A major U.S. archaeological exhibition - a first of its kind - opens to the public next month at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles. Beyond the Nile: Egypt and the Classical World (March 27 - September 9, 2018) will examine the cultural and artistic connections between the ancient civilizations of Greece, Rome, and Egypt. The exhibit includes nearly 200 rare objects, many of them on view in the U.S. for the first time. “Greece in America” sat down with Jeffrey Spier, co-curator of the exhibition, for an exclusive preview of this significant project.

"Beyond the Nile: Egypt and the Classical World" is the first exhibition to provide a comprehensive overview of Egypt’s interactions with Greece and Rome through 200 rare artifacts. What is the main objective behind this huge undertaking?

We are exploring the cultural and artistic interconnections between Egypt, the most ancient of the Mediterranean civilizations, and the cultures of Greece and Rome over a period of 2000 years. Throughout these many centuries, the cultural and artistic influences flowed in both directions and were often profound. We start in the Bronze Age (2000-1200) BC and show the prestige objects, such as carved stone vessels and small luxury goods, that were brought from Egypt to Crete and Mycenae, some very likely as diplomatic gifts. In return, the Minoans and Mycenaeans sent highly valued scented oil in finely decorated pottery to Egypt, as well as silver mined in Greece. 

After the collapse of the Mycenaean kingdoms at the end of the Bronze Age, it took a few hundred years for the Greeks to return to Egypt, but in the 7th century BC, they came as mercenaries and merchants. The pharaoh allowed them to establish a trading colony at Naukratis in the Nile Delta and experience Egyptian culture first-hand. Greek artists learned to copy the exquisite small bronzes and faience figures they saw and were inspired by the monumental sculpture and architecture to create their own versions in marble. In 332 BC, Alexander the Great conquered Egypt, and his general Ptolemy established a Greek dynasty that ruled Egypt for 300 years, with a newly built capital, Alexandria. A hybrid Greco-Egyptian culture was created, and the exhibition shows superb sculpture from this period, both in Greek and traditional Egyptian style. Finally, the Romans incorporated Egypt into their empire in 30 BC, and thereafter we find an interesting mix of culture in Egypt, reflected in the art. At the same time the fascination for all things Egyptian spread quickly through the Roman Empire, which we see in their embrace of Egyptian religion and their taste for Egyptianizing decoration in their villas and gardens.

Could you describe specifically the contribution of several Greek Archaeological Museums which provided loans to the exhibition?

The contribution of Greek museums was absolutely essential to the success of the exhibition, and the Ministry of Culture and Sports has been very generous in its loans. For example, the Archaeological Museum of Herakleion lent a number of important Egyptian objects found on Crete, including stone vases, statuettes, scarabs and seals, and a clay tablet with an inscription in Linear B, the earliest written form of Greek, with the name “Aigyptios”. The National Archaeological Museum in Athens has lent a beautiful Egyptian blue faience monkey from Mycenae, a marble kouros that helps illustrate the links between Egyptian and Greek sculpture, and a very fine funerary relief of a priestess of the goddess Isis dating from the Roman period. The Archaeological Museum of Vathy on Samos has lent an Egyptian bronze statuette dedicated in the Temple of Hera, and the Archaeological Museum of Rhodes is sending an Egyptian stone sculpture with a Greek votive dedication found at Kameiros. One of the earliest votive reliefs to Isis found outside of Egypt comes from the excavations at Dion in Macedonia, and this has also been lent.

Herodotus in his Histories has offered a fascinating description of the ancient relations between Greece and Egypt. Should we expect that the exhibition will bring this thrilling story "alive" into the 21st century?

That is an excellent question. The Greek historian Herodotus visited Egypt in the 440s BC, at the time of the Persian occupation of the country, and wrote a very well-informed account of the history and culture based primarily on his conversations with Egyptian priests (or their translators). Book 2 of his Histories is devoted to Egypt and was certainly very widely read in his time. He wrote not so much about relations between Greece and Egypt as tried to explain to his fellow Greeks the customs of the Egyptians, which he often found very strange. I do believe we will complement Herodotus’ descriptions by displaying such things as Greek vases illustrating the myth of Herakles and the Egyptian king Busiris, as well as objects that show the Greek presence in Egypt and how they lived in Herodotus’ day.

We would like to ask you to share with our viewers a fond memory you keep from your archaeological travels to Greece. 

I’ve traveled to Greece many time over the last 40 years, and I have enjoyed and been amazed by every place I have seen. Of course, Athens and Thessaloniki are wonderful cities with an exceptional archaeological presence. I have also visited sites in the Peloponnesos and the Chalkidiki. The islands of Samos and Rhodes particularly interested me. I would have to say that the sculpture in the museum in Olympia are probably the most magnificent works of art in the world.

But I should mention a very enjoyable trip to Crete last year with the director of the Getty Museum, Timothy Potts, who had not visited before. We loved the new museum in Herakleion and were able to drive around the island a little to see Knossos, Phaistos, Agia Triada, and Gortyna. It was all wonderful.

Bio:

Jeffrey Spier has been senior curator in the department of antiquities at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles since 2014. He earned his B.A. degree in Classical Archaeology at Harvard University and his D.Phil in classical Archaeology at Merton College, Oxford. He has held research and teaching positions at University College London, Oxford University, and the University of Arizona. 
For the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne, Australia, Spier curated the exhibition San Marco and Venice (1997). He was guest curator at the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth, Texas in 2007 for the exhibition Picturing the Bible: the Earliest Christian Art (catalog published by Yale University Press, 2007). 
He has lectured and written extensively on Greek and Roman sculpture, painting, luxury arts, numismatics and archaeological method, covering eras from Archaic Greece to Byzantium. In his research, he has pursued a broad understanding of ancient art, primarily Greek, Roman and Byzantine, but also of the borders of the classical world, including Egypt and the Near East, Thrace, Scythia, Persia, Bactria and beyond. He is regarded as a leading expert in the study of Greek, Roman and Byzantine gems. 
In addition to exhibition catalogues, his publications have included monographs on the Getty Museum’s Ancient Gems and Finger Rings, a catalogue of the collection (Malibu, 1992); A Catalogue of the Calouste Gulbenkian Collection of Gems (Lisbon, 2001); Late Antique and Early Christian Gems (Wiesbaden, 2007); and Treasures of the Ferrell Collection (Wiesbaden, 2010).