A Companion to the Hellenistic and Roman Near East

Johannes H. Hauboldis Professor of Classics at Princeton University. He is the author of Greece and Mesopotamia: Dialogues in Literature (Cambridge University Press, 2013), and has co-edited, with G. Lanfranchi, R. Rollinger, and J. Steele, The World of Berossos (Harrassowitz, 2013) and, with J. Steele and K. Stevens, Keeping Watch in Babylon: the Astronomical Diaries in Context (Brill, 2019).

C.T. Robert Haywardwas Professor of Hebrew in the Department of Theology and Religion, University of Durham, from 1995 to 2015. He was President of the British Society for Old Testament Study in 2006. His publications include studies of the ancient Bible Versions and Jewish Bible interpretation during Second Temple and Early Rabbinic times, often with reference to the Church Fathers, especially St. Jerome. He taught Hebrew, Aramaic, and Syriac, and continues to publish work on the Aramaic Targums, Early Rabbinic Texts, and writings of the Second Temple Period.

John F. Healeyis Professor Emeritus in the University of Manchester and a Fellow of the British Academy. He is the author of The Nabataean Tomb Inscriptions of Mada’in Salih (Oxford University Press, 1993), The Religion of the Nabataeans (Brill, 2001), Aramaic Inscriptions and Documents of the Roman Period (Oxford University Press, 2009), and, with H.J.W. Drijvers, The Old Syriac Inscriptions of Edessa and Osrhoene (Brill, 1999). A collection of his articles was published as Law and Religion between Petra and Edessa (Ashgate, 2011). His current research includes work on new inscriptions from Edessa and Harran, on the Syriac script, and on Syriac legal texts.

Jan Willem van Hentenis Professor of Religion, in particular Ancient Judaism and Ancient Christianity, at the University of Amsterdam. He is also extra-ordinary Professor of Old and New Testament at Stellenbosch. He is the author of Martyrdom and Noble Death (2002; with Friedrich Avemarie) and co-editor of Martyrdom: Canonisation, Contestation and Afterlives (2020; with Ihab Saloul). His commentary on Josephus, Antiquities 15, was published in 2014 in the Flavius Josephus: Translation and Commentary series (edited by Steve Mason). He is preparing a commentary on 2 Maccabees for the Anchor Yale Bible series.

Benjamin Isaacis Lessing Professor of Ancient History Emeritus at Tel Aviv University and a member of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, of the American Philosophical Society, and of the Deutsches Archäologisches Institut. He is also an Israel Prize Laureate. He has held visiting appointments at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton (twice), Dumbarton Oaks, Harvard University, the National Humanities Center, the Collège de France, All Souls College Oxford, Churchill College Cambridge, and Macquarie University. His books include: The Limits of Empire: The Roman Army in the East (Oxford, 1990), The Near East under Roman Rule (Leiden, 1998), The Invention of Racism in Antiquity (Princeton, 2004), Empire and Ideology in the Graeco-Roman World: Selected Papers (Cambridge, 2017). He is one of the editors of the Corpus Inscriptionum Iudaeae/Palaestinae (Volume 5 is now in print).

Ahmad Al-Jalladis a philologist, epigraphist, and historian of language. He is currently the Sofia Chair of Arabic at Ohio State University. His work focuses on the languages and writing systems of pre-Islamic Arabia and the ancient Near East.

Lidewijde de Jongis Associate Professor in Archaeology at the University of Groningen. She has published widely on the Roman cemeteries and funerary customs in the Near East, and is the author of The Archaeology of Death in Roman Syria (Cambridge University Press, 2017). Her research focuses on the dynamics of ancient empires and identity formation, and extends to the era of the Hellenistic-Seleucid kings, preceding Roman control, and the period after Rome was replaced by Byzantine and Early Islamic rulers. Her current fieldwork is carried out in the Kurdistan region of Iraq and Pisidia in central Turkey.

Ted Kaizeris Professor in Roman Culture and History at Durham University. He is the author of The Religious Life of Palmyra (2002) and has edited or co-edited various volumes on the social and religious history of the Roman Near East. He is currently working on a monograph on religious life in Dura-Europos and has written the historiographical introductions for two volumes on Dura in the Bibliotheca Cumontiana , Scripta Minora VII (2020) and Scripta Maiora XI (forthcoming 2022).

David L. Kennedyis Emeritus Professor of Roman Archaeology and History and Senior Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Western Australia. He has worked extensively in the Middle East including on programs of Aerial Archaeology in Jordan (1997–2017) and Saudi Arabia (2018–2020). He is the author, most recently, of The Roman Army in Jordan , 2nd ed. (2004) and Gerasa and the Decapolis (2007) and co-author (with R.H. Bewley) of Ancient Jordan from the Air (2004) and an iBook, Kites in ‘Arabia’ (with P. Houghton and R.E. Banks) (2014). He is currently researching books on The Hinterland of Philadelphia and East of Jordan: 19th Century Travel and Travellers in Jordan .

Andreas J.M. Kroppis 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 Lichtenbergeris 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. Lightfootis 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 Rajais 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.