The Nile Mosaic of Palestrina: Early Evidence of Egyptian Religion in Italy.

• Author: Jasnow, Richard
• Position: Review

By P. G. P. MEYBOOM. Religions in the Graeco-Roman World, vol. 121. Leiden: E. J. BRILL, 1995. Pp. ix + 411, plates. HFl 215, $123.

One of the more intriguing phenomena of antiquity is how the image of Egypt impressed itself upon the Graeco-Roman world. A manifestation of this fascination are the classical mosaics depicting Egyptian landscapes, and P. G. P. Meyboom devotes his study to the most famous of these, the Nile Mosaic of Palestrina. Originally located some twenty-three miles east of Rome in the Archbishop's Palace at Palestrina, ancient Praeneste, it is now preserved in the Museo Nazionale Prenestino. Before dealing with the fundamental questions of date and iconography, Meyboom carefully analyzes the physical remains of the fragmentary work (pp. 3-7). The mosaic has deteriorated in modern times, and researchers must depend in part on problematic seventeenth-century copies that have been studied by such scholars as Helen Whitehouse, who edited the Dal Pozzo copies.(1) Meyboom occasionally differs from his predecessors regarding the placement of certain sections of the mosaic, and proposes several changes in details of the reconstruction (pp. 6-7). The book as a whole has the character of an extended commentary on the subject; Meyboom meticulously documents his statements with elaborate footnotes which conveniently collect the massive secondary literature. Much of the volume indeed comprises appendices on the numerous collateral points of interest raised by the mosaic. There are, for example, discussions of such esoteric zoological topics as the "onokentaura" (pp. 111-14) and the "nabous" (pp. 119-21). However, Meyboom also treats specifically art historical subjects such as that of "landscape and spatial depth in Greek art" (pp. 181-85), and even offers a concise summary of "Relations Between Ptolemaic Egypt and Rome" (pp. 164-66).

The chief issues concerning the Nile Mosaic are the date and iconography. K. Parlasca posits an Augustan date, while G. Weill-Goudchaux favors the time of Hadrian (pp. 1-2 and 16).(2) Meyboom himself believes that the mosaic belongs to "the last quarter of the second century and, more precisely, from between 120 and 110 B.C." (p. 19). There is certainly nothing which precludes such a dating. Roman interest in and knowledge of Egypt is well documented at this time. In his discussion of the date Meyboom utilizes another Nile mosaic, from the Casa del Fauno, which he places about 90 B.C. (p. 17).

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