Writing Transcultural Histories in the Ancient Mediterranean

This free online seminar series co-organised by colleagues based at Merton College Oxford, the Department of Greek and Latin at UCL in London, and Palladion, based in Budapest, is intended to foster discussion on one of the crucial questions of contemporary ancient history – how we can imagine a truly transcultural history of the ancient Mediterranean world. Over the last two centuries, the writing of ancient history, and ancient cultural history in particular, has been largely organised in a set of siloed specialist disciplinary enclaves. This approach becomes untenable in light of our increasing awareness of the complex dynamics by which cultures form and interact. The great task of the next generation of scholars is not only to open themselves to cultures outside of Greece, Etruria, Rome, Egypt and the Near East, but also to acquire the linguisitic and cultural competency that will allow them to look at evidence from multiple cultural centres and to place those cultures in a new kind of dialogue – a new transcultural history. This must be done in recognition that cultures, particularly in the ancient world, are not essences, but rather structures of ideas, behaviour, memory and thought that emerge in dialogue and conflict with each other. Nor is it by any means clear that ideas of belonging to a collective culture were universally important to individual or group identity in this world without nation-states. We are also becoming more conscious of the porousness of artificial boundaries across the whole gamut of ancient societies, and of the mobility of words, ideas, myths, and material culture. What is ‘Greek’, ‘Roman’, ‘Jewish’, ‘Syrian’, ‘Phoenician’ or ‘Egyptian’ to the modern specialist may in fact have played a much more complex and interesting role in a cultural ‘middle ground’. For example, we cannot have a complete study of the emergence of a Greek culture, or indeed of Greek history, without looking at Greeks living in Egypt and the Levant who prompted literary, religious, and cultural evolution by exposing the Greek world to a host of highly developed sources of influence. The centrality of Boardman’s Greeks Overseas or Walter Burkert’s Orientalizing Revolution to the study of Archaic Greece underscores the importance of this wider field of historical vision.

Writing this kind of history raises a whole variety of questions, not least the terms or metaphors we use to describe and model cross-cultural action as diffusion, acculturation, exchange, transmission, and so on. It also reorients our attention to the experiences of individuals and communities who ferried materials, ideas, and histories between various ancient societies. We might look at the Hellenistic East, for instance, where multiethnic inhabitants of Bactria or Arachosia occupied a threshold between what can be called the Greek and Indian worlds, and experienced an emphasis on cultural plurality that gave rise to a certain kind of tacit multiculturalism in the region. In view of such examples, the old hierarchies that placed Classical culture in the active, hegemonic role must be flattened, as only this can make the kind of new questions possible that lead to more nuanced and realistic answers. And we must also find ways to explain the times and cases where ancient cultures resolutely refused to engage with one another, or where inhabitants of intercultural spaces explicitly avoided borrowing. The difference between Naukratite Greeks who could worship at Greek sanctuaries set up in situ, and Memphite Greeks who worshipped the local patron gods Ptah and Apis, can only be understood through a more detailed study of the purpose behind each settlement, and how this contributed to the formation of its character.

This international series of online seminars is designed to create the occasion for scholars from different backgrounds, disciplines and areas of study to engage with each other and debate the very real problems of writing this kind of transcultural history, to talk about the shape it can and should take, and to help each other reach a new understanding of problems that are best tackled together.

For more information, please write to our main organiser, Mridula Gullapalli.

A schedule of talks for the current year (2025-2026) is forthcoming, but here is our first offering: 

• Nino Luraghi (Wykeham Professor of Ancient History at Oxford University): “Empires and the Myth of the Martial Race”.

“My paper considers cases of ethno-racial projection on the part of imperial armies and recruiting agencies that create a specific image for groups of war workers seen as desirable recruits. Beyond visible elements of cultural specificity, my case studies point to an established rhetoric that supports the outsourcing of fighting. The paper concludes with some speculation of the relevance of the case studies for the cultural rhetoric around the recruitment of Greek war workers by imperial powers of the Eastern Mediterranean.”

This free, online lecture will take place on Zoom on October 22, 2025 at 16:30 BST (17:30 CEST). If you want to attend, please go to the Eventbrite page and book a place.