1.   It was the centre of a great empire.

2.   The city was the centre of a great empire.

3.   The power and skill of this one man built the great Frankish empire, and upon his death seemingly it died.

4.   The new Turkish republic he helped to build emerged from the ruins of a great empire.

5.   The expiry of a great empire is always a cataclysmic event.

6.   Armenians are from a region that has been successively dominated by great empires, among them the Mongol, Persian, Russian and Ottoman.

7.   Britain and France have lost great empires, several other countries smaller ones.

8.   In contrast, the religious right envisions America as a great Protestant evangelical empire.

9.   It traces the rise and fall of a great empire and has as much to say about history as art.

10.   No longer the great empire builders, the English are left to define themselves in new ways.