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The legendary overland silk road was not the only way to reach Asia for ancient travelers from the Mediterranean. During the Roman Empire's heyday, equally important maritime routes reached from the Egyptian Red Sea across the Indian Ocean. The ancient city of Berenike, located approximately 500 miles south of today's Suez Canal, was a significant port among these conduits. This book, written by the archaeologist who excavated Berenike, uncovers the role the city played in the regional, local, and “global” economies during the eight centuries of its existence. The book analyzes many of the artifacts, botanical and faunal remains, and hundreds of the texts the author and his team found in excavations, providing a profoundly intimate glimpse of the people who lived, worked, and died in this emporium between the classical Mediterranean world and Asia.

This book explores the archaeological and epigraphic evidence for Greek colonies in Central Asia in the Hellenistic period, in the aftermath of the campaigns of Alexander the Great. In communities such as the Graeco-Bactrian city of Ai Khanoum, the descendents of colonists interacted with their neighbours, and created dynamic new cultures and identities. Utilising a wide range of sources – documentary texts, inscriptions, archaeological remains, coins, Chinese and Greek historical writings - this work argues

The product of a decade of research, The Iranian Expanse is a study of the natural and built environments of power in Persia and the ancient Iranian world from the consolidation of the Achaemenid Empire in the sixth century BCE to the fall of the Sasanian Empire in the seventh century CE. It analyzes the formation and development of some of the most enduring expressions of power in Persia and the ancient Iranian world: palaces, paradise gardens and hunting enclosures, royal cities, sanctuaries and landscapes marked with a rich history of rock art and ritual activity. It explores how these structures, landscapes and urban spaces constructed and transformed Iranian imperial cosmologies, royal identities, and understandings of the past. While previous studies have often noted startling continuities between the traditions of the Achaemenids and the art and architecture of medieval or Early Modern Islam, they have routinely downplayed or ignored the tumultuous millennium between Alexander and Islam. The first study of its kind, the Iranian Expanse shows how the Seleucids, Arsacids and Sasanians played a transformative role in the development of a new Iranian royal culture that impacted early Islam and the wider Persianate world of such dynasties as the Il-Khans, Safavids, Timurids and Mughals.

This study uses an early seventh-century Christian martyr legend to elucidate the culture and society of late antique Iraq. Translated from Syriac into English here, the legend of Mar Qardagh introduces a hero of epic proportions, whose characteristics confound simple classification. During the several stages of his career, Mar Qardagh hunts like a Persian King, argues like a Greek philosopher, and renounces his Zoroastrian family to live with monks high in the mountains of Iraqi Kurdistan. Drawing on both literary and artistic sources, the author explores the convergence of these diverse themes in the Christian culture of the Sasanian Empire (224–642). Taking the Qardagh legend as its foundation, his study guides readers through the rich and complex world of late antique Iraq.

The Mirage of the Saracen analyzes the growth of monasticism and Christian settlements in the Sinai Peninsula through the early seventh century CE. It uses a post-colonial lens to examine the ways that Christian monks justified occupying the Sinai through creating associations between Biblical narratives and Sinai sites and assigning uncivilized, negative, and oppositional traits to the indigenous nomadic population, whom the Christians pejoratively called “Saracens.” By writing edifying tales of hostile nomads and the ensuing martyrdom of the monks, not only did the Christians reinforce their claims to the spiritual benefits of asceticism, they also provoked the Roman authorities to enhance the defense of pilgrimage routes to the Sinai. Included in these defenses was the monastery now known as Saint Catherine’s. When Muslim armies later began conquering the Middle East, Christians also labelled these new conquerors as Saracens, connecting Muslims to these pre-Islamic representations. The main sources used in this work are the Sinai Martyr Narratives – Ammonius’s Relatio and Pseudo-Nilus’s Narrationes, though many other literary sources as well as archaeological and anthropological information is used extensively.

This book sheds new light on religious clashes of the mid-fifth century regarding the nature (or natures) of Christ. The book focuses on Theodoret, bishop of Cyrrhus, his Syrian allies, and his opponents, led by Alexandrian bishops Cyril and Dioscorus. Although both sets of clerics adhered to the Nicene Creed, their contrasting theological statements led to hostilities, violence, and the permanent fracturing of the Christian community. The book closely examines council transcripts, correspondence, and other records of communication. Using social network theory, the book argues that Theodoret's doctrinal coalition was actually a meaningful community, bound by symbolic words and traditions, riven with internal rivalries, and embedded in a wider world of elite friendship and patronage.