If possible, the annual commission meetings will not be held digitally. It is only through a non-virtual setting that a transdisciplinary atmosphere can be created, which is crucial for a successful commission work. Furthermore, this is also vital for successful public relations as the commission’s meetings and their achieved work are able to reach a certain attention within and outside the Academy by means of public lectures. The commission meetings will be held twice a year, one meeting will be organised in combination with the respective conference and the other will take place in Vienna.


DER RÖMISCHE SEEHANDEL UND SEINE AUSWIRKUNGEN AUF DIE NORDWESTPROVINZEN
by Christoph Schäfer
29 November 2023, "Alte Burse" ÖAW

The economy was a decisive factor in the Roman Empire's ability to integrate. Sea trade, in turn, represented the backbone of the Roman economy. The transport cost ratios of the imperial era proved to be so favorable that bulk goods were also traded to the northwestern provinces on a large scale. The extensive economic interconnections and the intensity of maritime connections brought about developments, not least in the northwestern provinces, which closely linked these peripheral regions with the Mediterranean region, both economically and culturally.


THE COURSE AND CONSEQUENCE OF THE LAST GREAT WAR OF ANTIQUITY
by James Howard-Johnston
24 NOVEMBER 2022
Johannessaal ÖAW

ABSTRACT | PROGRAM

The war had repercussions in Arabia, where the eschalogical apprehension which it induced coloured the earliest utterances of Muhammad after his withdrawal and first vision. However, Arab success, in particular the defeat of the full field armies of the old empires, cannot be attributed wholly, or even largely, to the debilitating effects of the war. In the final part of the lecture, it is the merger of the umma, the Muslim community at Medina, on the one hand, and Mecca, the dominant city-state of the Hijaz, on the other, an event datable to 628 and signalled by Muhammad's acceptance of the hajj, which is identified as the key factor. Thereafter the zeal of the faithful was conjoined to the organisational capability and statecraft of a mercantile city with ramified connections in Arabia and beyond. It was a formidable and invincible combination.


The Sack of Nineveh in 612 B.C.: Fall of an Empire?

Giovanni Battista Lanfranchi | 28 OCTOBER 2021 | Museumszimmer OeAW

THE SACK OF NINEVEH IN 612 B.C.: FALL OF AN EMPIRE?
by Giovanni Battista Lanfranchi
28 OCTOBER 2021
Museumszimmer OeAW

LECTURE | ABSTRACT

The lecture is aimed at discussing the applicability of the term “empire” to the governmental structure commanded by the Neo-Assyrian kings during the first four centuries of the first millennium BC, and the modalities and consequences of its disappearance after the sack of Nineveh in 612 BC, both terms being usually associated in the commonly adopted historical formula “fall of the (Neo-)Assyrian Empire”.