No description available.

No description available.

Thesis--New York University.

Zugl.: Univ. of Sydney, Diss. / Includes bibliographical references and index.

Texte remanié de : Thesis : ? : University of Sydney : ? / Bibliogr. p. [227]-246. Index.

The dissertation re-examines a fragmentary and understudied group of nearly 150 portrait statues representing Hellenistic kings. The surviving portrait statuary comprises a small fraction of those originally produced for kings in marble, bronze, gilded bronze, and other materials during the Hellenistic period. The corpus of extant statuary presents many interpretive challenges, from fragmentary conditions to often uncertain provenance, and from unrecognizable physiognomies of rulers to unstandardized royal iconographies. Most previous scholarship was concerned with identifying kings in their portraits, unfortunately without much success. As a result, the portraits have received relatively little attention over the past few decades, despite robust and relevant scholarly advances related to Greek portraiture and Hellenistic kingship. While most studies have focused on identifying faces and interpreting portraits in thecontext of specific reigns, the present study collates the art historical, archaeological, and textual evidence for royal portraits’ forms, iconographies, and original placements to gain a fuller understanding of the corpus. Analysis of surviving royal statue bases, literary accounts, honorific decrees detailing royal portrait commissions, and royal portraits in other media (e.g., coins, seals, bronze figurines, mosaics, etc.) reveals that royal portrait statues were often more diverse, conspicuous, theatrical, and divinizing than portrait statues representing non-royal individuals. The study demonstrates the resonances between these portrait features and the marvelous bodily adornments, choreographed movements, and calculated performances of kings' real bodies in royal rituals and spectacles, ultimately revealing that like the staged appearances of kings, Hellenistic royal portrait statues were conceived as conspicuous material syntheses of royal actors and royal roles.

The history of Hellenistic Bactria (northern Afghanistan, and areas of Tajikistan and Uzbekistan) is particularly obscure and its reconstruction contentious. Unlike other Hellenistic kingdoms very little evidence survives from literary sources and inscriptions; the best primary source is the large quantity of coins issued under the Graeco-Bactrian kings who ruled the area from the third century to the mid first century BC. With limited details of the find spots of the coins and only a few published hoards, their use has often been limited to a superficial analysis of their iconography. This thesis presents the results of a die study, an approach to studying the coins that can give many insights into the way they were produced. The coins of six kings (Euthydemus I, Demetrius I, Euthydemus II, Pantaleon, Agathocles, and Antimachus I) are included. Different mints and rhythms of production can be identified, and the overall size of the coinages estimated. Using a thorough understanding of their production this thesis proposes a new, soundly-based, history of the Graeco-Bactrian kingdom under these kings.