The theme of cultural intersection in Ptolemaic and Roman-period Egypt has recently captured scholarly attention, particularly that of philologists and historians. Jacco Dieleman’s Priests, Tongues, and Rites: The London-Leiden Magical Manuscripts and Translation in Egyptian Ritual (100–300 CE) (Leiden: Brill, 2005), for example, and Susan Stephens’s Seeing Double: Intercultural Poetics in Ptolemaic Alexandria (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003) underscore the interlaced debt of Greeks and Egyptians. And with scarce exception, the articles in the often-cited Life in a Multi-cultural Society: Egypt from Cambyses to Constantine and Beyond (edited by Janet H. Johnson; Chicago: The Oriental Institute, 1992) also rely on textual or epigraphic evidence to make their point. In contrast, the ramifications of cross-cultural interchange in Graeco-Roman Egypt have occupied the attention of but the rare art historian.

In fact, with the singular exception of monumental architecture built by the foreign conqueror, “Egyptian” visual culture during the period of Roman domination has been generally ill-served. Classical art historians search out shades of Greek stylistic influence in Roman-period Egypt—embodied best, perhaps, in the well-known “Fayum” mummy portraits—and Egyptologists most often focus on Egypt’s efflorescence in the pharaonic period, only occasionally straying into the immediately post-pharaonic Late Period (as did Bernard Bothmer in his groundbreaking works on sculpture), or similarly sallying into discussions distinguishing Egyptian iconography on works in otherwise Greek-inspired style. This splendid volume by Christina Riggs, which aims to privilege monuments that do not rely on Greek stylistic models, admirably redresses this absence. With its material focus on objects cast in Egyptian style (especially coffins, funerary masks, and shrouds, but also integrating grave stelae, papyri, and tomb decoration) and its intellectual focus on the intersection of the two cultures—Greek and Egyptian—that underlie the production of these works, The Beautiful Burial constitutes a major contribution to the cultural and social history of Roman-period Egypt.

This volume, which is a part of the Oxford Studies in Ancient Culture & Representation series, is a reworking of the author’s dissertation subject, but only a mention at the beginning of the book (and perhaps the copious notes and concluding catalogue) attests to its origin. The book is the undertaking of a mature scholar and one who has already published widely on contiguous topics.

Forming the core of the work are three chapters, arranged both chronologically and thematically, which are bracketed by chapters that provide the book’s introduction and conclusion. Chapter 1 lays out theoretical issues that inform the study. These include discussions of Greek and Egyptian stylistic conventions, of the socio-political ambiance of Roman Egypt, and of “ethnicity” in Roman Egypt, for which the author astutely determines that identity is a more useful term—a conclusion reached, though with different terminology, by the father of ethnicity studies, Fredrik Barth, in his introduction to Ethnic Groups and Boundaries: The Social Organization of Culture Difference (edited by F. Barth; Boston: Little, Brown, 1969, 9–38), not cited in the study.

The first of the substantive chapters, “Osiris, Hathor, and the Gendered Dead,” treats a concern that originated in Late Period Egypt (that is, in approximately the first half of the first millennium BCE) for distinguishing the gender of the blessed dead. Previously, all dead persons, both male and female, had been assimilated to Osiris, the male deity of regeneration and everlasting life. But beginning in the Late Period and continuing through the period of Roman rule, the deceased female becomes identified, instead, with the female deity Hathor, which the author suggests may be “the result of a more personalized death and afterlife, attained [in the Roman period] by the near deification of the dead” (48). This chapter principally examines painted and modeled coffins from Kharga Oasis (whose style reveals a glance toward Greece) and those from the region of Akhmim (which retain Egyptianizing style), the latter of which may be recalled by all who have traversed the Roman Egypt galleries of the British Museum, where they glow incandescent in their gilt-and-magenta glory. The chapter also includes seeming excursuses into, for example, the construction of the Akhmim coffins and the representation of female garments, which—as do other apparent digressions throughout the volume—add greatly to the richness of insights contained in this book.

Chapter 3, “Portraying the Dead,” focuses on mummy masks from Meir in Middle Egypt and painted tombs, also from Middle Egypt, to provide a more nuanced rendering of László Castiglione’s seminal discussion of the “dual-style.” In an article (“Dualité du style dans l’art sépulcral égyptien à l’époque romaine,” Acta Antiqua 9 (1961): 209–230) published over forty years ago, Castiglione postulated that the deceased person, when depicted in Classicizing style and set among Egyptian deities portrayed in an Egyptianizing manner, is intended to denote the real world, whereas the deities depicted in Egyptianizing style conjure up a metaphysical space. Scholarly understanding of the intentions of this disjunction in style seen in works emerging from the chora (that is, the countryside) of Egypt has been refined in the almost half-century since Castiglione’s first defining explanation, and Riggs’s observations and analyses further enrich scholarly interpretation of this now-frequently detected phenomenon.

Chapter 4, “Art and Archaism in Western Thebes,” shifts the mode of the previous two chapters by concentrating on a close archaeological examination of material from ancient Thebes. The heart of New Kingdom Egypt and still a major religious center through the Roman period, Thebes retained little of its former political importance under Roman rule. Remote from stylistically influential Alexandria and steeped in traditional religion, Theban burials more strongly retained their Egyptian mien than did those of other centers during the period of Roman rule. The chapter focuses especially on coffins and shrouds of the stylistically and iconographically coherent “Soter group,” excavated near the village of Gurna, that date from the first half of the second century CE, and mummy masks of the “Pebos family,” excavated from the Dier el-Medina region of Thebes, that date somewhat later; but it also includes Theban funerary materials of less specific provenance. The most telling conclusion of the chapter is that despite the occasional Greek name carried by the deceased, the high political or religious office frequently attained by the deceased, and the Greek inscriptions often carried by the funerary materials, until late in the history of the city, inhabitants of Roman Thebes still insisted on a far more visually traditional Egyptian burial than did their counterparts elsewhere in Egypt.

The final chapter provides the conclusions of the study. It reiterates, with further examples, that the style of the depiction of the deceased—whether naturalistic Greek or conceptual Egyptian—cannot be employed as a viable “ethnic” marker. Instead, inhabitants of Roman Egypt had a range of options to choose from in the decoration of their funerary materials, and, based on these funerary objects, identities in the Roman period remained “remarkably flexible” (256).

A forty-five page appendix provides dimensions, descriptions, inscriptions, and bibliography for the mummy masks, coffins, and shrouds included in the study; and a register of museums adds page references for all the objects mentioned in the study.

The great strength of this volume lies in its depth and breadth and in its intelligence and insight: It is an audacious undertaking, and both its subject and its content are well served by its author. The scope of the project, which interrogates the entire range of available funerary materials in Roman-period Egypt, is vast. The knowledge the author demonstrates of both Greek and Roman stylistic details and of Egyptian iconography is equally comprehensive. Thus the individual monuments scrutinized are afforded a close and insightful reading. The questions the author poses cut to the heart of the problem, and the answers elicited are deeply satisfying. Because of the nature of its enquiry, this work breaks the boundaries of an “art-historical” study; concurrently, because of its examination of stylistic phenomena, it provides a uniquely visual contribution explicating the cultural history of the Egyptian chora in the Roman period, which heretofore was almost entirely dependent on textual and epigraphic evidence.

The Beautiful Burial is nicely produced: Its black-and-white photographs are printed as well as possible, reflecting the quality of their original source, and its color plates are also generally crisp and readable. It is only unfortunate that Oxford University Press felt compelled to place so high a price tag on this volume, because it belongs in the personal library of anyone interested in a sensitive discussion of the intersection of cultures in the ancient world.