Preface - Literacy, language and scripts - Literacy in an oral environment - Nomads and the Hawran in the late Hellenistic and Roman periods : a reassessment of the epigraphic evidence - Reflections on the linguistic map of pre-Islamic Arabia - Ancient ethnicity - Some reflections on epigraphy and ethnicity in the Roman Near East - Arabians, Arabias, and the Greeks : contact and perceptions - Les Arabes en Syrie or la penetration des Arabes en Syrie a question of perceptions - Aspects of the history of ancient Arabia - Was the Nabataean kingdom a Bedouin state? - On Saracens, the Rawwfah inscription and the Roman army - Trade routes and trade goods at the northern end of the incense road in the first millennium B.C - Notes containing addenda and corrigenda