Banquet imagery has a long and continuous tradition in Egypt, already expressed in Pharaonic wall paintings in the second millennium BC. Equally important was the depiction of banquets all over the Roman Empire, used as motif in wall paintings, mosaics and funerary reliefs. While banquet scenes are nearly absent from Roman-period Egypt, there are a few examples of relief carvings from the first and second century that depict a reclining figure and these examples will form the core of this discussion.

This paper examines how, in Egypt, this visual repertoire was used and reinterpreted in the Roman period through the case study based on stone-carved reliefs depicting banquet scenes. By situating the banquet reliefs within Egypt’s artistic legacy, the study highlights both the endurance of local conventions and the emergence of new iconographic strategies shaped by shifting cultural contexts. A comparative analysis with contemporaneous banquet scenes from imperial Rome and neighboring regions of the Near East, such as Palmyra, will help us better understand how stone, as a medium, was used to transfer a message. Through this cross-regional approach, the paper elucidates how Egyptian artisans selectively adapted a widely shared motif, creating works that are at once part of a broader visual koine and distinctly anchored in Egypt’s own artistic tradition.