Classical civilization (and hence contemporary Western culture) had deep roots in Afro-Asiatic cultures, but these influences have been systematically overlooked. This series of monographs and collections of articles addresses the social, religious and cultural interactions between East and West, particularly the alienation between East and West as the two parts of the Roman Empire grew apart from the fourth century onwards. To treat the cultures of Western Europe, Byzantium, and the Muslim East separately, as if too fundamentally disparate for substantive borrowings or syncretism to take place, is a drastic simplification of the cultural and religious encounters between East and West throughout Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages.