Eric Chaim Kline, Bookseller

Les Rapports des Grecs avec l'Égypte (De la Conquête de Cambyse, 525, à celle d'Alexandrie, 331) [Mémoires Publiés par l'Institut Français d'Archéologie Orientale du Caire. Tome Quarante-Huitième]

Mallet, Dominique (Text by); George Foucart (Ed.)

Le Caire (Cairo): Institut Français d'Archéologie Orientale, 1922. First edition. Hardcover. Folio (14 1/4 x 11"). [6], xv, [1], 209, [1]pp. Modern full cloth, with gold lettering to spine. Publisher's device to title page.

In Dominique Mallet's remarkable study, we see how the frequent cross cultural and economic relationships between the Greeks and Ancient Egypt made possible the rapid hellenization of the country of Pharaohs under the Ptolemies.

Indeed, "Egyptians and Greeks are known to have been in contact already in the 2nd millennium BC, though we don’t know much about it. The picture becomes clearer from about 600BC, when the sea-faring Greeks were frequent visitors to Egypt. Some of it was for trade (there was a Greek trading-base at Naucratis in Egypt from about this time), some of it was about military services, and some of it was probably just sightseeing. By the 5th-4th centuries BC Greek intellectuals had a pretty good idea of Egyptian culture. They knew it was ancient (in fact they greatly overestimated how old it was), and they saw it as a source of knowledge and esoteric wisdom. Some of them believed that Egypt had influenced Greece in the distant past; for the historian Herodotus, Greek religion was mostly an Egyptian import." (For more information, see Ian Rutherford's "Greco-Egyptian Interactions: Literature, Translation, and Culture, 500BC-AD300").

Minor shelf wear. Ex-library copy with remnants of sticker at tail of spine, bookplate on inside of front cover, descriptive notice on inside of back cover, and stamp at upper and lower paper edges. Text in French. Binding in overall good+ to very good, interior in very good condition. g+ to vg. Item #42900

Price: $350.00