Facing the encounter: An historical ontology of Graeco-Egyptian royal sculpture of the Ptolemaic period

Culture contact historiography has gone through immense changes in the last decades. Various disciplines, from History to Anthropology, have dialogued via different objects, but convergent enquiries have developed in order to elaborate concepts and theories more adequate to a (growing) diversity of contexts and situations of contact. The present paper discusses Ptolemaic royal stone sculpture in the round within this topic of cross-cultural interaction, with special focus on statuary regarded as “mixed” in style. The main goal of this article is the comprehension of this group of objects and their construction as a challenging and debatable object of study. Attention is thus given to the ways in which this object has been nominated, analysed and interpreted since Gaston Maspero suggested some statues produced during the Ptolemaic dynasty showcased a hybridisation of Egyptian and Greek arts. This study further attempts to outline the major points from where a critique of the previous studies may arise.