Speaking with Egyptian gods:
dialogue and difference

Ian Moyer
Associate Professor
University of Michigan

When Lucius, in the final book of the Metamorphoses, prays to an unknown lunar goddess and receives a reply from Isis, Apuleius has his characters, one human and one divine, address each another in Latin literary versions of Greek genres of discourse, including well-known hymns and self-revelations of Isis.  Apuleius was not simply adapting Greek texts to his literary purposes; he was also representing existing dialogical relations between a range of Greek inscriptions, and – crucially – the spoken utterances for which they stood.  Several of these inscribed discourses adopt and adapt stylistic and formal features from each other that were regarded as characteristic of Isiac genres of discourse.  Drawing on examples from the Memphite self-revelation of Isis, adaptations from Maroneia and Andros, as well as the hymns of Isidorus from Medinet Madi, this talk explores the dialogical discourse of Greek hymnic texts belonging to Isis and her circle and their literary representation by Apuleius.  While such texts have long been understood as domesticating translations of an exotic divinity intended to facilitate her assimilation into Hellenistic and Roman societies, examining them collectively and in their dialogical relations with one another shows that their discourse held a place for difference, figuring Isis as a stranger who was neither fully assimilated nor wholly other.

For a Zoom link, email Paraskevi Martzavou at pm2839@columbia.edu

PLEASE NOTE: To attend in person, non-Columbia students/staff will need to contact Columbia ahead of time to be put on a list for entry.