Between religion and politics

Abstract

The Hellenistic civilisation in Egypt was the result of complex relations between two symbolic universes in a constant process of update. The Hellenistic period created a new political reality by gathering together the Greek-Dominant and the Egyptian-Dominated in the same physical space. That new community would coexist during the following three centuries. Consequently, one’s perception of “Us” - and its differentiation from “Them” - become blurred. In this article, Egyptian religion gains a major focus to discuss how cultural updates are shaped by the way individuals understand, classify, and interact with the world surrounding them at a political, religious, cultural, and social levels. Hence, constant, gradual and always unpredictable transformations are in charge of redefinitions of cultural identities. The outcome of such a transformation of cultures is a new symbolic universe – in our case a Hellenistic universe – that developed a new world-view, replacing both traditional Egyptian and Hellenic.

Keywords

• Cultural identity
• Greeks in Egypt
• Egyptian religion
• Hellenistic egypt