8 I 2025: Simcha Gross (University of Pennsylvania), Good Fences Make Bad Neighbors: Communities and Empire on the Roman-Sasanian Frontier

The competition between the Roman and Sasanian empires for control of the frontier has been told many times, but typically from an imperial perspective. This lecture shifts the focus to ...

18 XII 2025: Grzegorz Ochała (UW) Of Names and Meanings: Insights into Socioonomastics of Medieval Nubia

Onomastics has been an important part of the Altertumswissenschaften, especially epigraphy and papyrology, since very early on. Yet, unlike in contemporary societies in which names form the basis of, among ...

11 XII 2025: Paweł Nowakowski (UW) Thinking in Greek and Thinking in Aramaic: How Languages Foster Unique Ways of Processing and Expressing Thought in Late Antique Epigraphy

In my paper, I will present some considerations for a book chapter on the choice of language in the epigraphical practice of late antique Roman Syria. Due to time constraints, ...

4 XII 2025: Oto Mestek (Univerzita Karlova), The Disappearance of the Heruli: Justinian’s Policy Towards the Barbarian Foederati

The Heruli were one of the lesser-known Germanic tribes that attacked the Roman Empire in Late Antiquity. They were part of Attila’s Hunnic empire and later settled in the Middle ...

27 XI 2025: Jean-Michel Carrié (EHESS), Origins and pagan precedents of christian military chaplains in the late Roman army

Unlike pagan military religion, the Christianization of the army and the transformation of religious practices that it brought about remained largely unexamined for a long time. In particular, the question ...

20 XI 2025: Roxanne Bélanger-Sarrazin (Universität Würzburg), Apocrypha, Magic, Liturgy: The Multiple identities of Coptic Prayers in Late Antique and Early Islamic Egypt

“This is the 21st prayer (that) Mary the Virgin spoke the day of her dormition. It restrains all the powers of the Adversary; it cures every disease and every sickness. ...