
Contents
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Introduction Introduction
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The Development of the Region The Development of the Region
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The Hellenistic Period The Hellenistic Period
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The Roman Period The Roman Period
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Late Antiquity Late Antiquity
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Early Islamic Period Early Islamic Period
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Conclusion Conclusion
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Bibliography Bibliography
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26 Urbanization and Cities in the Hellenistic and Roman Near East
Get accessOlympia Bobou was born in Greece, where she studied history and archaeology, receiving an M.Phil. in classical archaeology at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. She continued her studies at Oxford, where she completed a doctoral thesis on statues of children in the Hellenistic period, under the supervision of Professor Bert Smith. She worked as a research assistant and lecturer at various institutions in the UK, including the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge. She has published a monograph and various articles on the representations of children, as well as articles on emotions in ancient art. She is now working at the Circular Economy and Urban Sustainability in Antiquity Project, UrbNet, Aarhus University, as an assistant professor.
Rubina Raja (D.Phil. 2005, University of Oxford) is professor of classical archaeology and art and chair at Aarhus University, Denmark. She is also centre director of the Danish National Research Foundation’s Centre of Excellence for Urban Network Evolutions (grant: DNRF119) and heads several further collaborative research projects with a focus on West Asia and Palmyrene culture and society, including the Palmyra Portrait Project. Raja has published widely on the Mediterranean region and West Asia from the Hellenistic period into the medieval period with a focus on global outlooks as expressed through local behaviours. She specialises in urban societies and their diverse networks and cultures, including their architectural and other visual cultures, such as portrait cultures.
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Published:22 April 2025
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Abstract
Today more than half the world’s population lives in cities. However, past urbanism and its impact on the ancient world is still being debated widely and intensely. The evidence for cities, mostly from archaeology, is still developing rapidly, but there is yet an incomplete overview of cities in the ancient world. Because of the benign climate and other factors in the Near East, urban societies developed there from prehistoric times onward, and some of the largest cities in the Mediterranean world during the Hellenistic and Roman periods were there. The very early cities have been well researched, but Hellenistic and Roman Syria and the Near East, although intensely urbanized, remain understudied, largely because of the massive amount of evidence available, the finds still emerging, and the complexity of everything found. This chapter gives a condensed overview of urbanization in the region in the periods under consideration.
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