Andreas J.M. Kropp is Assistant Professor at the Department of Classics and Archaeology, University of Nottingham. He has done extensive fieldwork in Petra, Baalbek, and the Hauran. His research focuses on Roman Near Eastern coins, client kings, and cult images. He is the author of Images and monuments of Near Eastern dynasts, 100 BC–AD 100 (2013).
Achim Lichtenberger is Professor of Classical Archaeology at the University of Münster. He has published on the Hellenistic and Roman Near East including Die Baupolitik Herodes des Großen (1999) and Kulte und Kultur der Dekapolis (2003), as well as on Roman Imperial representation, Severus Pius Augustus (2011).
Jane L. Lightfoot is Professor of Greek Literature and Charlton Fellow and Tutor in Classical Languages and Literature in New College, Oxford. She has published editions and commentaries with Oxford University Press on Parthenius of Nicaea (1999), Lucian’s On the Syrian Goddess (2003), the Sibylline Oracles (2007), Dionysius the Peregete’s Description of the Known World (2014), and pseudo-Manetho’s Apotelesmatica (2020), and a Loeb selection of Hellenistic poets (2008). Her articles, reviews, and chapters follow her wide interests across the prose and poetry of the Hellenistic period and later antiquity.
Michael C.A. Macdonald, D.Litt is a Fellow of the British Academy, Honorary Fellow of Wolfson College, Oxford and a Research Associate of the Oriental Institute, University of Oxford. He has worked for the last 45 years on the languages, scripts, inscriptions, and rock art of Arabia, Jordan, and southern Syria and has led, and continues to lead, numerous epigraphic surveys in the region. He has also written extensively on the history of the nomads, and ancient literacy. Between 2013 and 2017, he directed the AHRC-funded project to create the Online Corpus of the Inscriptions of Ancient North Arabia (OCIANA), and continues to update it. He has published numerous articles as well as Literacy and Identity in Pre-Islamic Arabia (Variorum, 2009) and has edited several collections of articles.
Rubina Raja is Professor of Classical Archaeology at Aarhus University and director of the Danish National Research Foundation’s center of excellence Center for Urban Network Evolutions. She directs the Palmyra Portrait Project and co-directs fieldwork projects in Rome and the Middle East. Her research focuses on societal developments and networks from the Hellenistic to the Medieval periods, iconography, religion, and religious life in Antiquity. While being a classical archaeologist she also works in the fields intersecting archaeology and natural sciences bringing high definition studies of the past to the forefront.
Gillian Ramsey is Assistant Professor in Classics at Campion College at the University of Regina, Canada. She has published on the Seleucid empire, its royalty and administration, and Hellenistic women’s history, most recently on the queens Apame and Stratonike for Women and Monarchy in the Ancient Mediterranean (2020), and is currently researching the social and cultural history of the Hellenistic world.
Alberto Rigolio is Assistant Professor of Classics at Durham University. He is the author of Christians in Conversation: a Guide to Late Antique Dialogues in Greek and Syriac (Oxford 2019), and he is currently working on a monograph on early Syriac culture and literature.
Kai Ruffing is Professor of Ancient History at the University of Kassel. His research focuses on ancient economic history, the contacts between the Mediterranean world and the East, and ancient historiography. His recent books include Das Weltreich der Perser. Rezeption – Aneigung – Verargumentierung, Wiesbaden 2019 (CleO 23) (co-edited with Robert Rollinger and Louisa Thomas), Antike Wirtschaft und ihre kulturelle Prägung – The Cultural Shaping of the Ancient Economy, Wiesbaden 2016 (Philippika 98) (co-edited with Kerstin Droß-Krüpe and Sabine Föllinger), and Wirtschaft in der griechisch-römischen Antike, Darmstadt 2012.
