In 2018 the J. Paul Getty Museum presented the exhibition Beyond the Nile: Egypt and the Classical World, curated by Jeffrey Spier, Timothy Potts, and Sara E. Cole. This was the first in a series of exhibitions and publications seeking to explore how Greece and Rome influenced and were influenced by neighboring cultures and civilizations in the Mediterranean and Near East over a period spanning
nearly twenty-five hundred years. Providing an assemblage of objects rarely, if ever, displayed together, the exhibition invited viewers to move beyond a common perception of Egypt, Greece, and Rome as monolithic, static cultures; to think about the “classical world” beyond the confines of its traditional definition; and to contemplate the interconnectedness of the ancient Mediterranean.