Cosmopolitan Trends in the Arts of Ptolemaic Alexandria

Abstract

Among all the Alexandrias, Alexandria of Egypt enjoyed the quality of universality. Despite the glory achieved by the city for more than a thousand years, only a few monuments from that city remain, which do not match the glory and the greatness of its past. Nevertheless these remains are expressive of diversity in different fields. In the light of recent archaeological discoveries, we realize that fusion in Alexandrian art began with the time of the first two Ptolemies. One would tend to think of Ptolemaic Alexandria as a city that incorporated Egyptian and Greek traditions in both physical and cultural aspects of its life. New artistic motives were created to express the intellectual and artistic richness of the different cultures that resided in Alexandria and were influenced by the city’s heterogeneous and cosmopolitan society. This paper is tracking the archaeological evidence on the universal trends in ancient Alexandrian art through an investigation of some monuments.