My current academic research has branched out into three strands. My PhD thesis looks at the adoption and domestication of Egyptian gods, cultic practices and elements of art by the Greeks during the Hellenistic and Roman periods (4th century BCE-2nd century CE).
Secondly, I examine the cultural impact of epic poetry characterising the personalities of the Greek gods and ideas about the afterlife. This encompasses the ways in which these texts were engaged with beyond simple reading – through the creation of new cultural-religious identities, commemoration in material culture and inclusion in the grave.
Thirdly, I look at the attitudes that the Greek literary tradition – namely, Herodotus – took towards Egyptian history, culture and religion and how this influenced Greeks in their practice of religion, specifically Egyptian-inspired religion.
Worshipping the Egyptian Gods in Hellenistic-Roman Greece
Worshipping the Egyptian Gods in Hellenistic-Roman Greece
My PhD thesis, under the working title ‘Experiences of Worshipping in the Greek Temples of the Egyptian Gods’, seeks to explain why Greeks, who were living in multicultural societies during the Hellenistic and Roman periods (last centuries BCE and first centuries CE) incorporated Egyptian gods, such as Sarapis, Isis, Anubis and Harpokrates, into their religious lives and local landscapes. As they did so, they constructed temples and filled them with objects that, while seemingly Greek in their outward forms, were replete with ideas and fine details taken from Egypt.
There was a series of such sanctuaries throughout the Greek world, including the sacred island of Delos, where Apollon was believed to have been born and Dion (city of Zeus) in the Macedonian heartland of north Greece, at the foothills of Mount Olympus. There was the Sarapeion at Alexandria, city of Alexander the Great, the Ptolemies and their most celebrated member, Cleopatra and arguably the cultural heart of the Greek world at the time. There were, however, also less well-known sites on the Greek Cyclades islands, such as the temples at Eretria on the island of Euboea and at Gortyn on Crete.
The Derveni Papyrus, Orphic Mysteries and Macedonian Religion
The Derveni Papyrus, Orphic Mysteries and Macedonian Religion
How can literature help to forge a new political-cultural-ethnic identity when two ambitious leaders unify a group of fragmented tribes and cities and suddenly build a vast empire that encompasses most of the known world? How can the burning of a text allegedly authored by a mythological ‘occult’ poet, together with a tomb jam-packed with riches, guarantee heroic immortality after death? How did an ancient aristocrat read a book that spans three different genres?
My MA dissertation, titled The Derveni Papyrus in its Religious, Performance and Social Context in 4th Century BCE Macedon, supervised by Dr Chiara Meccariello (University of Exeter) has been a source of other ongoing research interests and endeavours of mine.
In 1963, a one-of-a-kind discovery was made in a remote field in northern Greece. The find consisted of a half-burnt, book-quality papyrus roll (the so-called Derveni Papyrus) that had been mysteriously left on the covering slabs of a cist-grave filled with treasures and belonging to a late 4th century BCE Macedonian noble. Ever since its retrieval, the papyrus has been laboriously conserved, restored and edited, revealing a unique text by an unknown author that combines sophisticated Presocratic philosophy with the recitation of, and commentary on, a curious theogonic hymn attributed to the mythological poet and founder of mystery cults, Orpheus. The Derveni Papyrus remains one of only a handful of Greek papyri from outside Egypt.
Herodotus – Greek Reporter of Egyptian Traditions
Herodotus – Greek Reporter of Egyptian Traditions
Ever since reading the translations of Herodotus, ‘The Father of History’, into Polish (Seweryn Hammer) and English (Aubrey De Sélincourt) and subsequently the original (courtesy of the Loeb Classical Library), I have been fascinated by Herodotus’ Histories.
What began as an (as it turns out, victorious) entry for the ‘Doris Post Essay Prize’ competition held by the Herodotus Helpline in 2025 on the subject of Herodotus’ account of the 26th Dynasty (6th century BCE) pharaoh Amasis (Ahmose) soon turned into a separate strand of research.
Principally, I explore Herodotus’ literary workshop as it appertained to his contacts with contemporaneous Egyptians, his account of Egypt in Book II and how his writings exerted an important influence on later generations of Greeks interacting with Egyptians and worshipping their gods.
If any of this has peaked your interest, watch out for my upcoming publications and talks on my research, which I will post to the ‘My Publications’ and ‘My Talks and Lectures’ sections of the website.