Recorded: February 18, 2020
Event: Contextualizing Iranian Religions in the Ancient World - 14th Melammu Symposium
Citation: Agut-Labordère, Damien. "Religious Interactions between Persians and Egyptians in Achaemenid Egypt," Contextualizing Iranian Religions in the Ancient World - 14th Melammu Symposium. February 18, 2020.
by Damien Agut-Labordère (French National Center for Scientific Research)
Religious Interactions between Persians and Egyptians in Achaemenid Egypt
In this presentation, I shall not focus on the relationship of the Persian crown and Egyptian temples, but rather address the question of religious interactions between Persians and Egyptians during the first Persian domination (526–400 BCE), and in the first half of the 4th century BCE. My approach will be resolutely micro-historical. I will begin by examining how some Persians serving the Great King in Egypt adopted all or part of the Egyptian funeral rites, for it is in this context that the phenomenon of acculturation of Iranians living in Egypt is most apparent. Subsequently, I shall examine how Egyptians may have integrated Persian elements into their religious practices and worshiped the Great King as a god. Finally, I seek to demonstrate that these phenomena of acculturation do not occur in all of Egypt, but are inscribed within geography that corresponds unsurprisingly to the centers of Persian power in the Nile Valley.
About the Speaker
Damien Agut-Labordère is a doctor in Egyptology, an epigraphist, a specialist in demotic writing, and in the history of the 1st millennium BC. He is a research fellow at the CNRS, a member of the UMR Arscan-HAROC (Nanterre), and a member of the Achemenet program. He is a lecturer at the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes in Paris, and lecturer in Greek and Hellenistic history at the Catholic Institute of Paris.