La imagen de Busiris y Memnón en las fuentes clásicas

Abstract

The physical characterization and ethnical adscription of the Ancient Egyptians have been topics of great interest in Egyptology research for some time. The afrocentrists’ hypotheses insist that the Egyptians were black. Opposing this interpretation we find the western academic media. My objective is to emphasize in this context the importance of one source of information: the iconography of Hellenic pottery. By means of this and its comparison with literary sources it will be possible to analyze how the Egyptians were perceived by contemporary societies. The specific purpose of my research is to compare different sources on two paradigmatic characters in Greek mythology: Busiris, an Egyptian monarch, and Memnon, an Ethiopian ruler. With these objectives, I have mainly focused on the phenotypic features which appear in references from classical literary sources, and also, from Hellenic pottery production of the VI-IV AC centuries.