2015).
The distinctiveness of the wider region, and the diversity of its constituent parts, found expression perhaps most clearly in the religious culture and in art, where aniconism has traditionally been treated as the stereotypical Near Eastern way of representing the divine (for a famous example, see Fowlkes-Childs and Seymour 2019: 62–63, no.38; and above all the sophisticated discussions by Gaifman 2008 and Stewart 2008) and where the popular scholarly misnomer “Parthian art” hides a large assortment of local idiosyncrasies in which classical and Oriental elements interact in a myriad of ways (see the important collection of articles on the “sculptural environment” of the region in Eliav et al. 2008; cf. Weber 2006, which is the first installment of a collection of all classical sculptures from the National Museum in Damascus). Recent years have seen the publication of studies on the religious life of individual sites or sub-regions, including Lucinda Dirven on Palmyra and Dura-Europos (Dirven 1999), Marie-Emmanuelle Duchâteau on Dura-Europos (Duchâteau 2013), Jane Lightfoot on Hierapolis (Lightfoot 2003), Nicole Belayche on Judaea (Belayche 2001), Achim Lichtenberger on the Decapolis (Lichtenberger 2003), Corinne Bonnet on Hellenistic Phoenicia (Bonnet 2015), Julien Aliquot on the Roman Lebanon (Aliquot 2009), Simone Paturel on the Beqaa valley (Paturel 2019), John Healey and Peter Alpass on Nabataea (Healey 2001; Alpass 2013), and Rubina Raja and myself on Palmyra (Kaizer 2002; Raja 2019a). As regards the religious architecture, this ranged from Mesopotamian temple types to Parthian-style vaulted structures commonly known as “iwans” and from indigenous models sometimes referred to in modern literature as “kalybe” to the monumental sanctuaries combining a classical appearance with “Oriental” features such as niches and parapets (for studies of the various architectural fashions, see Downey 1988 on the Mesopotamian and Parthian traditions; McKenzie 1990 on the architecture of Petra; Freyberger 1998 on the sanctuaries of the wider region which he prefers – sometimes controversially – to date to the early imperial period; Thomas 2007 on the monumental classical buildings of the high empire; Segal 2013a who divides the Near Eastern temples into Vitruvian and non-Vitruvian categories).
The key defining element of the variety of the Near Eastern lands may well be the presence of a range of Semitic and other non-classical languages, in use (in varying degrees) alongside the koinē that was Greek (Latin, though never absent, played a more modest role in the region’s linguistic situation). Great progress has been made in recent years with regard to the publication of different corpora, including (to give but two examples) Laïla Nehmé’s archaeological and epigraphic atlas of Petra (Nehmé 2012a) and Marco Moriggi and Ilaria Bucci’s publication of the Aramaic graffiti from the archives of the Italian Archaeological Mission to Hatra by the University of Turin, which was spearheaded by Roberta Venco Ricciardi (Moriggi and Bucci 2019). Comparative study of the different Aramaic vernaculars in use in places such as Palmyra – “the only publicly bilingual city in the Roman Near East” (thus Millar 1993: 470; cf. Kaizer 2017: 87–94) – Hatra, Edessa, and Petra is greatly facilitated by the fourth installment, by John Healey, of the Textbook of Syrian Semitic Inscriptions (Healey 2009).
