# Reconceptualizing cross-cultural influences: Kmt and Greece  
The highly skilled Kmtan artists used living human models to create enduring images which stare at us; these images serve as primary evidence for evaluating the specific ethnicities and nationalities with which the people of Kmt came into contact from the predynastic to the Pharaonic period. The characteristic costumes, hair styles, type and texture of hair, shape of nose, and so on are presented with such an eye for detail that we are left with no doubt that these outstanding artists were portraying phenotypical features that  
they had observed. Before delving further into this arena, however, we should examine the report of an ancient eyewitness and compare it with one of the rapidly amassing modern scientific revelations about the technical, aesthetic and established canonical traditions which produced the variety of art in the ancient political entity called Kmt.  
Diodorus Siculus, who lived during the first century BCE, wrote and published a book on ancient Egypt. By then, Egypt was a country which had been colonized, principally by the Greeks in a process initiated by the multiculturalist Alexander of Macedonia in 332 BCE. However, Kmt's reputation as a centre of science, religion and the arts had not been dimmed, and, according to Davis (1979, footnote 3; emphasis added), 'The journey to Egypt is a central theme in the ancient biographies of several Greek philosophers and men of culture. References to this abound in the classical literature.' Diodorus lists 13 prominent figures in Greek intellectual and political history (including Homer, Solon and Plato) as having visited and/or studied in Kmt (Diodorus, 1985, p. 125). He goes further by naming two famous Greek sculptors: