The Greeks in Egypt: on Sunken Cities at the British Museum
The exhibition explores the interactions between two great civilizations.
Two thousand years ago, Thonis-Heracleion and Canopus, two cities on Egypt's Mediterranean coast, were thriving cultural melting pots.
Traders from the Greek world and the Levant flowed into the cities' ports with goods, ideas and religious beliefs. The Egyptian god Osiris, king of the blessed dead, was celebrated
The Art Newspaper
June 9, 2016
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along with the wine-loving Greek god Dionysus, among many other deities. In both cities, as elsewhere in Egypt since the 650s BC, Egyptian and Greek cultures slowly fused, an evolution best represented by the flourishing cult of Serapis—a hodgepodge deity combining various Greek divinities and the Egyptian god Osiris-Apis.