Vezető a Déri Múzeum kiállításaihoz II. A Déri gyűjtemények. 2. javított kiadás (Debrecen, 2001)

121 THE EGYPTIAN, GREEK AND ROMAN COLLECTIONS Nofertum, and various animals worshipped as saints. In the last display case, the utensils, the characteristic furniture legs, the alabaster and bronze pots exhibited were all parts of grave furniture. Apart from these, the Alexandrian glass jugs are also noteworthy. The terracotta statuettes are already from the time of the Roman Empire, while the Coptic textile rags were made in the 4th—5th centuries A. D. Classical art reached its highest standards in ancient Greece. On the southern part of the Balkan Peninsula, the first Greek tribes appeared at the beginning of the 2nd millennium B. C. and shortly established a flourishing culture (Mykene). The slave-holding city-state system (polis) came into being in the 9th—8th centuries B. C. In this archaic age, arts were exposed to some Oriental influence, too. After the repulsion of the Persian attacks at the beginning of the 5th century B. C, Athens became the leading power of the Greek world. This made it possible for the Athenian democracy of classical culture to flourish. It reached its highest point during the reign of Pericles. Following the middle of the 4th century B. C, the Macedonians occupied the weakened city-states and Alexander the Great established a world empire expanding as far as India. In the successor states, after his death, the so-called Hellenistic art developed by the fusion of Greek and Oriental arts. Arts in Rome at the time of the monarchy were mostly influenced by Etruscan and Greek traditions, and it became artistically independent only from the 3rd century B. C. on. Between the 4th and the ist centuries B. C, Rome, by its gradual conquests, gained power over Italy and later over the whole Mediterraneum of the antiquity. This brought about a change in its culture in the course of which