The research project “Olympiodorus Online”, supported by University of British Columbia, the LMU in Munich, KU Leuven, and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, and the “Between Athens & Alexandria. Platonism, 3^rd-7^th c. CE” research project coorganise a panel entitled ‘Platonic Egypt and Egyptian Platonism’ for the 2024 International Society for Neoplatonic Studies (ISNS) conference, scheduled to be held in Dublin, Ireland in June 2024. Detailed information about the conference is available on the ISNS website at http://www.isns.us. 

This panel explores how Platonist philosophers represent and engage with Egyptian religion, art, intellectual culture and conversely, how the Egyptian environment has contributed to the orientation of Platonists who lived, studied, and worked along the Nile and in Alexandria. We investigate Egyptian themes in philosophers like Plotinus, Porphyry, Iamblichus, Ammonius, Philoponus, and Olympiodorus of Alexandria, among others, while also discussing the place of Egypt in the works of Plato and Aristotle as well as in the thought of Christian Platonists like Origen and Clement of Alexandria. We are interested in assertions of Egyptian identity or affinity by Platonist philosophers, for instance by Iamblichus (as “Abammon”); intersections and bidirectional influence between the Hermetica, Platonist literature, and Gnosticism; Platonist appeals to the hieroglyphic writing system of Egypt, or Egyptian theology, laws, and culture; bilingualism and multilingualism in late antique philosophy and magic, including cross-pollination between Egyptian and Greek traditions; biographical and hagiographical representations of Greek philosophers studying in Egypt, or of Egyptian priests and oracles; the reception of Egypt in Jewish, Islamic, Christian, and Renaissance Platonism; and other related topics. In addition, the panel welcomes comparative philosophical explorations of related questions in Egyptian and Platonist thought.