Pharaonic Egypt and the Ara Pacis in Augustan Rome
Jennifer Trimble (Stanford University)
Princeton/Stanford Working Papers in Classics: September (2007)
Abstract
This paper explores processes of cultural appropriation, and specifically Augustan visual receptions of pharaonic Egypt. As a test case, I consider the possibility of Egyptianizing precedents for the Ara Pacis, including the architecture of Middle and New Kingdom jubilee chapels. This requires looking at the Augustan interventions into the traditional temple complexes of Egypt, the transmission of imperial ideas about pharaonic Egypt to Rome, their uses there, and the role of pharaonic appropriations within a broader landscape of Aegyptiaca in Rome.
1. Appropriations
The Ara Pacis Augustae is the product of a modern appropriation (fig. 1). Fragments were known from the sixteenth century and there was serious interest in the nineteenth, but the decisive intervention came under Mussolini in 1937-38, when the majority of the altar was excavated under the direction of Giuseppe Moretti in a spectacular feat of engineering that included freezing the groundwater at the site. The subsequent reconstruction presented a monument that was compellingly whole. Within a new pavilion designed for it by Vittorio Ballio Morpurgo, it could be visited and walked around, and its program and sculpture studied in detail. This splendid presence was coupled with a striking absence. The monument had been removed from its original location in the southern Campus Martius and was now reconstructed as the fourth side of the Piazzale Augusto Imperatore, the other three sides consisting of new buildings framing Augustus’ Mausoleum (fig. 2). Tying these elements together, the Res Gestae of Augustus was reproduced on the external wall of the Ara Pacis pavilion facing the Mausoleum, while on the Piazzale’s modern buildings, modern inscriptions and imagery evoked ancient Roman themes, including visual echoes from the altar itself. Excavated and reconstructed in this way to mark Augustus’ bimillennial anniversary, and inaugurated in 1938 on the emperor’s birthday of Sept 23rd, the Ara Pacis Augustae now linked a Fascist political program to an Imperial past through direct analogy, through the process of reclamation, and through its reconstructed materiality.
Jennifer Trimble (Stanford University)
Princeton/Stanford Working Papers in Classics: September (2007)
Abstract
This paper explores processes of cultural appropriation, and specifically Augustan visual receptions of pharaonic Egypt. As a test case, I consider the possibility of Egyptianizing precedents for the Ara Pacis, including the architecture of Middle and New Kingdom jubilee chapels. This requires looking at the Augustan interventions into the traditional temple complexes of Egypt, the transmission of imperial ideas about pharaonic Egypt to Rome, their uses there, and the role of pharaonic appropriations within a broader landscape of Aegyptiaca in Rome.
1. Appropriations
The Ara Pacis Augustae is the product of a modern appropriation (fig. 1). Fragments were known from the sixteenth century and there was serious interest in the nineteenth, but the decisive intervention came under Mussolini in 1937-38, when the majority of the altar was excavated under the direction of Giuseppe Moretti in a spectacular feat of engineering that included freezing the groundwater at the site. The subsequent reconstruction presented a monument that was compellingly whole. Within a new pavilion designed for it by Vittorio Ballio Morpurgo, it could be visited and walked around, and its program and sculpture studied in detail. This splendid presence was coupled with a striking absence. The monument had been removed from its original location in the southern Campus Martius and was now reconstructed as the fourth side of the Piazzale Augusto Imperatore, the other three sides consisting of new buildings framing Augustus’ Mausoleum (fig. 2). Tying these elements together, the Res Gestae of Augustus was reproduced on the external wall of the Ara Pacis pavilion facing the Mausoleum, while on the Piazzale’s modern buildings, modern inscriptions and imagery evoked ancient Roman themes, including visual echoes from the altar itself. Excavated and reconstructed in this way to mark Augustus’ bimillennial anniversary, and inaugurated in 1938 on the emperor’s birthday of Sept 23rd, the Ara Pacis Augustae now linked a Fascist political program to an Imperial past through direct analogy, through the process of reclamation, and through its reconstructed materiality.
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