Percepcija starog Egipta u antici
Perception of Ancient Egypt in antiquity

Summary/Abstract: Ancient Egyptian society has specific place in European taught, although it is not so simple to find Egyptian legacy in our culture like we can talk about Roman law, Greek philosophy or The Holy Bible. Nevertheless, Egypt had an important roll in construction of European identity and we can see changes in European historycal and cultural climat by finding evidences of European interest in land of pharaohs. Ancient Greece is extremly important point in that trajectory, because it is the first society of European continent that left written historical traces that speak about contacts between two cultures. Besides that, in 18th and 19th centuries Ancient Greece was the main model of progressive society that developed great works of art, philosophy and culture in broad sense and that is the reason for importance of Greek texts about Egypt. On the other hand, Romans had quite different picture about the land in Nile valley. Egypt apeared in their minds like one more province of their wast state and looked at it in light of resources that will fill up their state tresuary. In the first period of intercultural contacts Ancient Romans had stereotyped ideas about Egypt, because they had plans to conquest land, and Egypt was enemy for them, but after the conquest we can sense dramatic change: Egypt becomes part of Roman everyday life, land that fascinates by her religion, mysticism and treasures. In this work we tried to present all that points of view in classical antiquity and to show that by exploring ancient evidences we can learn lot about past, but also about present and complex paths that crossed in construction of our society today.

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