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Excavations and Analysis of Assyrian and Sumerian Sites

Cambridge currently collaborates with the University of Pennsylvania and the Iraq State Board of Antiquities and Heritage in excavation and survey at the site of Tell al-Hiba (ancient Lagash). Lagash is the capital city of an important Early Dynastic period city-state and one of the largest sites in south Iraq, at 600 hectares. The project began in March 2019 with an ambitious programme of survey, excavation, and environmental research that addresses the city’s diversity and resilience. Cambridge-based projects have also excavated at Tell Brak, Syria, and Kilise Tepe and Ziyaret Tepe, Turkey. 

Archaeological research at the mound of Kilise Tepe in southern Turkey, at the western limit of the Assyrian empire in "Rough Cilicia". The final excavation season was in 2012 and the project is now engaged in publishing its results. 

Archaeological research at Tell Brak in the Upper Khabur plain of northeastern Syria has recovered evidence for one of the world's first cities and earliest civil wars. Excavation at Brak was halted after the March-May season of 2011, due to the current political situation in Syria, but the publication of results directed by Dr Augusta McMahon continues.

Archaeological research at Ziyaret Tepe, a Neo-Assyrian provincial capital, 60 km east of Diyarbakir in the upper Tigris region of southeastern Turkey has been ongoing since the late 1990s as an international collaboration, to which the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research made a significant contribution (for example in the excavation of the Ziyarat Tepe Lower Town.)

Abu Salabikh is a Sumerian city of the late 4th and 3rd millennium, from which came cuneiform texts of ca. 2500 BC which are the world’s earliest known library.  Nicholas Postgate directed excavations there 1975-1989, at which point work was suspended after the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. Four volumes of the final report are published, two or more further volumes are in progress.     

                   

Researchers previously at Cambridge

Former Researchers

Christina Bouthillier; Research Associate, Tell Brak Archaeological Project

Nicole Brisch; Leverhulme-Funded Lecturer in Assyriology, 2009-2012

Carlo Colantoni; Research Associate, Kilise Tepe Archaeological Project

Graham Cunningham; Senior Research Fellow, The Geography of Knowledge in Assyria and Babylonia

Yağmur Heffron; Anniversary Fellow, McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research 

Margaret Munn-Rankin; Lecturer in Mesopotamian History and Archaeology, 1949-1981

Eleanor Robson; Reader in History & Philosophy of Science and PI, The Geography of Knowledge in Assyrian and Babylonia

David Oates; Director, Tell Brak Excavations, 1976-2004

Joan Oates, Lecturer in Mesopotamian Archaeology and History, Tell Brak excavations, 1976-2011

Greta Van Buylaere; Research Fellow, The Geography of Knowledge in Assyria and Babylonia

Martin Worthington; Senior Lecturer in Assyriology

 

Recent PhD Theses

Daniela Arroyo-Barrantes; supervised by Augusta McMahon: feasting events in Northern Mesopotamia in the 4th millennium BC. (2017)

Olga Vinnichenko; supervised by Nicholas Postgate: The linguistic influences of Aramaic languages on Neo-Assyrian (2016) 

Sarah Clegg; supervised by Dr Eleanor Robson: Metrology and the limits of state control in early Mesopotamia.

Tina L. Greenfield; supervised by Augusta McMahon: Reconstructing the political economy of early empires, in particular the imperial and provincial capital cities of the Near East. Tina is a Lecturer in the Department of Religion and Culture, University of Saskatchewan (Canada).

Yaǧmur Heffron, supervised by Nicholas Postgate: Household religion in Anatolia.  She is currently lecturer in Ancient Near Eastern history at UCL. 

Adam Stone; supervised by Nicholas Postgate and Eleanor Robson: Sumerian administrative documents of the Ur III period of Ancient Mesopotamia, particularly those from Tell Drehem.

ANE Seminar Series in previous years

Easter Term 2019

Apr 30, 2019 from 05:30 PM to 06:30 PM — The McDonald Seminar Room, Courtyard Building, Downing Street, Nancy Highcock (University of Cambridge) - Religious Aspects of Mercantile Identities in 3rd and 2nd Millennia Mesopotamia and Anatolia

May 14, 2019 from 05:30 PM to 06:30 PM — West Building Seminar Room, West Building, Downing Site, Downing Street, Christina Tsouparopoulou (University of Cambridge) - Connectivities of Societies in Western Eurasia: Common Mitanni Cylinder Seals from Greece 

Lent Term 2019

Jan 22, 2019 from 05:30 PM to 06:30 PM — McDonald Institute Seminar Room, Courtyard Building, Downing Street, Silvia Ferreri (University of Cambridge) - Tombs, ancestors and women: The case of Umm El Marra (Syria)

