Earrings, nefesh and opus reticulatum: self-representation of the royal house of Emesa in the first century AD

Unpublished MPhil thesis submitted June, 2021. Abstract: The subject of this thesis is the history of the rulers known colloquially as Roman ‘client kings’ and their families. These large, complex kin groups became increasingly interconnected in the late Hellenistic and early Roman imperial periods and combined institutional locality and parochial engagement within their kingdoms with broadened horizons and declared belonging to a new, oikumenical royal class. There emerged a new, highly distinctive transregional royal aristocracy at the edge of the Roman world. The primary contention of the thesis is historiographical: that this is a historical phenomenon and a profitable domain of enquiry not hitherto recognised as such. Secondly, that the formation of transregional links and oikumenical belonging was an active choice by the families in response to a changing environment of risk, rather than a mere epiphenomenon of integration or Roman imperialism; I am particularly interested in the shift towards transregional exogamy in the early first century BC and in families’ regimes of property holding and transmission of capital. Thirdly, that this marked a distinctive phase in the history of royalty itself, as late Hellenistic basileia became more narrowly and differently defined compared to ‘high Hellenistic’ kingship.

The Ituraeans first came to the notice of the Classical writers as highland bandits who disrupted Alexander the Great’s siege of Tyre. Throughout the later Hellenistic and early Roman periods, the Ituraeans are referred to only in their capacity as rapacious brigands and this negative bias is perpetuated by most modern publications in which they are discussed. The outward expression of the Ituraeans, as displayed through their coinage (produced between 73/2 and 20 BC), presents a picture which contrasts with the written history: Hellenisation rather than barbarian recalcitrance and legitimacy in the face of external imperialism rather than insurrection. This paper examines the imagery employed on Ituraean coinage in its political and cultural context and discusses the significance of the exploitation of different dating conventions. It demonstrates that the Ituraean tetrarchs prized their political autonomy above all else and perceived themselves to be the legitimate successors of the Seleukid state.

2021

The history and archaeology of Hellenistic Commagene is a rich field of study, not in the least because of the remarkable monuments and inscriptions of king Antiochos I (c. 70–36 BC). Over the last decades important new work has been done on Commagene proper, providing novel interpretations of the epigraphical and historical record or the archaeological data and individual sites, like Nemrud Dağ, Samosata or Arsameia. Simultaneously scholars have tried to better understand Hellenistic Commagene by situating the region and its history in a wider Mediterranean and Near Eastern context. This long-awaited book provides a critical evaluation of all these new data and ideas on the basis of a theoretically embedded, state-of-the-art overview for the history and archaeology of Hellenistic Commagene. From this volume a new picture emerges in which Hellenistic Commagene is no longer understood as peripheral and out-of-the-ordinary, but as an important node in a global Hellenistic network, from Ai-Khanoum to Pompeii and from Alexandria to Armawir.

Nabataeans, in constructing their tombs, added many symbols and geometrical forms, plants and animals. Crowsteps, as a geometrical form, are the most common among these symbols. This study investigates the use of the crowsteps motif found frequently on the facades of Nabataean tombs. The primary focus is to replace models of typo-logical explanation for the introduction of crowsteps into the Nabataean rock-cut facades. The study begins with tracing the origin of the crowsteps motif and the wayit was adopted by the Nabataeans to become one of the most significant features in the making of Nabataean architectural vocabularies. It then provides a theoretical framework for explaining the use and meaning of the crowsteps in Nabataean archi- tecture. Thematic analysis of related literature and existing architectural remains allows us to suggest that crowsteps served both sacred and secular purposes. Sacredly, crowsteps were used to connect the deceased with the principal deities through metaphorical representation either as a ‘high place’ or as a ‘throne’. Secularly, crowsteps served basic human needs: representing identity, wealth and social structure. The study also considers that the Nabataean rock-cut crowsteps activated the dialogue between different cultural traditions and helped in shaping the ideological cult and identity of the Nabataeans. Keywords: crowsteps motif, tomb facade, sacred symbol, secular symbol, Nabataean architecture

Decoscapes in Hellenistic Italy. Figurative Polychrome Mosaics between Local and Global, 2021

conference" The World of the Herods and the …, 2007

Palestine Exploration Quarterly, 2015