When the Roman Empire was African

The Washington Post

A deeply absorbing exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, however, shows us how circumscribed in time and geography our sense of that empire is, especially if our identity is linked to the western half of the Roman world. “Africa & Byzantium” shifts the focus to the east and south of Rome, to the empire dominated by the eastern capital of Byzantium, and its links to Africa. With its African provinces a vital source of food, intellectual foment and artistic production, the eastern empire lasted in a coherent form for centuries after 476, the date commonly given for the fall of the western Roman Empire.

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Funding for 'Africa & Byzantium' came from a Exhibitions: Implementation NEH grant.