Classicists and Egyptologists from Hungary and the United Kingdom team up for Graeco-Aegyptiaca, a project aiming to study the multifold cultural interactions between Greece and Egypt from prehistory up to the Byzantine period. Having started in January 2022, the program has already entered its second year of running, through research but also a series of outreach events.

As stated on the project’s UCL website “the initial impetus for this project came from a small collective of scholars in the UCL Department of Greek and Latin in London and the Palladion, a community-focused Classics project based in Budapest.  As a mix of Hellenists and Egyptologists, and of experts on texts and material culture, we aim to break down the disciplinary boundaries that have stifled progress in this area for far too long, stimulating discussion and creating a forum for sharing questions and ideas.

Who is who

Peter Agócs is a lecturer in Classics specialising in Archaic and Classical Greek poetry at UCL; Árpád M. Nagy is a professor of Classical archaeology at the University of Pécs; and Kata Endreffy is a lecturer in Egyptology at Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest. Besides being active in Palladion, both the latter have extensive museum experience as former directors of the Classical Collection in the Budapest Museum of Fine Arts.

Programme October 2022 – June 2023

In the autumn of 2022 we will be continuing our online Graeco-Aegyptiaca seminar inaugurated in January 2022. The series will consist of 40-minute papers given monthly by established scholars in the field of Egyptian and Greek cultural relations. Lectures will be held on ZOOM; participation is free, but registration is required. If you are interested in attending our events, please register on our Eventbrite page.

-October 25, 2022. 17:00 (CET; 16:00 GMT). Kata Endreffy (The Palladion – Eötvös Loránd University), ‘Seeing double: visualizing creation on Graeco-Egyptian stone dishes’

-November 29, 2022. 17:00 (CET; 16:00 GMT). Vinciane Pirenne-Delforge (Collège de France, FNRS), ‘Herodotus as an historian of religions and polytheism: the Egyptian matrix’

-January 31, 2023. 17:00 (CET; 16:00 GMT). Tamar Hodos (University of Bristol), ‘Eggstraordinary Objects: Ostrich Eggs as Luxury Items in the Ancient Mediterranean’

-February 28, 2023. 17:00 (CET; 16:00 GMT). Raquel Martín-Hernández (Universidad Complutense de Madrid): ‘Composing magical formularies in Late Antique Egypt.’

-March 28, 2023. 17:00 (CET; 16:00 BST). John Tait (University College London), ‘Demotic narrative and emotions’

-April 25, 2023. 17:00 (CET; 16:00 BST). Carolina López-Ruiz (University of Chicago), ‘Egyptian Herakles and Syrian Aphrodite? Disentangling perceptions of Phoenician art and religion in the Greek tradition’

-May 30, 2023. 17:00 (CET; 16:00 BST). Lindsay Mazurek (Indiana University, Bloomington), ‘Imagining a Greek Home for an Egyptian Goddess: Time, Landscape, and Architecture in Greek Sanctuaries to Isis’

-June 27, 2023. 17:00 (CET; 16:00 BST). Alexandra Villing (British Museum), TBC

Anyone interested in giving a paper is asked to contact the organisers .