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For nearly a thousand years, Ktesiphon (name in Latin/Greek; Parthian/Pahlavi: tyspwn ; Aramaic Talmud: (') qṭyspwn ; Syriac: qṭyspwn ; Arabic: Ṭaysafūn) was one of the most important cities in the Near East and beyond. From the later second century BCE until 637 CE , Ktesiphon served as the capital of the Arsacid and Sasanian empires ( see Sasanians). It was thus the equivalent of Rome, or later Constantinople in the east.

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Splendid isolation and an austere environment allegedly saved Hatra on more than one occasion from the wrath of Rome. Even when the city finally fell to the Sasanians in AD 240 and Shapur carried off its portable wealth, its comparative remoteness prevented the wholesale destruction that happened, for instance, at nearby Ashur. So in 1985 UNESCO had no difficulty in recognising the ruins' value as a gem of world heritage.Hatra's comparative isolation presents problems but also advantages for archaeologists. The problems concern the city's economy and subsistence with respect to its size and density in a hostile environment beyond the limit of dryland farming. Most prominently Hatra will have played an important role as a centre for nomad-sedentary political and economic exchange. The central temple of Shamash, which might have served as a focus of pilgrimage, will have added in some degree to its wealth, as reflected by its architecture and sculpture. According to some authors the city also played at least some role in long-distance caravan trade, which might have created further substantial revenue. But the important question remains: to what extent did Hatra's inhabitants complement their livelihood through cultivation

Im Beitrag wird die in Presseinterviews häufig anzutreffende Formulierung "Wer mich kennt, der weiß ..." auf der Grundlage eines umfangreichen Korpus auf ihre Vorkommens-und Funktionsweisen hin untersucht. Unter Berücksichtigung der sequenziellen Position der Formulierung wird ihre Grundfunktion, die Authentifizierung von Selbsteinschätzungen durch Verweis auf Dritte, nach verschiedenen Fragetypen weiter differenziert. Die Wendung wird als formelhafte Ressource der sozialen Positionierung beschrieben, in deren Gebrauch sich sowohl der Status der Interviewten als öffentliche Personen als auch medienkulturell verankerte, neutralistische Kommunikationsformen niederschlagen. Das Korpus umfasst 343 vollständige Presseinterviews aus verschiedenen Ressorts aus einer Vielzahl von deutschsprachigen Presseorganen aus dem Zeitraum zwischen 1998 und 2013. Die Analyse verbindet phraseologische, gesprächsanalytische und medienlinguistische Zugriffe auf formelhaften Sprachgebrauch und macht zugleich das gesellschaftsanalytische Potenzial dieses Ansatzes deutlich. Using an extensive corpus, this article examines the occurrence and functions of the expression "Wer mich kennt, der weiß" ('Anyone who knows me knows ...'), which is frequently found in press interviews. The basic function of the expression, the authentication of a self-assessment by reference to a third party, is differentiated with respect to various question types, taking into account its sequential position. The expression is described as a formulaic resource of social positioning, the use of which reflects both the status of the interviewee as a public person and neutralist forms of communication which are rooted in media culture. The corpus contains 343 complete press interviews from various sections of a large number of Germanlanguage publications in the period 1998-2013. The analysis combines approaches to formulaic language use from phraseology, conversation analysis and media linguistics, and also also serves to illustrate the socio-analytical potential of this approach.