The Egyptian gods enjoyed an extraordinary and enduring popularity in the Roman world. It is not only the impressive remains of their temples in Rome and Italy, but also the empire-wide spread of their worship, whose mark can be found virtually in every province, that bear witness to the devotion paid to Sarapis and Isis. The Greek East constitutes a particularly rich field of inquiry in this respect, as it yields a vast array of documents related to these cults across a long time span—evidence of how deeply embedded Egyptian deities were in the life of the local communities. The monograph that Lindsey A. Mazurek developed from her PhD dissertation (Duke University, 2016) addresses the question of the diffusion among the Greeks of the Egyptian cults, especially that of Isis, and “the impacts of those cults on ideas of Greek ethnicity” (3). The “Greek identity” anticipated by the title, in fact, turns out to be the product of a series of dynamics, which the author subsumes under concepts borrowed from Ethnicity without Groups (2004) by the sociologist Rogers Brubaker: these very notions constitute the conceptual framework of Mazurek’ Isis in a Global Empire: Greek Identity through Egyptian Religion in Roman Greece, which she describes as “a work of materially oriented ethnic history” (5). Thus, the analysis is carried out adopting an outsider perspective—the so-called etic approach—as the author explains in the conclusion (186).

An introductory chapter, “Egyptian Religion and the Problem of Greekness,” precedes the other five dedicated to exploring the documentation; four of them are entitled after the Brubaker’s concept that informs the argument. Two chapters focus mainly on epigraphic and literary sources “Building Groupness: Isis’ Devotees and Their Communities,” and “Deterritorializing Theology? Bringing the Egyptian Gods to Greece,” while the remainder are devoted to archaeological and visual evidence “Self-understanding: Visualizing Isis in Stone,” “Self-fashioning: Dressing the Devotees of Isis in Athenian Portraits,” and “Self-location: Isiac Sanctuaries and Nilotic Fictions.” The book ends with a short chapter, “Conclusion: Graecia capta, Aegypta capta”—note the rather puzzling grammatical mistake, as the correct form is Aegypto—, which elaborates further on the results of the previous ones, followed by an appendix on sculptures attributable to the Serapeum of Thessaloniki housed at the Archaeological Museum of this city, endnotes, bibliography, and a general index.

Despite Mazurek’s broad interest in “Greek ethnicity”, the geographical scope of the book is restricted to an area roughly equivalent to modern Greece, namely the provinces of Macedonia and Achaia, and some of the major islands (Crete, Kos, and Chios). Considering the amount of evidence, the exclusion of Asia Minor would not be surprising at all, were it not for the reasons that the author herself offers for such a choice: “the region’s long and close political connections with Egypt, dating back well into the Bronze Age, may have resulted in a different kind of familiarity with and understanding of Egyptian religion and culture” (6). It is not clear what connections Mazurek might be referring to, especially when mentioning the Bronze Age (the relations between Egyptians and Hittites?), and what bearing they might have had on the Greeks of later periods. It may rather cogently be argued that the contacts between Egypt and Late Helladic Greece, or—focusing on a timeframe closer to the Roman conquest—Athens in the Classical and Hellenistic periods may have indeed borne consequences for the communities of the Roman period. This is just one of several instances in which the author could have explained her views in more detail, for this inclination to brevity makes her points from time to time hard to follow or even rely on. Most significantly, however, are two other issues, which hinder a full appreciation of her work: the ambiguity of the key term “Greekness” and Mazurek’s interpretative position on the Roman empire.

