The culture of ancient Egypt has fascinated outsiders from its own day well into the modern day, long after that culture was subsumed first by Greco-Roman, then Christian, then Muslim currents. And while the concept of the "Western world" owes its origin to Christian writers of early medieval Europe and Asia Minor, those same writers were keen to imagine themselves as part of—or heirs to—a cultural continuum that began with classical antiquity and evolved to include the Biblical history of the Jews.
In Western cultures' collective imaginings, the idea of "ancient Egypt" has developed and changed over millennia no less than those cultures themselves changed. From classical and late antiquity through the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, and into the modern era, this imagined "Egypt" has served as a powerful symbol, variously representing profound antiquity, esoteric wisdom, evil, the exotic, or timeless grandeur.
