Reconsidering the Expansion of Egyptian Cults in the Roman Empire: Stereotypical Ideas and Modern Interpretations

The article examines the history of studying the expansion of Egyptian religious cults into the territory of Rome and Italy for a period of over a century and a half, in the context of the relationship between Egypt and the Roman Empire. Through research, the author identified several significant stages of the expansion, reevaluated the existing research material, as well as added some new sources. In the late 19th – early 20th centuries, a domi-nant stereotype emerged regarding Egyptian cults, which asserted that the lower strata of Roman society and the population of non-Roman origin became the main adherents of Egyptian cults and the driving force behind their spread. This view was challenged in the 1980s by to the work of Malaise. An important stage in the interest in the cults of Egyptian gods in Rome and Italy took place in the mid-1990s – early 2000s. This was associated with the publication of new research and the organization of several major international conferences. As a result of these discussions, it was concluded that previous studies had a clear tendency to exaggerate the religious as-pect and that it was necessary to abandon the traditional focus on the spread of the cult of Isis and other Egyptian gods when studying the relationship between Egypt and Rome. Instead, it was suggested that the religious com-ponent should be seen as part of a broader process of cross-cultural communication in the ancient world. The author notes that, over the past two decades, interest in the topic of the spread of Egyptian cults on the territory of the Roman Empire has remained consistently high. This can be contributed, first of all, to the increasingly popularity of studying the formation of civilizational identity.