Large-scale public building in Antiquity is frequently assessed from a point of view that reflects Moses I. Finley’s influential distinction (as expressed in his Ancient Economy) between the Ancient Near East’s coerced mass labour regime on the one hand and the coexistence of slave and free wage labour in the Greek and Roman societies of the Mediterranean World on the other.

The research network studies aspects of the official administration of several ‘empires’ which flourished in the Near East and eastern Mediterranean from the first millennium BC to the first millennium AD, namely, the Neo-Assyrian, Neo-Babylonian, and Achaemenid empires, the Roman Empire (in particular in Egypt), and the emerging Muslim Empire in Egypt. Administrative practice will be investigated, as will the origins, social status and economic background of the officials in question.