Ancient Western Asia (Near East) (up to 7th cen.)

From the Chalcolithic onwards the culture and society of Sumer flourished along the banks of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers with communities living close to the ancient shoreline in an environment that was closely linked to the exploitation of fluvial systems the sea and the unique marshlands of the area. This volume gathers together research first presented as part of a workshop entitled Sumer and the Sea: Deltas Shoreline and Urban Water Management in 3rd Millennium Mesopotamia to explore the interaction between Sumerians and their water-dominated environment. The chapters gathered here offer updates on methodologies and the most recent research from the field to provide new understanding and fresh insights into how the Sumerians adapted to the world in which they lived.

Gerasa/Jerash and the Decapolis are located along the seismically active area of the Dead Sea Rift a point where four tectonic plates meet to create the 110 km-long fault known as the Dead Sea Transform. It was activity along this fault that led in ad 749 to a famously devastating earthquake in the region. Measuring at least 7.0 on the Richter scale this quake not only had a profound physical impact on the Decapolis Galilee Caesarea and Jerusalem causing widespread destruction and reshaping urban landscapes but also led to a clear shift in socio-economic dynamics through a combination of economic decline and population displacement. It thus stands as a clear watershed moment in Late Antiquity. In its aftermath some cities struggled to regain prominence while others declined and were abandoned. Taking the ad 749 earthquake as its starting point this volume aims to provide a nuanced understanding of the quake’s effects questioning its role as a sole watershed moment and exploring the various other factors at play that influenced urban change. The contributions gathered here which clearly recognize earthquakes as non-human actors in this process clearly highlight the diverse impacts that this seismic event had on the city life in the southern Levant and the fallout in the decades that followed.

This volume brings together an international and interdisciplinary host of scholars to reflect on the complicated legacies of exploration at the archaeological site of Dura-Europos situated on the western bank of the Euphrates River near modern Salihiyeh (Syria). A chance discovery after World War I kicked off a series of excavations that would span the next century and whose finds are today housed in collections worldwide including the Yale University Art Gallery the Louvre and the National Museum in Damascus. Dura-Europos exemplifies a multiethnic frontier town at the crossroads of major trade routes. Its textual remains and remarkably-preserved Christian Jewish and polytheist religious sanctuaries provide key resources for the study of antiquity and attest to the cross-cultural interconnectivity that was demonstrably central to the ancient world but which has been too often obscured by Eurocentric historiographic traditions and siloed disciplinary divisions.

Foreign-run large-scale archaeological campaigns of the early twentieth century like those at Dura-Europos have created narratives of power and privilege that often exclude local communities. The significance of these imbalances is entangled with the destruction the site has experienced since the 2011 outbreak of conflict in Syria. As a step toward making knowledge descendant of early excavations more accessible this volume includes Arabic summaries of each paper following up on the simultaneous Arabic interpretation provided at the 2022 hybrid conference whose proceedings form the core of this publication. The papers address topics connected to essential themes in relation to Dura-Europos: long-distance trade relations and cross-border interactions in antiquity including the exchange of technologies people and materials; Christianity Judaism and other religious practices and their relations to one another; contemporary trafficking of looted artifacts; cultural heritage and the Islamic State; and the evolving role of museum collections technologies and archival materials for research.

The Battle of Gaugamela in which Alexander the Great’s army faced the Persian army of King Darius III in 331 bce remains a famous date in history the last battle that led to Alexander’s conquest of the Achaemenid Empire. However the topography and chronology of the campaign have up to now remained little studied. Taking these two elements as its starting point this volume draws both on the latest archaeological research in the region and on recent advances in science (in particular GIS) to offer a completely new reconstruction of the Gaugamela campaign arguing for a much shorter campaign than has hitherto been understood. By turning the spotlight for the first time onto the geographical and topographical context of the campaign the author here also provides a new understanding of both the scale of Alexander’s military achievement and the long-term effects of the military reforms introduced by his father Philip II.

The Pal.M.A.I.S. Syro-Italian joint project at Palmyra established in 2007 aimed to shed light on private housing in the Roman East. Through excavations in Palmyra’s southwest quarter the remains of a residential complex the ‘Peristyle Building’ were uncovered; this site was built in the Roman period but was inhabited up to the eighth century ad.

This volume dedicated to Prof. Maria Teresa Grassi (Università degli Studi di Milano) who co-directed the project together with Dr Waleed al-As‘ad (Museum of Palmyra) presents selected studies stemming from the Pal.M.A.I.S. project. It draws together contributions dedicated to the topography of the southwest quarter the excavation of the Peristyle Building and selected classes of material. Through detailed analysis and the presentation of fresh data this volume sheds new light on a relatively unexplored sector of a threatened UNESCO World Heritage site.

Incubation (temple sleep) was a well-known ritual in the Near East and became increasingly popular in Classical and Hellenistic Greece becoming attached to Asclepius and other divinities. It flourished in the Eastern Mediterranean where it was encountered by the emergent Christianity. Temple sleep was so widespread that it was impossible to ban. The Christianization of the incubation ritual was thus a detailed and lengthy (but successful) process that encompassed several aspects of the Church’s self-definition including important social and theological issues of the era. The list of relevant issues is extensive: the fate of Greek temples and the reinterpretation of sacred space confronting Hippocratic medicine and the learned Greek intelligentsia. Since disease and a search for cure is a ubiquitous human need the early Church embraced a healing ministry in secular terms as well as in ritual healing. Incubation records show how the Church viewed dreams conversion or the notions of magic and divination. All these come within the framework of writing miracles: the transformation of the cult was thus incorporated into standard Church discourse from ritual practice to proper literary genres.

This first comprehensive monograph on Christian incubation examines the rich material of all the relevant Greek miracle collections: those of Saint Thecla Cyrus and John the different versions of Saint Cosmas and Damian and saint Artemios as well as the minor incubation saints As a result it unfolds the transformation of healing sites and practices related to dreams as they spread across Byzantium from rural Asia Minor to Constantinople and Alexandria.