text: A historian from this polity wrote of how a man escaped Antioch undetected by laying inside a coffin with a dead chicken inside.
full_question: A historian from this polity wrote of how a man escaped Antioch undetected by laying inside a coffin with a dead chicken inside. Through her marriage to Giovanni Orseolo, a woman from this place introduced the fork to Venice. Visitors to this realm's royal palace were required to put their foreheads to the floor as the emperor's throne rose up into the air by means of hydraulics. "Dung-named" and "the Khazar" were epithets of two of this realm's rulers. A princess from this place was married off to Vladimir the Great and later helped Christianize Kiev. Another princess from this empire recorded her father's role letting the First Crusade go through it in the Alexiad. For 10 points, name this Mediterranean empire whose powerful women included historian Anna Komnena and the empress Theodora.
first_sentence: A historian from this polity wrote of how a man escaped Antioch undetected by laying inside a coffin with a dead chicken inside.
raw_answer: Byzantine Empire [or Eastern Roman Empire]