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Purwins, Nils. 2025. Der Aufbau des Sasanidenreiches: Administration und Eliten im Vergleich zum Römischen Reich (Ancient Iran Series 18). Leiden: Brill. The work provides in two volumes the first comprehensive overall concept of the administrative and social structure of the Sasanian Empire (5th-7th century). In more than 1.000 contemporary leather documents, seals, ostraca, inscriptions and texts, which are brought together here for the first time, the subjects of the king of kings report in words and pictures on their lives in the various provinces of the empire, on the organisation of the military, civil and religious administration and on the circles of power at the court of their ruler.

Tatsuya Nakadai, one of Japan's most celebrated actors who was a frequent collaborator of Akira Kurosawa and Masaki Kobayashi, died. He was 92.

Update: The Metropolitan Museum of Art has put online 492,000 high-resolution images of artistic works. Even better, the museum has placed the vast majority of these images into the public domain, mea...

Review of: Christian Rollinger/Nadine Viermann (eds.): Empresses-in-Waiting. Female Power and Performance at the Late Roman Court. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press 2024 (Women in Ancient Cultures). Reviewed by: Liz James, Brighton Read in PDF: [Review Rollinger_Viermann] Language: English

The traditional privileging of Russian colonial perspectives contributes to our (mis-)understanding of the history of Eastern Europe to this day. The medieval period is no exception.

YouTube video by Curihistory

YouTube video by Curihistory

New findings in Anatolia show that hunter-gatherers were experimenting with copper metallurgy 9,000 years ago, reshaping our understanding of early technology.