The Land of the Elephant Kings: Space, Territory, and Ideology in the Seleucid Empire

Paul J. Kosmin's The Land of the Elephant Kings, Space, Territory, and Ideology in the Seleucid Empire, published by Harvard University Press in 2014, is a scholarly study of how the Seleucid Empire constructed and maintained its territorial identity and ideology across a vast and diverse realm. Its authority rests on standard academic peer review at a major university press and Kosmin's close engagement with primary epigraphic and numismatic evidence from the period. Its limit is scope: it is a study of Seleucid territorial ideology specifically, one part of the empire's broader religious and cultural life, so a claim about a specific Seleucid cult practice or local religious tradition within that territory needs a more targeted source alongside this one.