Semitic Languages; history of the alphabet; Ugaritic Studies (including language and religion); Hebrew and the Hebrew Bible; Aramaic and Syriac epigraphy and linguistics, especially Egyptian Aramaic, Nabataean, Palmyrene and Hatran Aramaic and Syriac; the Middle East in the Greek and Roman periods; Syriac Christianity and its literature; Mandaic and the Mandaeans; legal history (pagan and early Jewish legal documents)