Egyptian Iconography in the Ancient Near and Middle East

Instructor: Chana Algarvio (MA Student at the University of Toronto)

This course will look at the various foreign societies that assimilated Egyptian symbols and motifs with local iconography to serve foreign contexts and needs, particularily in regards to kingship and religion. Beginning with the Middle Bronze Age and the first occurrence of Egyptian iconographic acculturation that took place in the Levant, this course will trace Egyptian cultural diffusion via art up to the Achaemenid Empire before the spread of Hellenism by Alexander the Great in the 4th-century BCE. A variety of primary source materials in the form of art mediums will be examined, such as cylinder seals, statues, ivories, and wall reliefs, from online collection databases of prominent museums and art galleries around the world. Foreign art will be compared to contemporary or pre-existing Egyptian art to solidify the similarities, as well as to demonstrate the divergences due to the need to readapt to a different cultural context. Designed for both Egyptologists and non-Egyptologists alike, this course is meant to help bring together a variety of disciplines to understand cross-cultural relations of the Ancient Mediterranean world and their influences through art practices.