As for onomastics, no region in the ancient world has revealed such integration of personal names from so many regions and cultural spheres of influence (cf. Sartre 2007; and now above all the monumental volume by Yon 2018a. For a recent investigation of the nomenclature attested at Dura-Europos see Grassi 2012, and for Hatrene names see Marcato 2018. Ilan 2002–2012 is a lexicon of Jewish names in four volumes.). Near the Roman colony of Berytus, a dedication in Latin was set up by a lady called Flavia Nicolais Saddane, sporting Roman, Greek, and Semitic elements in her name (CIL III, 6680; cf. Kaizer 2005). From elsewhere in the Lebanon comes the funerary “Qartaba column” depicting two couples whose personal names combine classical and Arabic roots (Fowlkes-Childs and Seymour 2019: 138–139, no.98). Though it remains highly problematic to establish a person’s ethnicity on the basis of nomenclature, studies of onomastics may serve to reveal the persistence of indigenous layers below classical surfaces which can otherwise be hard to pin down. The material brought together in the forthcoming Volume VI of the Lexicon of Greek Personal Names on Syria, Mesopotamia, Palestine, and beyond, prepared by the Oxford-based LGPN team directed by Rober Parker, in collaboration with Jean-Baptiste Yon, will therefore be of enormous assistance in the discussion of issues of cultural interaction in the wider region (see also Kaizer et al. forthcoming, emanating from the conference on “Greek Onomastics East of the Mediterranean: Naming and Culture in the Roman Near East and the Greek Far East,” which took place in 2019 around the material that is being prepared for LGPN VI).
The Future of the Hellenistic and Roman Near East
Since this project was first conceived, the political situation in the Middle East has been dramatically and drastically altered, and with it the future of scholarship on the Hellenistic and Roman Near East. That is not to say that heritage at risk is a totally new problem. The protection of ancient sites and monuments fell within the remit of the famous explorer Gertrude Bell when she was appointed Director of the Department of Antiquities in Iraq in 1923. In the 1990s and again in 2000 large international rescue operations were undertaken in Zeugma when the ancient town at the Euphrates crossing was threatened to be submerged due to the construction of a modern dam (Kennedy 1998b; Aylward 2013). But needless to say, when it comes to the archaeological remains from the world of the Hellenistic and Roman Near East, the past years have seen more, and more serious, destruction than ever before. As a result, new projects have been set up by various academic teams in order to address the manifold issues that are at stake. The EAMENA (Endangered Archaeology in the Middle East and North Africa) project (https://eamena.arch.ox.ac.uk) uses satellite imagery, like its key forerunner the Fragile Crescent project (https://www.dur.ac.uk/fragile_crescent_project). High-resolution imagery can make major contributions in the assessment of damage to archaeological sites, especially in comparison with “ground-based observations of damage by civilians, media, and often politicized government reports” (thus Casana 2015: 142) – perhaps most notoriously in the well-documented looting in 2012 and 2013 in Apamea on the Orontes, done with heavy machinery and seemingly involving many people (Figure 15.3). A book published by the Swedish Axel and Margaret Ax:son Johnson Foundation, on cultural heritage at risk, has focused on the role of museums in war and conflict, key as they are for “capacity building, advocacy and passing a strong message on the urgent need to put a stop to illicit trafficking” (Almqvist and Belfrage 2016). A document created in 2012 by Emma Cunliffe and the Global Heritage Fund assembled and cataloged information about what was referred to as “Damage to the Soul: Syria’s Cultural Heritage in Conflict” (https://ghn.globalheritagefund.com/uploads/documents/document_2107.pdf).
The site whose fate has become most emblematic of the recent destruction that took place in the Middle East is Palmyra. The willful demolition of its spectacular remains has not only turned the erstwhile “Queen of the Desert” into the undisputable symbol of the world’s heritage at risk, it has also made the oasis city the main forum for ongoing discussions both about rebuilding planning and about a reorientation of scholarly approaches which have to move away from the traditional approach dominated by annual excavations (Kaizer 2016b). Whereas for some, Palmyra’s future lies in anastylosis, a reconstruction of the ruins with use of modern materials where necessary, for others the ruins are lost forever and no attempt should be made to regain them as they were (the case against reconstruction is made most vigorously by Schmidt-Colinet 2019). What is in any case needed first is the coordination of all available documentation and the updating of the existing catalogs of collections. In the meantime, digital conservation of the site may serve as an instrument to preserve humanity’s collective memory as a legacy for future generations.
In fact, the current inaccessibility of the ruins is already leading to a resurgence in the consideration of records from times long gone. Old paintings, and slightly less old photographs, are now being rediscovered as important sources on the preservation of the site in the early modern period. In late 2015, the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery in Washington DC organized a small exhibition of eighteenth-century engravings and nineteenth-century