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The origins of this volume go back to a time before the civil wars in the Middle East led to unprecedented destruction of the heritage from the Hellenistic and Roman periods in the Levantine lands. In the meantime, our field of research will probably have been changed for ever. It is to be hoped that a lasting peace will eventually be there to enjoy for the long-suffering population of the region.

At the outset, I must thank Al Bertrand, then Editorial Director for Social Science and Humanities Books at Wiley-Blackwell, for commissioning this Companion. Had I known at the time the mammoth task which editing a project of this size involved, I would surely have turned down his invitation … In the years since then, I have dealt with various members from the team at Wiley-Blackwell, and am grateful for the support of Kelley Baylis, Janani Govindankutty, Haze Humbert, Allison Kostka, Ajith Kumar, Jennifer Manias, Roshna Mohan, Elizabeth Saucier, Niranjana Vallavan, and Galen Young-Smith. In particular, I should like to acknowledge the guidance, patience, and kindness of Will Croft, Pallavi Gosavi, Todd Green, Andrew Minton, Skyler Van Valkenburgh, and Dhivya Vaithiyanathan, who together oversaw the final stage of the process. And I am grateful to Moira Eagling and Monica Matthews for their careful copy editing.

A warm thank-you for their splendid chapters and much-appreciated patience goes to all contributors to this volume. As is to be expected for a book of this size, some chapters were originally submitted substantially earlier than other ones, but all colleagues have responded in cheerful collegiality to my requests to ensure that the final version would be as up-to-date as possible. Amongst the contributors, I must single out (for reasons known to them) Jen Baird, Kim Czajkowski, Alberto Rigolio and, especially, Michael Sommer. I am truly grateful.

My thanks are also due to Eris Williams Reed for her insightful comments on an earlier draft of my introduction.

This volume is dedicated to the memory of Sir Fergus Millar, who passed away in the summer of 2019. Fergus was not a great fan of companions or handbooks, but when I asked him for his blessing of the project when I received the original commission he thought that, on the Hellenistic and Roman Near East, there might actually be some use for it. I am sorry that he did not live to see the final product. But surely the reader will perceive his presence as shining through in many of the pages that follow.

Cover Relief of priest in front of temple at Niha in the Bekaa Valley. © R. Raja.

Figure 3.1 Near Eastern section from the Peutinger Table. Freely downloadable at https://www.cambridge.org/us/talbert/index.html, Map B, TP2000seg9 (detail).

Figure 10.1 Distribution of the scripts of the oases and nomads in Arabia. © A. Al-Jallad.

Figure 12.1 Bottom part of gigantic marble statue of Aphrodite from Gerasa on the day of its discovery (13 May 2016). © T.M. Weber-Karyotakis.

Figure 12.2 Painted synagogue from Dura-Europos, reconstructed in the National Museum of Damascus. © L. Dirven.

Figure 12.3 Basalt lintel from Suweida in the Hauran, showing Hera (detail of the judgment of Paris), now in the Louvre (cat. AO11O77). © T. Kaizer.

Figure 12.4 Funerary relief from Palmyra, now in the Louvre (cat. AO4147). © T. Kaizer.

Figure 13.1 Colonnaded main street in Apamea. © R. Raja.

Figure 13.2 Capital from the Sanctuary of Artemis in Gerasa. © R. Raja.

Figure 13.3 The Sanctuary of Artemis in Gerasa seen from the west. © R. Raja.

Figure 13.4 Temple A in Niha, Beka’a Valley. © R. Raja.

Figure 14.1A Silver stater of Aradus, fourth century bce, issued in the decades before the defeat of the Persians by Alexander the Great. On the obverse, a laureate head of a bearded deity; on the reverse, a galley with stylized waves beneath; Phoenician letters mem aleph ayin above (the letter mem is off the flan).

Figure 14.1B Athenian tetradrachm or Syrian imitation of one, fourth century bce. The obverse has a head of Athena; the reverse depicts her attribute, an owl, with a sprig of olive. The test cut on the reverse suggests that such coins were probably appreciated more for their metallic worth than their symbolic monetary value.

Figure 14.1C Copper-alloy coin of Alexander the Great (336–323 bce), attributed to Byblos and issued between c. 330 and 320 bce. The obverse bears a head of a youthful Heracles, wearing the skin of the Nemean lion; the reverse has a bow in a bow case and a club, accompanied by the legend “of Alexander.”

Figure 14.1D Silver tetradrachm in the name of Alexander the Great, attributed to Byblos and issued between c. 330 and 320 BCE. Like the previous coin (14.1C) the obverse bears the head of Heracles; the reverse has a figure of Zeus seated on a throne, holding an eagle, and the legend “of Alexander.” The Greek monogram in front of Zeus has been understood as a monogram of a King Adramalek of Byblos (the first three letters of his name in Greek, ADR).