In the current context the term ‘‘reception’’ is taken to denote not only the knowledge and understanding which the classical world acquired of Pharaonic Egypt but also the use which Greeks and Romans made of their vision of this culture for their own purposes. In dealing with this phenomenon we shall concentrate mainly on the textual evidence since material of this kind is much more explicit than representational data, but there is much to be learned from the latter, and its aid will be invoked as and when it helps in analysis. Unfortunately the textual database is anything but easily tractable because it is generated by several factors which interact in complex ways to create not one image but a veritable kaleidoscope. The starting point for any image generation is the personal reaction of individuals, which may range anywhere on a spectrum running from tolerant fascination through disinterested enquiry to contemptuous prejudice. Such perceptions will then be aggravated by major deficiencies in historical and cultural imagination which are endemic in the ancient world, though it had no monopoly of this failing, and both vitiate a deep understanding of any alternative culture. Furthermore, while the ever evolving tradition on Egypt, oral and written, which took root in Greece and Rome, contained much truth, it also harbored many errors which were much more likely to be compounded than rectified in the light of experience or fresh knowledge as the new was forced into a pre-existing mould. Finally, textual traditions are not all of one type or one literary genre, and this inevitably has a significant effect in that they all have their genre-defined agenda which determine what they say, how they say it, and how far truth is subordinated to the requirements of a particular type of text. While it is true that one culture will never produce an undistorted picture of another, however hard it may try, the interaction of the factors just enumerated guarantees that the image Pharaonic Egypt generated in the classical world will fall some considerable way short of actuality. The most convenient way to deal with these data is to take them in chronological order.
World History
