A view from beyond the Golden Horn of what, in ancient times, was the Greek city of Byzantium. It was here, in AD 324, that the emperor Constantine arrived to found a new capital. With becoming modesty, he christened it “The City of Constantine”: Constantinople. The waters around the city, it was said, adorned it “like a garland.” (Tom Holland)
A column raised by Constantine to mark the inauguration of his city. Originally, it was surmounted by a statue of the Emperor, crowned as though by the sun, with seven glittering rays. Beneath its base was believed to lie the “Palladium”: a talisman that had supposedly been brought, via Rome, from the sack of Troy. (Tom Holland)
A tiny surviving fragment of what for centuries was the hub of Roman power: the palace of the Caesars in Constantinople. Those privileged to enter the vast complex of halls, secretariats and gardens hailed it as “another heaven.” (Tom Holland)
The emperor Justinian. “He was entrusted by God with this commission: to watch over the whole Roman Empire and, so far as was possible, to remake it.” (Byzantine School [sixth century], San Vitale, Ravenna/Giraudon/Bridgeman Art Library)
Emperor and crowds at the Hippodrome. The passions roused by chariot-racing were violent in the extreme – and in January 532, they exploded into an orgy of looting and savagery that briefly threatened Justinian’s entire regime. (Tom Holland)
Christ the Good Shepherd, painted in a catacomb in Rome in the late second or early third century AD. An image drawn from a Gospel is combined with the smooth cheeks and skimpy tunic of a Greek god. (De Agostini Picture Library/G. Cargagna/Bridgeman Art Library)
Debates about the relationship between God the Father and God the Son convulsed the Christian world for centuries. This mosaic, illustrating the baptism of Jesus, was commissioned by a follower of Arius, who taught that the Father had preceded the Son. The doctrine was condemned as heretical at the great Church Council of Nicaea, summoned by Constantine in 325. (Giraudon/Bridgeman Art Library)
In the Near East, Jews and Christians tended to be far more familiar with one another’s beliefs than their respective leaders cared to acknowledge. This bowl was inscribed by someone who had looked to play safe by invoking both the God of the Jews – “I-Am-That-I-Am” – and the Christian Trinity.
The conversion of Constantine to Christianity saw the old religious order of the empire spectacularly superseded. Here, in a cistern below Constantinople, the positioning of a toppled pagan sculpture symbolises an entire world turned upside down. (Tom Holland)
The Empress Theodora: reformed whore and Monophysite saint. (The Art Archive/Collection Dagli Orti)
Like a phoenix from the ashes, Justinian’s great cathedral of Hagia Sophia rose from the smouldering ruins left by three days of terrible rioting in Constantinople. So vast was its dome that it seemed to stupefied contemporaries “like the very firmament that rests upon the air.” (Tom Holland)
The twin founders of Constantinople: Constantine stands on the left-hand side of the Virgin, and Justinian – holding the Hagia Sophia – on the right. (Tom Holland)
Caves in the Judaean desert: the haunt of Christian hermits. (Tom Holland)
A mosaic at Saint Catherine’s monastery, at the foot of a mountain that was identified in the fourth century as Sinai, where Moses had received the Ten Commandments. In this image, the standing figure on the left is Moses himself: the great prophet of the Jews, recast as a Christian prophet. (Tom Holland)
Christian Jerusalem. From a mosaic in the floor of a church in Madaba, on the eastern side of the Dead Sea. (Tom Holland)
Mount Gerizim. The holiest place in the world, according to the Samaritans. (www.bibleplaces.com)
Mamre, as shown on the Madaba map. The church built by Constantine is shown to the left of the oak of Abraham. (Tom Holland)
This niche at Petra once held an image of the goddess al-’Uzza – the “Mighty Queen” of the Arabs. In 527, an Arab king sacrificed four hundred Christian virgins in her honour. (Tom Holland)
From Petra in the north of Arabia – where this photograph was taken – to Najran in the south, the cube, or “ka’ba”, seems to have been a shape held in peculiar reverence by the Arabs. (Tom Holland)
Theodoric, viceroy of the Roman emperor in Italy, and King of the Ostrogoths. He poses like a Caesar, and sports a thoroughly Germanic moustache. (akg-images)
Under Khusrow I, the image of the Persian monarchy attained an unprecedented magnificence. Khusrow himself was hailed by his subjects as “divine and virtuous, peace-loving and powerful, a giant among giants, the favourite of the heavens.” (Ullstein Bild)
Saint Mark, who was believed by Christians to have founded the Church of Alexandria, is shown surrounded by his successors as bishop, with the balconies and rooftops of the great city rising behind them. (akg-images/Erich Lessing)
The tomb of a plague victim in Avdat, a predominantly Arab city in the Negev Desert. Although the plague tended not to penetrate deep into the desert, those who lived on its margins were always susceptible to its visitations. (Tom Holland)
Heraclius. His reign witnessed some of the greatest triumphs and most calamitous defeats in all Roman history. (Dumbarton Oaks Collection, Washington, DC)
The skulls of monks slain by the invading Persians – and preserved to this day in the monastery of Mar Saba, in the Judaean desert. (Tom Holland)
Heraclius, before leaving Constantinople for Iranshahr, made sure to reinforce the already massive walls that surrounded his capital. This stretch buttressed the approach to the Golden Horn – from where, in 626, the Byzantine navy sallied out to sink the transport fleet of the invading Persians. (Tom Holland)