Feb 05, 2019 from 05:30 PM to 06:30 PM — McDonald Institute Seminar Room, Courtyard Building, Downing Street, Kevin Kay (University of Cambridge) - Who does a house hold? Social structure, house biography and the question of history at Neolithic Çatalhöyük

Feb 19, 2019 from 05:30 PM to 06:30 PM — McDonald Institute Seminar Room, Courtyard Building, Downing Street, Nèle Ziegler (CNRS Paris) - A sick boy in Aleppo

Mar 05, 2019 from 05:30 PM to 06:30 PM — McDonald Institute Seminar Room, Courtyard Building, Downing Street, Selena Wisnom (University of Cambridge) - The uses of Mesopotamian literature

Michaelmas Term 2018

Oct 23, 2018 from 05:30 PM to 06:30 PM — McDonald Institute Seminar Room, Nicla De Zorzi (Vienna) - How to identify serial adultery through animal behaviour: on analogistic thought in Ancient Mesopotamia

Oct 30, 2018 from 05:30 PM to 06:30 PM — South Lecture Room, Department of Archaeology, North Building, Downing Street, Elizabeth Bennett (London) - What’s in a name for a Babylonian scholar?

Nov 13, 2018 from 05:30 PM to 06:30 PM —McDonald Institute Seminar Room, Walter Sommerfeld (Marburg) - The myth of the cultural symbiosis between the Sumerians and the Akkadians

Nov 29, 2018 from 05:30 PM to 06:30 PM — South Lecture Room, Department of Archaeology, North Building, Downing Street, Christoph Schmidhuber (Cambridge/Heidelberg) - From childhood to 'childhood': on children in Old Babylonian society

Easter 2018

May 01, 2018 from 05:30 PM to 06:30 PM — McDonald Institute Seminar Room, Courtyard Building, Downing Street, — Sebastiano Soldi, (Archaeological Museum of Florence) - Glazing in the West: architectural elements and glazed ceramics in the Iron Age northern Levant

Lent 2018

Feb 06, 2018 from 06:30 PM to 07:30 PM — McDonald Institute, Downing Street, — Yağmur Heffron, (UCL) - The kārum period in Amatolia: Towards a historiography of archaeological interpretation - II

Feb 13, 2018 from 05:30 PM to 06:30 PM — South Lecture Room, Department of Archaeology, Downing Stree, — Eva Miller, (University of Birmingham) - Parallels and references in Ashurbanipal's Teumann-Dunanu sequences

Michaelmas 2017

Oct 24, 2017 from 05:30 PM to 06:30 PM — McDonald Institute Seminar Room, Courtyard Building, Downing Street, Vitali Bartash, (Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität) - Children and the Early State: A Complex Socioeconomic Interplay in Mesopotamia

Oct 25, 2017 from 02:00 PM to 04:00 PM — South Lecture Room, Division of Archaeology, Downing Site, — Reading Group led by Vitali Bartash (Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität) - Sumerian crime stories

Nov 07, 2017 from 05:30 PM to 07:00 PM — McDonald Institute Seminar Room, Courtyard Building, Downing Street, Stef Conner, (University of Huddersfield) - "No, this is the Oldest Song in the World!" Have rival attempts to decipher Mesopotamian music notation reached a permanent stalemate?

Nov 21, 2017 from 05:30 PM to 07:00 PM — McDonald Institute Seminar Room, Courtyard Building, Downing Street, — Bleda During, (Universiteit Leiden) - Chalcolithic Cyprus: An Island in Splendid Isolation?

Nov 28, 2017 from 05:30 PM to 07:00 PM — McDonald Institute Seminar Room, Courtyard Building, Downing Street, — John Ray, (University of Cambridge) - Assyriology through Egyptological Spectacles

Easter 2017

May 02, 2017 from 05:30 PM to 06:30 PM — McDonald Institute Seminar Room, Courtyard Building, Downing Street, — Tim Clayden, (University of Oxford) - The Late Babylonian to Early Kassite Period: Issues

Jun 02, 2017 from 05:30 PM to 06:30 PM — South Lecture Room, Division of Archaeology, Downing Site, — Tzvi Abusch, (Brandeis University) - Some synchronic and diachronic observations on a Babylonian prayer type

Lent 2017

Jan 24, 2017 from 05:30 PM to 06:30 PM — McDonald Institute Seminar Room, Courtyard Building, Downing Street, — Mark Weeden, (SOAS, University of London) - Provincial Identities: The use of Anatolian Hieroglyphic writing at Kaman-Kalehöyük

Feb 07, 2017 from 05:30 PM to 06:30 PM — McDonald Institute Seminar Room, Courtyard Building, Downing Street, — John MacGinnis, (The British Museum) - The ancient history of Erbil

Feb 21, 2017 from 05:30 PM to 06:30 PM — McDonald Institute Seminar Room, Courtyard Building, Downing Street, — Sara Pizzimenti, (La Sapienza University, Rome) - Stars and Heaven Perception in the Near East: Astral Representations in the II Millennium BC Cylinder Seals and Monumental Art

Feb 22, 2017 from 04:00 PM to 05:00 PM — West Building Seminar Room, Division Room, Downing Street, — Sabina Franke, (Universität Hamburg) - Sargon's 8th campaign to Urartu and the Temple in Muṣaṣir

Mar 16, 2017 from 05:30 PM to 06:30 PM — McDonald Institute Seminar Room, Courtyard Building, Downing Street, — Jacob Dahl, (University of Oxford) - The Odd and the Ordinary: Making canon out of Nothing or the peculiar history of a few Mesopotamian objects and a few odd comments about Sumerian literature

Michaelmas 2016

Oct 18, 2016 from 05:30 PM to 06:30 PM — McDonald Institute Seminar Room, Courtyard Building, Downing Street, — Magnus Widell, (University of Liverpool) - New light on Ur III

Oct 26, 2016 from 03:30 PM to 05:30 PM — West Building Seminar Room, Division Room, Downing Street, — Enrique Jiménez, (Yale University) - 'Palm and Vine' - A new Babylonian disputation poem

Nov 01, 2016 from 05:30 PM to 06:30 PM — McDonald Institute Seminar Room, Courtyard Building, Downing Street, — Stuart Campbell, (The University of Manchester) - Rural and urban centres on the edges of the marshlands of southern Iraq: Tell Khaiber and Charax Spasinou

Nov 21, 2016 from 05:30 PM to 06:30 PM — South Lecture Room, Division of Archaeology, Downing Site, — Strahil Panayotov, (Free University of Berlin) - Mesopotamian eye disease texts

Nov 29, 2016 from 05:30 PM to 06:30 PM — McDonald Institute Seminar Room, Courtyard Building, Downing Street, — Christoph Dalley, (University of Oxford) - Fifty years a spouse: A sideways look at Assyriology

Easter term 2016

Apr 26, 2016 from 05:30 PM to 06:30 PM — McDonald Institute Seminar Room, Marie-Françoise Besnier (McDonald Institute, Cambridge) - How to understand the unseen: images for the primary stages of life in Tablet 1 of šumma izbu

May 10, 2016 from 05:30 PM to 06:30 PM — McDonald Institute Seminar Room, Daniela Arroyo-Barrantes (University of Cambridge) - Tell Majnuna: the origins of urban production in Mesopotamia 

Lent Term 2016

Jan 19, 2016 from 05:30 PM to 06:30 PM; South Lecture Room, Division of Archaeology; Patrick Michel (University of Geneva): Relations between the Sumero-Akkadian elite and Seleucid power in Babylon and Uruk.

Feb 02, 2016 from 05:30 PM to 06:30 PM; McDonald Institute Seminar Room; Gösta Gabriel (Graduate School for Humanities, Göttingen): Interchanging stories - the mutual dependency of the Sumerian King List and the Sumerian Flood Story.

Feb 16, 2016 from 05:30 PM to 06:30 PM; McDonald Institute Seminar Room; Mark Altaweel (University College London): The dawn of empires in the Ancient Near East: a dynamic systems approach.

Mar 01, 2016 from 05:30 PM to 06:30 PM; McDonald Institute Seminar Room; Johannes Haubold (University of Durham): After Babylon: Mesopotamian and pseudo-Mesopotamian literature in the Roman empire.

Michaelmas Term 2015 

Oct 13, 2015 from 05:30 PM to 06:30 PM; South Lecture Room, Division of Archaeology; Christopher Metcalf (University of Oxford):Old Babylonian religious poetry in Anatolia: from solar hymn to plague prayer.

Oct 27, 2015 from 05:30 PM to 06:30 PM; South Lecture Room, Division of Archaeology; Selena Wisnom (University of Oxford): Old English stress patterns in Akkadian poetry: a comparative approach.

Nov 05, 2015 from 05:30 PM to 06:30 PM; South Lecture Room, Division of Archaeology; François Desset (University of Tehran / UMR 7041 ArScAn): Linear Elamite and geometric (Jiroft) writings : the state of the art about some undeciphered Iranian writing systems of the 3rd millennium BC.

Nov 17, 2015 from 05:30 PM to 06:30 PM; McDonald Institute Seminar Room; Olga Vinnichenko (University of Cambridge): The Aramaization of the Assyrian empire as evidenced by language.

