The Art of Hellenistic Queenship

Patricia (Tricia) Kim joins me in the Lesche to discuss the art of Hellenistic queenship -- i.e., art that depicted Hellenistic queens, art patronized by Hellenistic queens, and art that spoke to the construction of queenship across the Hellenistic world. 

Egypt Museum on the "Arsinoe-Aphrodite" statue

Franck Goddio write-up of the statue

Lesche episode 18 is a conversation about Isis Worship in the Greek East (including Egypt) with Lindsey Mazurek.

Ancient passage 

Pliny, Natural History 34.148 (on Timochares' idea for a floating statue of Arsinoe II)

Works mentioned

• Historical work by Sheila L. Ager, Elizabeth Carney, Sabine Müller, et al. on Hellenistic queenship.
• Najmabadi, Afsaneh (2006) "Beyond the Americas: Are Gender and Sexuality Useful Categories of Analysis?" Journal of Women's History 18: 11-21.
• Parmenter, Christopher Stedman (2024) Racialized Commodities: Long-Distance Trade, Mobility, and the Making of Race in Ancient Greece, C. 700-300 BCE. Oxford.
• Seaman, Kristen (2020) Rhetoric and Innovation in Hellenistic Art. Cambridge.
• Smith, R.R.R. (1989) Hellenistic Royal Portraits. Oxford.
• Stewart, Andrew (1993) Faces of Power: Alexander's Image and Hellenistic Politics. University of California.
• Waywell, Geoffrey B. (1978) The Free-Standing Sculptures of the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus in the British Museum. London.

About our guest

Patricia Kim is assistant professor at New York University and author of The Art of Queenship in the Hellenistic World (Cambridge University Press, 2025)—the first book-length study on the visual and material cultures of queenship from the 4th-2nd centuries B.C.E, across the eastern Mediterranean and western Asia. She is guest-curator of a forthcoming exhibition on ancient queenship at the Cincinnati Art Museum and the Getty Villa (2027). 

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Thanks for joining us in the Lesche!

Podcast art: Daniel Blanco
Theme music: "The Song of Seikilos," recomposed by Eftychia Christodoulou using Sibelius

This podcast is made possible with the generous support of Brown University’s Department of Classical Studies and the John Nicholas Brown Center for Advanced Study.

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