ABSTRACT
Since the decipherment of hieroglyphic and Egyptology’s reconstruction of its history, the history and culture of Egypt after the New Kingdom has suffered from unfair neglect in general studies. This is the more remarkable because many Egyptologists have been particularly attracted to certain aspects of these periods, such as Demotic texts. The pre-nineteenth-century European image of Egyptian art was derived almost entirely from monuments that were the products of the Late, Ptolemaic and Roman Periods. In recent years, interest in Ptolemaic and Roman Egypt and their monuments has increased enormously among Egyptologists, rather than being the preserve of classicists, particularly papyrologists. Popular interest has also been stimulated by the underwater discoveries in the area of Alexandria. However, the centuries from the end of the New Kingdom to the conquest by Alexander the Great of Macedon in 332 BC remain a period that excites little popular interest. Why?
