Stephanie Moser. Painting Antiquity: Ancient Egypt in the Art of Lawrence Alma-Tadema, Edward Poynter, and Edwin Long (Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press, 2020, xxv and 596 pp., numerous illustrations in b/w and colour, ISBN 9780190697020)

tions, and the ways in which the two in fact overlap. The British Museum exhibition followed the pattern, not least because, although we curators were looking for something new, a public focus-group was invited to consider a range of proposed titles and came down strongly in favour of including ‘myth and reality’ in the exhibition’s name. It seems these concepts are so innately enmeshed within reception of both the story and the archaeology of Troy that no other outcome was possible. Baker’s excellent book demonstrates why this is still the case, as it has been since Schliemann’s exhibition in 1877. Visitors search for the historicity of the Trojan War in the archaeological remains, but at the same time have a continuing fascination with the myths of Troy, and the human truths that they reveal. REFERENCES