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The Antiquities Museum has a valuable collection, prized among Egyptian museums, of portrayals of intellectuals, including a funerary stele from the Chatby Necropolis that represents a memorial of one of the philosophers or intellectuals who were dynamic and active in Alexandria during the 3rd century BCE. Several statues of Greek thinkers usually had Roman copies and adaptations, such as the marble pyramid representing Xenophon, a famed Athenian historian and soldier. Statues and sculptures of Socrates, Plato, Zeno, Hermarchus, Menander, Hesiod, and others are also found in Egypt. The 2nd century AE was probably the time when Greek philosophy peaked in the East and resulted in the spread of statues of new sophists, such as the elegant marble statue with a Greek pallium in Marsa Matrouh and terracotta statues of school students and learners. Another marble statue from a cemetery located in Sporting, Alexandria, demonstrates how Roman soldiers (togati) were keen on dressing as intellectuals or learned men when performing their civil duties.
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