History and Culture of Central Asia (Summer term 2025)Imaginative Constellations of the Bactrian Camel in Late Antique to Early Islamic Central Asia (Sogdiana)A lecture by Emily Everest-Philips, New York University

15 July 2025

Photo: © Sinani

The Asien-Afrika Institut of the University of Hamburg and the Imam Bukhari International Scientific Research Center in Tashkent, Uzbekistan kindly invite to the last lecture of this summer semester 's series on the history and culture of Cental Asia, which will take place online via ZOOM.

• Topic: Imaginative Constellations of the Bactrian Camel in Late Antique to Early Islamic Central Asia (Sogdiana)
• Speaker: Emily Everest-Phillips, Research Associate, Institute of the Study of the Ancient World, New York University
• Date: July 15th, 2025, 2:00 PM CET, 5:00 PM Tashkent Time, 8:00 AM Eastern Daylight Time (US- East Coast)
• Place: Online via ZOOM

Why to listen to Emily Everest -Philips?
With a stamina for long-distance travel and the ability to withstand extremes in climate, two-humped Bactrian camels (camelus Bactrianus) are premodern Central and Inner Asia’s pack animal par excellence, responsible for facilitating long-distance, land-based networks of trans-Eurasian exchange of the so-called ‘Silk Roads’. In Late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages, camels are often evoked when describing the activities of Sogdian traders (ca. 5th-8th centuries CE), an association shaped to a great extent by highly stereotyped, exoticising images of Bactrian camels and Central Asian hu (胡) produced among Northern Chinese elites, for whom these camels and hu were couriers of coveted Western exotica from distant worlds.
But what was the imaginative status of the Bactrian camel from Central Asian perspectives? This talk draws on historical, iconographic and zooarchaeological evidence to explore the imaginative constellations of the Bactrian camel in the historical region of Sogdiana during Late Antiquity into the early Islamic period, with a particular focus on expressions of sovereignty during the 7th-8th centuries CE. 

Speaker's Profile:
Emily Hanako Everest-Phillips is a historian of Eurasian Late Antiquity with a focus on the intellectual history of Central Asian archaeology. She is a Ph.D. candidate at the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World at New York University and a Public Humanities Doctoral Fellow at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Asian Art. She received her Bachelor of Arts in History and her Master of Studies in Late Antique and Byzantine Studies from the University of Oxford.

Participation:
In order to participate, please click here or use the following Zoom credentials:
Meeting ID: 446 979 3351
Password: 12345