The Age of the Drvomwn: the Byzantine navy ca 500-1204.

People Involved

Associate Professor John Pryor
Elizabeth M. Jeffreys
Ahmad Shbou

Project overview

This is a research project which has been in the making for over seventeen years. It began around 1988 as an attempt to examine the construction and characteristics of the Byzantine warship known as the Drovmwn. The first draft ran to 12,000 words.

Since then the project has grown. Professor Elizabeth Jeffreys, now at Oxford, became involved as the collaborator on the Byzantine Greek texts. Associate Professor Ahmad Shboul became involved as a collaborator on an Arabic translation of one of the Byzantine texts. The project expanded into an operational and technological history of the Byzantine navy from around 500 to the Fourth Crusade.
It is now a major volume of over 750,000 words with eight appendices of translated and edited texts and commentaries on Greek Fire iconographic depictions of Byzantine warships.