Frogs around the Pond? Cultural Diversity in the Ancient World and the New Millennium

Abstract

This essay examines relations between Greeks and non-Greeks in the eastern Mediterranean in three case studies. A Geometric clay pyxis from Athens is compared to an older Egyptian granary, to consider how shapes, images, and beliefs might travel across time and place. In the second case, a famous image of Artemis from Ephesus is traced to Anatolian traditions of the second millennium. Finally, the role of myth, or the narrative behind such images, is examined in the figure of Midas, whose asses’ ears could harbor royal Anatolian attributes. Details of these connections are explored elsewhere; this essay asks how and why we pursue them in classical art and myth, and what the results accomplish for our purposes as teachers and scholars of classical antiquity.