Maurice Sartre is Professor (emeritus) of Ancient History at the University of Tours. He studied at the University of Lyon and has been a collaborator on the project “Inscriptions grecques et latines de la Syrie” since 1969 in the Maison de l’Orient et de la Méditerranée (HiSoMA unit) for South Syria (volumes 13–16, with Annie Sartre-Fauriat). He has published books and articles about the political, social, and cultural history of the Eastern Mediterranean (L’Orient romain, 1991; Histoires grecques, 2006) and especially Syria (D’Alexandre à Zénobie, 2nd ed., 2003; Engl. tr. The Middle East under Rome, 2005). He was editor in chief of Syria from 1997 to 2018.
Michael Sommer teaches ancient history at the Carl von Ossietzky University of Oldenburg. His areas of research include the cultural history of the Hellenistic and Roman Near East, cross-Mediterranean history, and the Roman Empire. Among his recent publications are Die Soldatenkaiser (Darmstadt, 2020), Palmyra. A History (London, 2018), Roms orientalische Steppengrenze, 2nd ed. (Stuttgart, 2018). With Tassilo Schmitt he is the editor of Von Hannibal zu Hitler. “Rom und Karthago” 1943 und die deutsche Altertumswissenschaft im Nationalsozialismus (Darmstadt, 2019).
Oliver Stoll holds the Chair for Ancient History at the University of Passau. After studying at the universities of Mainz and Freiburg, he gained his PhD in Classical Archaeology in 1992 (Die Skulpturenausstattung römischer Militäranlagen an Rhein und Donau, 2. Bde) and his Habilitation in Ancient History in 2001 (Zwischen Integration und Angrenzung. Die Religion des Römischen Heeres im Nahen Osten), both at Mainz. He was research assistant and research fellow at the universities of Stuttgart-Hohenheim, Mainz, and Bamberg and also Fellow (Scholarship) of the Römisch-Germanisches Zentralmuseum in Mainz (RGZM). Research interests: military history of the ancient world, economic and social history, history of technology and religions; provincial archaeology. One of his latest books was on veterans in the Roman Near East (Ehrenwerte Männer. Veteranen im römischen Nahen Osten der Kaiserzeit, Berlin 2015).
Lucas Van Rompay is Professor emeritus of Duke University (North Carolina), where he taught Eastern Christianity (2000–2016). Before joining Duke he was Professor of Aramaic language and literature at Leiden University (1977–2000). His primary interest is in Syriac language and literature. With S.P. Brock, G.A. Kiraz, and A.M. Butts he co-edited Gorgias Encyclopedic Dictionary of the Syriac Heritage (2011). With S.P. Brock he co-authored Catalogue of the Syriac Manuscripts and Fragments in the Library of Deir al-Surian, Wadi al-Natrun (Egypt) (2014).
Eris B. Williams Reed is Senior Teaching Fellow in Roman History and Epigraphy at the University of Warwick. Her doctoral research, completed at Durham University, focused on the relationship between water and religious life in the Roman Near East. Her next project investigates the interactions between the region’s environments and their religious communities, with the aim of recalibrating these interactions as part of the diversity of religious experience in the Roman Empire. She is also interested in exploring aspects of the Roman world through the lens of modern environmental concepts, such as ecological grief and ecocide.
Jean-Baptiste Yon is Senior Researcher at the French CNRS (Centre national de la recherche scientifique) at Lyon (HiSoMA, Maison de l’Orient) and Beirut (Institut français du Proche-Orient). He has worked extensively on the history and the epigraphy of the Hellenistic and Roman Near East. He is the author of Les notables de Palmyre (2002), Inscriptions grecques et latines de la Syrie XVII.1, Palmyre (2012), Inscriptions grecques et latines du Musée national de Beyrouth (2016, with Julien Aliquot), and L’histoire par les noms (2018). He is currently working in Lebanon (excavations at Tyre) and in Jordan, and is a member of the Palmyra Portrait Project.
Maps
Map I The Hellenistic and Roman Near East. Sources: Esri USGS NOAA. Made with Natural Earth. All adjustments © T. Kaizer.flast.