LIST OF FIGURES

1.1

The base of the obelisk in the Hippodrome

1.2

Istanbul: Justinian’s church of St Sophia

1.3

A Byzantine empress, late fifth or sixth century

2.1

The Proiecta casket from the Esquiline treasure, Rome, late forth century

2.2

Ostrogoth-style buckle, late fifth–early sixth century

2.3

Coin of Theodoric the Ostrogoth (d. 526)

3.1

S. Maria Maggiore, Rome, built in the fifth century

3.2

The complex at Qalaat Semaan, Syria, with part of the pillar of Symeon the Elder

3.3

The huge site of Palmyra, built in an oasis of the Syrian desert

3.4

Pottery pilgrim token depicting St Symeon Stylites the Younger on his pillar near Antioch, late sixth–seventh century

5.1

The Barberini ivory

5.2

St Catherine’s monastery, Mt Sinai

5.3

The fortress at Zenobia (Halabiye) on the Euphrates

6.1

One of the classrooms uncovered at Komm el-Dikka, Alexandria

6.2

Mosaic of the first bath of Achilles, from the House of Theseus, Paphos, Cyprus

6.3

The shape of the world as imagined in the Christian Topography of Cosmas Indicopleustes

7.1

Serjilla, one of the ‘dead’ cities

7.2

An olive-press astride a former main street, Sbeitla, Tunisia

8.1

The ‘praetorium’ at Resafa

8.2

The city of Scythopolis (Bet Shean)

8.3

The refectory of the monastery of Martyrius in the Judaean desert

9.1

The Great Mosque at Damascus (early eighth century), built on the site of a Christian church and Roman temple

9.2

Nessana in the early 1990s