Excavations at Amheida between 2004 and 2006 revealed a large, late antique domicile, dubbed the “House of Serenos,” filled with an astonishing array of decorated plaster – a rare find in terms of quantity as well as the subject matter of the paintings in the house’s main reception room. Showcasing lively figural scenes drawn from Greco-Roman mythology in an era when one might expect instead Christian iconography, the visual program of this house reveals much about the sophisticated visual and literary culture at play in a city that could otherwise be considered a backwater given its distance from the major metropolitan centers of the Nile. This chapter surveys therefore the extraordinary corpus of late antique wall painting from Amheida’s House of Serenos alongside other examples of decorated plaster from the Great Oasis in order to interrogate the role played by artistic practice and visual culture in general in articulating the social, political, and religious dynamics of late antique Egypt.

The history of temple buildings in the Great Oasis shows periods of intense activity alternating with periods of relative quiet. When seen in combination with the varying amounts of archaeological remains over time, this data allows us to chart the development of contacts between the oases and the Nile Valley. In particular, this has consequences for the times of the Libyan conflicts of the 19th Dynasty. This chapter argues that the oases were in Libyan hands during this time, after which the Egyptian army re-established control. Two dated finds from the temple at Amheida, Dakhla, are of particular interest for this discussion. A stela of Seti II marks building works at Amheida shortly after the wars of Merenptah, and a fragment of relief dated to Ramesses IX sheds light on the incursions of Libyans into the Nile Valley at that time.