11–14 2005, edited by M.J. Versluys, P. Meyboom, and L. Bricault, 113–36. Religions in the Graeco-Roman World v. 159. Leiden: Brill

‘More hieroglyphicorum interpretatio. Reading Roman Antiquity as Athanasius Kircher, an Egyptian Oedipus’, in M.J. Versluys, K. Bülow Clausen, G. Capriotti Vittozzi (eds.), The Iseum Campense from the Roman Empire to the Modern Age. Temple - Monument – Lieu de mémoire, pp. 283-302.

Martje de Vries, 2018

Papers of the Royal Netherlands Institute, 2019

This article explores how Tacitus, writing in the era of Trajan, reshaped the memory of Egypt in the rise of the Flavian dynasty and Vespasian’s interactions with the god of the Rhakotis Hill in Alexandria. Vespasian’s visit to Egypt actualizes in full the arcanum imperii of Histories 1.4, which has been associated primarily with Galba. Serapis emerges as a uniquely significant god in Vespasian’s rise to power, as the interaction between the usurper and the god constitutes a kind of miraculous coronation of Vespasian as pharaoh and emperor. Tacitus, however, ends his aetiology of the god of the Rhakotis Hill with an identification of that deity as Dispater. This choice may have sprung from his participation as a quindecimvir in the Secular Games of A.D. 88. The historian’s representation of Egypt and Dis-Serapis in the Histories may thus be read as a reaction to Domitianic propaganda. Through his depiction of Vespasian, Egypt, and Dis-Serapis, Tacitus crafts a rich and complex historiographical contribution to the Campus Martius as a lieu de mémoire evoking Egypt’s role in the construction of Roman empire and the making of emperors.

V. Gasparini, "Bringing the East Home to Rome. Pompey the Great and the Euripus of the Campus Martius", in M.J. Versluys, K. Bülow Clausen, G. Capriotti Vittozzi (eds.), The Iseum Campense from the Roman Empire to the Modern Age. Temple, monument, lieu de mémoire, Rome 2018, pp. 79-98.

"Appropriating Egypt for the Ara Pacis Augustae." In Matthew Loar, Carolyn MacDonald and Dan-el Padilla-Peralta, eds. Rome, Empire of Plunder: The Dynamics of Cultural Appropriation. Cambridge University Press: 109-36.

This paper explores the cultural and artistic appropriations that produced the Ara Pacis Augustae in Rome. In addition to the monument’s well-known Greek and Italic forbears, I argue that jubilee chapels from New Kingdom Egypt were also appropriated as architectural models. The paper’s first section establishes some necessary context for Augustan appropriations from ancient Egypt. The second examines peripteral chapels in Egypt as architectural precedents for the Ara Pacis. In the third part, I return to Rome to ask how and why Egyptian precedents could be meaningful on the Ara Pacis. They can be read narrowly as part of a freighted ideological communication between the Senate and the princeps. More broadly, this appropriation highlights the symbolic role of pharaonic Egypt in Augustan expressions of dominion over time as well as space. Paying attention to Egypt thus illuminates the innovative and experimental nature of the Augustan monumental project, which produced a new cultural synthesis expressing the aspirations of Roman power and Augustus’ rule.

Højte Roman Imperial Statue Bases. From Augustus to Commodus.(Aarhus Studies in Mediterranean Antiquity 7.) Pp. 658, figs, ills, maps. Aarhus, Oxford and Oakville …

The Classical Review (New Series), 2008

"To Isis the Great, Lady of Benevento": Privately Dedicated Egyptian Obelisks in Imperial Rome and the Twin Obelisks of Benevento Re-edited (with an appendix by P.D. Wordsworth)

J. Spier / S.E. Cole (eds.), Egypt and the Classical World: Cross-cultural Encounters in Antiquity, J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles 2022: 106–177

Domitian between Isis and Minerva: the dialogue between the “Egyptian” and “Graeco-Roman” aspects of the sanctuary of Isis at Beneventum

M.J. Versluys, Egypt as part of the Roman koine: Mnemohistory and the Iseum Campense in Rome, in: S. Nagel, J.F. Quack, C. Witschel (eds.), Entangled worlds. Religious confluences between East and West in the Roman Empire. (Mohr Siebeck: Tübingen) (2017) 274-293.