ENVISIONING THE ART OF EMPIRE IN THELETTER OF ARISTEAS

Abstract

This article examines two ‘digressions’ within the Letter of Aristeas: the description of the gifts which Ptolemy sends to the Jerusalem Temple (§§51–82) and the survey of the Jerusalem Temple, the city and the Judaean countryside, including the final comments on Persian mining on the Arabian border (§§83–120). I propose that Aristeas envisions the Alexandrian artworks as an imperial subject and that, by juxtaposing the two passages, he comments on the imperial machinations that attend the production of artworks. In concluding I suggest that this anxiety about material cultural production in an imperial context has ramifications for the Letter's central narrative of literary cultural production: the Alexandrian creation of the Septuagint.