Academy Travel Lecture Program

Following its dramatic decline in 63 BCE, the Seleukid world was gradually overwritten by successive political regimes. 

Roman, Parthian, and later Islamic settlements reused Seleukid foundations, dismantling monuments for building material or burying them beneath new urban layers. As a result, many cities founded or refounded by Seleukid rulers disappeared from view, surviving only as names in ancient texts or faint traces in the landscape.

Over the past century, however, archaeological work has begun to recover this lost urban network. Excavations across Syria, Mesopotamia, Iran, and Central Asia have revealed planned street grids, fortifications, sanctuaries, and administrative complexes that attest to a shared imperial vision adapted to local conditions.  

In this lecture, Dr John Tidmarsh takes a look at the ‘Lost’ Cities of the once mighty Seleukid Empire, and the striking discoveries that have emerged from regions long considered peripheral. Together, these findings have transformed modern understanding of the Seleukid Empire as a durable, adaptive, and truly transregional power.