Diffusion of local cultural elements in the Roman Empire the cult of Isis in Savaria

Abstract

This paper analyze a cultural-historical example of the relationship between globalization and local cultures, the spread of Egyptian religious phenomena in the Roman Empire, in the Savaria of Pannonia. Ancient Roman culture is still the defining basis of European culture, and the phenomenon of the 'interpretatio Romana', one of its many cultural heritages, is particularly instructive for the subject of this conference book. In examining this cultural and religious phenomenon, I seek to answer the question of how the tolerant aspects of Rome's religious policy, which brought together/coerced the peoples of the ancient Mediterranean into an imperial unit, led to the creation of imperial, 'globalised' versions of local cultural elements and the spread of local cultural traditions of different ethnic groups. What were the features of the Egyptian cult in the area of today's Szombathely, in the Iseum of the Roman Savaria?