“The Invention of the Necropolis: Collective Memory, Identity, and Funerary Practices in Hellenistic Alexandria [Egypt]” [in Greek]
[Audio-Visual]

“The Invention of the Necropolis: Collective Memory, Identity, and Funerary Practices in Hellenistic Alexandria [Egypt]” [in Greek]

The lecture explores how Hellenistic Alexandria “conceived” its necropoleis as active mnemonic topographies: not as closed spaces of death, but as carefully staged environments in which the living performed rituals and recurring commemorations, renewing bonds of family, status, and collective identity. Focusing on the city’s Ptolemaic cemeteries, it discusses the hybrid architecture of the underground complexes (courtyards, peristyles, burial niches), where the memory of the Greco-Macedonian “homeland” enters into dialogue with Egyptian practices and transforms the tomb into a “funerary temple,” a meeting point of the living and the dead. Finally, funerary painting (grave stelae and plaques, iconographic and stylistic particularities) is highlighted as a language of social differentiation and the negotiation of identities within a multiethnic city.

---

>>>>>>>>>>> https://www.blod.gr/lectures/i-epinoisi-tis-nekropolis-syllogiki-mnimi-taytotita-kai-tafikes-praktikes-stin-ellinistiki-aleksandreia/?fbclid=IwY2xjawPwPI5leHRuA2FlbQIxMABicmlkETBFOEFxc1Y2a2ZoNnFjY3M1c3J0YwZhcHBfaWQQMjIyMDM5MTc4ODIwMDg5MgABHtuyrXJFjU6kYg0IgaPjbJi7Rure3_aFA0S7NZrbqK1CgFoCaEwV862MG7WH_aem_teo7LWsTjMLqMI64_fdePQ

Dimitris Plantzos (Greek: Δημήτρης Πλάντζος) is a classical archaeologist and writer, and Professor of Classical Archaeology at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens.He specializes in Greek art and archaeology, archaeological theory, and contemporary and modern receptions of classical culture.