At first, it seems that the whole analysis should rest on the assumption that there was a normative and apparently exclusive Greek ethnicity, for which the Egyptian cults would have represented an issue: “Given the ethnic connotations attached to the Egyptian gods, why was the cult so popular and successful?” (3). The ideas of this “Greekness” can be grasped through the writings of the intellectuals of the Second Sophistic, which are briefly referred to and occasionally discussed over the following chapters. However, even if this premise were to be accepted, to what degree were the views of these intellectuals truly representative of those of the people who produced the evidence addressed by the author? Over the course of the book, the definition of “Greekness” becomes more complex, and eventually rather elusive: “I use this term not absolutely, for I do not believe there existed a single, stable, reified group of Greeks. Rather, I keep the term for ease of expression and ask the reader to grant me this shorthand” (20). The discussion of this topic (The problem of Greekness, 17–25) is indeed not very helpful when one is confronted with the chapters that follow. The same holds true for the other “-ness” terms occasionally employed throughout the book (Romanness, Egyptianness).

The choice to frame the question in terms of a tension between ethnicities seems to be linked to Mazurek’s understanding of the Roman empire: “[I]n this work I highlight aspects of violence, power, and domination in Greece’s colonial experience. Other histories might minimize this violence, but it is important to my argument to place Isiac cults in this context of conquest and foreign rule . . . [T]he violence inherent in Roman colonization should not be overlooked” (7). In comparison to what the author does with Brubaker’s notions, it is striking that the application to the Roman empire of such a charged concept as that of colonization is simply unaccounted for, as though the reader should take it at face value. Furthermore, this stance affects the way in which at least part of the documentation is assessed, resulting in interpretations that one may hold as partial at best. This is clear from the beginning of the book, when Mazurek comments on the temple of Roma and Augustus on the Athenian Acropolis as a “most intrusive” monument “probably dedicated by an elite Greek man from Marathon” (9), disregarding the fact that the dedicatory inscription (IG II3 4, 10) attributes the initiative to the Athenian people—an element that also question its definition as “intrusive”. Another such case arises in the discussion of the Egyptian sanctuary in the villa of Herodes Atticus at Marathon, in which the latter is styled as both an “Imperial official” and a “provincial subject” (152), a characterisation which ultimately aligns with Mazurek’s claim that in such spaces the Greeks “could take distant Egypt and appropriate it for their own use . . .  Rather than suffering themselves to be identified as the colonized, they used Isiac cults to grant themselves the power and space to colonize others” (190). In fact, Herodes was a Roman citizen, and it is exactly in this capacity that he could hold the most important Roman magistracies. How much would his Egyptian sanctuary or those of other Greek cities have served the cultural revanchist purposes that Mazurek ascribes to them? And then, what about those communities of worshippers outside Greece whose sanctuaries had comparable architectonic and sculptural features?

Since the evidence is so diverse, it is not possible to discuss here every point raised by Mazurek’s presentation: specialists in the many fields of Ancient Studies will certainly read of little-known materials or find interesting insights on familiar ones. Taking the example of statuary, the author’s exploration of Isis’s aretalogies and their possible interplay with the images of other goddesses in the experience of a Greek worshipper visiting an Egyptian sanctuary is stimulating and thought-provoking (112–17). On the other hand, there are aspects, which would have deserved a more thorough treatment—for instance the iconography of Sarapis and Isis (90–101)—or whose interpretation is rather questionable, such as the suggestion that the use of white marble for Isis’s statues was “based on a need to privilege Greeknees as the Mediterranean’s most important culture” (101). A discussion on visual language(s), workshop traditions, and stone supply options—that is, on artistic geography—would have been expedient in this case.

Overall, the idea of writing a regionally focused monograph on the worship of Egyptian deities and its role at a local level is commendable, and credit is due to Mazurek for bringing together a rich and varied body of materials, thereby making them more accessible also to nonspecialists in the Egyptian cults in the Hellenistic and Roman periods. Moreover, her work will represent a practical sample of the possibilities offered by the adoption of sociological and anthropological theories as a means for reading the evidence from antiquity. However, one cannot help but feel that a proper comprehension of the “understudied group” (4) of Greek worshippers of Isis and Sarapis is yet to be achieved. It is hoped that this book will encourage future scholars to engage with the great variety of topics it touches upon through a detailed analysis of the sources, further contributing to our understanding of the success of the Egyptian deities outside their homeland and, more generally, to the multifaceted social and cultural history of the Roman provinces.