Late Antique Egyptian Funerary Sculpture: Images for This World and the NextPrinceton University Press
Thelma K. Thomas
ISBN: 0691034680
price: $57.50 hardcover
Early Coptic art, once heralded as the crude product of a
poor, indigenous, Christian peasantry, is here dramatically
recast in the more inclusive cultural terms of late antiquity.
Focusing on funerary sculpture, one of the best-known categories
of late antique Egyptian art, Thelma K. Thomas demonstrates how
skilled artisans created a varied repertory of works for a
diverse body of commissioners. Some of these sculptures were made
for grand monumental tombs and commissioned by an urban,
landowning class with strong Hellenistic roots; others were made
for smaller and less imposing monuments and commissioned by
distinctly different clienteles from monasteries and towns, as
well as by different socioeconomic classes within the cities.
Thomas balances keen analysis of the surviving sculptures with
close attention to primary written sources and archaeological
evidence. The approach yields original interpretations of
regional implications for attribution groups, and provocatively
atmospheric reconstructions of the works as they would have
appeared in their original settings. The sculptures' motifs and
styles provide evidence for focused discussions of the cultural
affiliations of the late antique Egyptians described in this
book--pagan and Christian, secular and monastic, children and
adults. Thomas's reading of the sculptures' cosmic and
eschatological themes allows for an even richer understanding of
this historical moment.
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