From the Ptolemies to the Emperors: A Sculptural History of the Alexandria Serapeum

Dr. Paul Edmund Stanwick

29 August 2017

02:00 PM

Afterlife Section, Antiquities Museum, Bibliotheca Alexandrina Main Building (B1 level)

The Bibliotheca Alexandrina Antiquities Museum is holding a lecture entitled From the Ptolemies to the Emperors: A Sculptural History of the Alexandria Serapeum. The lecture will be held on Tuesday, 29 August  2017, at Afterlife Section, Antiquities Museum, Bibliotheca Alexandrina Main Building (B1 level), at 2:00 pm; and will be given by Dr. Paul Edmund Stanwick, a scholar of the Ptolemaic and Roman Period in Egypt. His specialty is sculpture. He has devoted much of his study to the sculptural remains of ancient Alexandria. The researcher will discuss a picture of the Serapeum’s visual program through time, via both the Classical and the Egyptian statues. Today’s ruins of the Alexandria Serapeum provide only hints of the site’s over 500-year history as a religious center devoted to the god Serapis. The earliest Ptolemies through the later Roman emperors supported extensive building programs and elaborate sculpture that befitted the sanctuary’s august status and were justly famed in Antiquity. This talk will examine the archaeological record, ancient documentation and modern historical accounts to develop a history of the sculptures created to adorn the Serapeum from the Ptolemaic through the Roman Periods.