Photograph of Dr Martin Bommas

Dr Martin Bommas has received an award from the Getty Research Institute, for the project ‘Remembering Egypt: the creation of nature within temples of Isis in the Roman world’.

The Fellowship, which begins in September 2016, will enable Dr Bommas to spend nine months at the prestigious Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles, where he will continue his research on the Egyptian goddess Isis, and how she was personified as nature in the ancient Greek and Roman worlds.

The research will show how Isis’s new identity became the major driving force behind the design and interior decoration of temples for Egyptian gods in Greece and Rome. For example, exotic animals like ibises and crocodiles were depicted on frescoes and columns in important temples for Isis in Rome. Dr Bommas has collected archaeological and textual evidence for this research for the past 10 years – this award gives him an opportunity to write a book on the subject.