By Alka Patel (NHC Fellow, 2018–19) This book charts the origins and rise of the Shansabānīs, a nomadic-pastoralist or transhumant group from modern central Afghanistan. As they adapted and mastered the mores of Perso-Islamic kingship, they created a transregional empire unseen in the region for almost a millennium, since the Kushanas of the early centuries … Continued
After the ancient Roman Empire embraced Christianity, the empire’s culture and politics were significantly transformed. In this podcast, Dennis Trout shares insights from his interdisciplinary study of poetic inscriptions found throughout ancient Rome. He considers the way these epigrams were embedded in the city's architecture and displayed to an empire in transition, and he suggests they go beyond considerations of religion, literature, and culture to illuminate the ways that visual and textual cues were used to send messages to a diverse audience in the ancient world.