Introduction

Abstract

Abstract The introduction focuses on the two central terms in the book’s argument—representation and resistance—which, broadly speaking, reflect the different perspectives offered by Greco-Roman and Egyptian materials. Of particular importance is how the novels’ depictions of Egypt and Ethiopia receive and transform a centuries’ long tradition of Greek and Roman ethnographic discourse about Egypt and Ethiopia, their religious and cultural traditions, and their Nilotic landscapes that stretches back at least to Herodotus and Hecataeus of Miletus. In making its argument, the book considers the novels not only in the context of Greco-Roman traditions of writing about and depicting Egypt but also in relationship to local literary and documentary texts (including hymns and dedications to Isis, Egyptian narrative literature, and apocalyptic texts), monumental inscriptions, and material and visual culture. Such an approach is crucial for providing a full picture of how the novels represent the Nile River Valley. They reveal that Egypt and Ethiopia are not simply sites of a Greek and Roman imaginaire; rather, one of the book’s most important interventions is to show that the novels’ fictional narratives are in dialogue with the history, literature, and culture local to those places. In addition, the Introduction shows how the book contributes to a broader set of questions about identity, ethnicity, and race; about the relationship between Greek and Egyptian literature; and about the theory and practice of ekphrasis in the Roman imperial period.