The Destruction of Statues in Late Antique Egypt: A Widespread Phenomenon or Christian Polemic?

Abstract

The topic of violence in Late Antiquity is a heavily debated subject and many scholars have focused on this issue, as evidenced by the many studies published within the last ten years. The perception of Late Antiquity as a period of widespread religious violence is mainly influenced by Christian literary sources, who document accounts of violence against temples, statuary, and people alike. Egypt, in particular, has often been used as an example to demonstrate the destructive nature of religious violence that existed in the ancient world. However, the concept of religious violence is a complicated and nuanced topic. In Egypt, the many accounts by the Christian sources were written with specific intentions and the events documented in the texts were often exaggerated. The objective of this thesis is to provide a study of statue destruction by Christians between the fourth to seventh centuries CE in Egypt, and determine whether these destructions were acts of religious violence or were carried out for another reason in order to provide a more nuanced understanding of violence in Late Antiquity. By juxtaposing accounts from literary sources and archaeological evidence, the study seeks to determine whether the literary sources are accurate in their documentation of widespread statue destruction, or whether the violent discourse present in the literary sources is the result of Christian polemical purposes.