Greek Immigration, Literature, and Identity in Egypt, Ancient and Modern

This is a joint event between ISAC and the National Hellenic Museum. Brian Muhs discusses the history of Greek immigration to ancient Egypt in the first millennium BCE, and how Greek immigrants and their descendants used and promoted Greek language and literature. The Ptolemies founded the library of Alexandria and patronized associated scholars and philosophers to portray their capital as a center of Greek learning. They also subsidized the teaching of Greek in the Egyptian countryside, which helped the descendants of Greek immigrants to maintain their language, literacy, and identity. Egyptians also learned Greek, however, and brought an Egyptian voice to Greek literature that spread well beyond Egypt. Katherine Kelaidis turns from antiquity to the modern period, focusing on the poet C. P. Cavafy and the Greek community of early twentieth-century Alexandria. Writing from one of the most cosmopolitan cities of the modern world, Cavafy lived and worked at the intersection of Greek, Egyptian, British, and French cultural life. His poetry draws on Hellenistic history as well as the social and political realities of empire, migration, and decline that shaped Alexandria in his lifetime. This talk situates Cavafy within both the global Greek diaspora and the wider cosmopolitan world of the eastern Mediterranean, tracing how his work moved across languages, borders, and literary traditions. Through Cavafy, we will explore how literature reflects life in multilingual, multiethnic societies—and why his poetry continues to speak powerfully to readers grappling with exile, memory, power, and belonging in the modern world.