Contextual and Conceptual Remarks on the Question of the Diffusion of Egyptian Cults in Italy

Over the past twenty years, studies of the diffusion of the cult of Isis and other Egyptian gods on the territory of Rome and Italy have undergone serious deconstruction, which, first of all, made it possible to question the entire scale of cross-cultural contacts between Egypt and Rome, as built exclusively on a religious basis. Moreover, the contextualization of the cult of Isis led to the emergence of other horizons of interpretation based on the processes of constructing a new Roman identity within the framework of the formation of imperial self-awareness. In this context, the author highlights contextual and conceptual approaches, as well as the specifics of the diffusion of Egyptian cults on the territory of the Roman Empire, which will subsequently allow us to focus on the problem of integrating these beliefs into the Roman cultural and religious environment. It is noted that the specificity of Roman religious practice lies in the fact that a significant part of it was formed on the basis of knowledge, topoi and images received «second-hand», i.e. not directly from the East, but through contacts with the Greeks, which at an early stage led to a significant transformation of the original Egyptian cults. At the same time, the adaptation of the topoi of Egyptian culture actively continued in Roman society, when at the end of the 1st century BC it became part of the process of deterritorialization, i.e. was torn out of its original context, retaining only an ephemeral connection with its place of origin. These changes, according to the author, affect not only the cult of Isis, as one of the elements of Egyptian culture, but also ideas about Egypt entirely. Deterritorialization could take such forms that allowed the Egyptian gods to be placed in the Roman world not only metaphorically, but also physically, which ultimately further distanced them from their original place of origin, and also reterritorialized them within the Roman Empire itself.