A Companion to the Hellenistic and Roman Near East

J.A. Baird, PhD, FSA, is Professor of Archaeology in the Department of History, Classics, and Archaeology at Birkbeck College, University of London. Her work has focused on the Roman Middle East, and she has published on ancient graffiti, urbanism, housing, as well as archaeological photography, archives, and the history of archaeology. Her books include Ancient Graffiti in Context (co-edited with Claire Taylor, Routledge, 2011), The Inner Lives of Ancient Houses: An Archaeology of Dura-Europos (Oxford University Press, 2014), and Dura-Europos (Bloomsbury, 2018).

Janine BaltyDr habil., honorary researcher at the Centre belge de recherches archéologiques à Apamée de Syrie. She is author of La mosaïque de Sarrîn (Osrhoène ), Beyrouth-Damas-Amman ( Bibliothèque archéologique et historique CXI), Paris 1990 and of Mosaïques antiques du Proche-Orient. Chronologie, Iconographie, Inter-prétation , Besançon-Paris 1995. She has published widely on the archaeology and history of Apamea-on-the-Orontes (Syria) and on classical iconography (portraits, sarcophagi, mosaics), in various periodicals.

Apostolos Bousdroukisis a researcher at the French National Center for Scientific Research (UMR 7041, Archéologie et Sciences de l’Antiquité) in Paris. He is the author of the forthcoming monograph D’Alexandre à Kanishka. Rencontres interculturelles dans l’Orient hellénistique, romain et arsacide (MDAFA, Mémoires de la Délégation Archéologique Française en Afghanistan). His scientific interests include the history and institutions of the Hellenistic and Roman Near and Middle East and the cross-cultural encounters between Greek and indigenous populations.

Kevin Butcheris Professor in the Department of Classics and Ancient History, University of Warwick. He is author of Roman Syria and the Near East (2003); Small Change in Ancient Beirut (2003); Coinage in Roman Syria (2004); co-author of The Metallurgy of Roman Silver Coinage (2014); editor of Debasement: Manipulation of Coin Standards in Pre-Modern Monetary Systems (2019); and has published widely on numismatics, monetary history, and ancient sites in the Near East. He is currently principal investigator on a European Research Council Advanced Grant Rome and the Coinages of the Mediterranean .

Kimberley Czajkowskiis a Senior Lecturer in Ancient History at the University of Edinburgh. Her research primarily focuses on the legal history of the Roman Near East, though she also has broader interests in the history of the Jewish people, Roman law, and ‘Romanization’. She is the author of Localized Law: the Babatha and Salome Komaise Archives (2017) and co-editor of Law in the Roman Provinces (2020).

Lucinda Dirvenis Professor by Special Appointment of Ancient Religions at the Radboud University, Nijmegen. She studied art history and history of religions and comparative religion at the University of Leiden, where she obtained her PhD which was published in 1999 as The Palmyrenes of Dura-Europos. A Case Study of Religious Interaction (Brill). Her research concentrates on the Roman and Parthian Near East (especially Dura, Hatra, and Palmyra) on the one hand and the religious influences of these regions on the Roman West on the other hand. Currently, she is finishing a catalog on the sculptures from Hatra and is preparing the final report on the mithraeum of Dura-Europos, together with Matthew McCarty (University of British Columbia).

Peter M. Edwellis Senior Lecturer in the Department of Ancient History at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia. He researches and teaches on the relationship between the Roman and Sasanian empires and in the area of Late Antiquity more broadly. He is the author of Between Rome and Persia (2008) and Rome and Persia at War (2020), both published by Routledge. He is also part of the project Crises of Leadership in the Eastern Roman Empire funded by the Australian Research Council.

Yaron Z. Eliavis Associate Professor of the Rabbinic literature and Jewish history of late antiquity at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. He is the author of God’s Mountain: the Temple Mount in Time, Space, and Memory (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005; soft-cover 2008) and co-editor of various volumes including The Sculptural Environment of the Roman Near East: Reflections on Culture, Ideology, and Power (Interdisciplinary Studies in Ancient Culture and Religion 9; Peeters, 2008). His documentary for the college classroom, Paul in Athens , came out in 2018, and is available on YouTube. Currently, he is working on his new book, A Jew in the Roman Bathhouse: The Poetics of Cultural Interaction in the Roman Mediterranean .

Alison C. Ewinsis a PhD student at Durham University. Her thesis investigates ‘Religious Terminology in the Local Cult Centres of the Roman Near East’.

Margherita Facellais Associate Professor of Greek History at the University of Pisa. Her research focuses on the Hellenistic and Roman Near East, in particular on Commagene, where she participates at the excavations and surveys conducted by the Forschungsstelle Asia Minor (University of Münster). She is author of La dinastia degli Orontidi nella Commagene ellenistico-romana (2006) and co-editor of Lokale identität im Römischen Nahen Osten: Kontexte und Perspektiven (2009) and Kingdoms and Principalities in the Roman Near East (2010).

Pierre-Louis Gatieris a researcher in the ancient history, archaeology, and epigraphy of the Near East posted at the CNRS (Centre national de la recherche scientifique) in Lyon (France). “Coordinator” until 2017 of the IGLS program, he is the author of Inscriptions de la Jordanie , 2, Région centrale (Inscriptions of Jordan, 2, Central region) (1986), published in the IGLS series, and has also edited or co-edited numerous books. He contributes to the Bulletin épigraphique and L’Année épigraphique , and is currently working on the Gerasa corpus and on a catalog of the Hellenistic and Roman weights from Syria.

Michał Gawlikowskiis Professor emeritus of Warsaw University, where he taught the archaeology of the Near East and Aramaic epigraphy. He was also Director of the Polish Center of Mediterranean Archaeology (Warsaw/Cairo) from 1991 to 2005 and excavated several sites in the Near East, Palmyra (1973–2011) and Hawarte (1998–2009) in Syria, Gerasa in Jordan (1982–1984), and Hatra in Iraq (1990).

Tommaso Gnoliis Professor of Roman History at the University of Bologna. His research activity is mainly focused on the Roman Near East, Greek and Latin historiography during Late Antiquity, and Greek and Latin epigraphy. He has published Roma, Edessa e Palmira nel III sec. d.C. Problemi istituzionali. Uno studio sui Papiri dell’Eufrate (2000); The Interplay of Roman and Iranian Titles in the Roman East (1st–3rd Century A.D.) (2007); and Navalia, Guerre e commerci nel Mediterraneo romano (2012); and has edited Le identità regionali nell’impero tardoantico (with V. Neri) (2019) and Aspetti di Tarda antichità: Storici, storia e documenti del IV secolo d.C . (2019).

David F. Grafis Professor at the University of Miami. He is the author of Rome and its Arabian Frontier from the Nabataeans to the Saracens (1997) and director of the Hellenistic Petra Project. He has been conducting field work in Jordan since 1978. He has been a Fulbright Scholar in Saudi Arabia (2003), and recently the Seymour Gitin Distinguished Professor at the Albright Institute for Archaeological Research in Jerusalem (2017). He is a Member of the Institute of Advanced Study at Princeton.