Dec 01, 2015 from 05:30 PM to 06:30 PM; McDonald Institute Seminar Room; Frank Simons (University of Birmingham): While we’ve got the brazier out, we may as well do Šurpu ...

Easter Term 2015

April 28th from 5.30-6.30 PM, McDonald Institute Seminar Room 
Dr N. İlgi Gerçek, Affiliated Lecturer in Akkadian, Istanbul University 
The Steepest Places: Rebellion and Political Dissent in Hittite Records

Lent Term 2015

January 27th from 05:30 PM to 06:30 PM — McDonald Institute Seminar Room, 
Dr Christoph Bachhuber, POINT Fellow, Freie Universität Berlin 
The Presence of a Hittite Past 

February 3rd from 05:30 PM to 06:30 PM — McDonald Institute Seminar Room, 
Prof. Haskel Greenfield, Professor of Anthropology, University of Manitoba & Visiting Fellow, McDonald Institute 
Early Urban Neighbourhoods in the Southern Levant: The Early Bronze III at Tell es-Safi/Gath, Israel 

February 10th from 05:30 PM to 06:30 PM — McDonald Institute Seminar Room, 
Dr Wendy Matthews, Lecturer in Archaeology, University of Reading 
New Insights into Early Sedentism and Resource Management: The Central Zagros Archaeological Project 

February 17th from 05:30 PM to 06:30 PM — McDonald Institute Seminar Room, 
Dr Kathryn Stevens, Lecturer in Classics, University of Durham & Junior Research Fellow, Trinity College Cambridge 
Preserving the Past or Predicting the Future? Late Babylonian Scholars and Enūma Anu Enlil 

February 24th from 05:30 PM to 06:30 PM — McDonald Institute Seminar Room, 
Dr Gül Pulhan, Director of Gre Amer Excavations, Turkey 
North of the Tur Abdin but Still in the Loop: Excavations at Gre Amer, Garzan 

March 3rd from 05:30 PM to 06:30 PM — McDonald Institute Seminar Room, 
Dr Ulf-Dietrich Schoop, Lecturer in Eastern Mediterranean Archaeology, University of Edinburgh 
The Role of Technology in Chalcholithic Anatolia

Michaelmas Term 2014

Oct 14, 2014 from 06:00 PM to 07:00 PM — McDonald Institute Seminar Room, 
Dr Birger Ekornåsvåg Helgestad (The British Museum) 
The Ur Project: Digitally Reunifying the Finds and Archives from the City of Ur 

Oct 28, 2014 from 05:30 PM to 06:30 PM — McDonald Institute Seminar Room, 
Prof. emer. Michael Roaf (Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München) 
30-day Months and 10-day Weeks 

Nov 04, 2014 from 05:30 PM to 06:30 PM — McDonald Institute Seminar Room, 
Dr Sophie V. Moore (Newcastle University) 
Bodies of Evidence at First and Second Millennium AD Çatalhöyük: Identity, Memory and Knowledge 

Nov 11, 2014 from 05:30 PM to 06:30 PM — McDonald Institute Seminar Room, 
Prof Cécile Michel (CNRS Nanterre) 
The Economic Activities of the Aššur Women According to Kaneš Private Archives (19th century BCE) 

Nov 18, 2014 from 05:30 PM to 06:30 PM — McDonald Institute Seminar Room, 
Dr Mark Jackson (Newcastle University) 
Innovation in the Byzantine Dark Age

Lent Term 2014

14 January, 2014
Dr. Michael Danti, Boston University
Searching for Musasir: The Rowanduz Archaeological Program 2013 in Iraqi Kurdistan

21 January, 2014
Prof. Douglas Baird, Liverpool University
A tale of two villages: The spread of farming in Neolithic Central Anatolia and the antecedents of Çatalhöyük: Excavations at Pinarbasi and Boncuklu

4 February, 2014
Prof. Andrew George, SOAS
On house drains and street lamps: textual evidence for some Babylonian civic amenities

11 February, 2014
Prof. Grant Frame, University of Pennsylvania
Lost in the Tigris: Trials and Tribulations in Editing the Royal Inscriptions of Sargon II of Assyria

25 February, 2014
Prof. Amélie Kuhrt, UCL
A Persian View of the Achaemenid Empire

11 March, 2014
Prof. Karen Radner, UCL
Brain drain: Foreign experts in the Assyrian heartland

Michaelmas Term 2013

15th October 2013
Dr. David Kertai, Institute of Archaeology, University College, London
Kalḫu’s royal palaces of the Late Assyrian period 

21st October 2013 (*Monday*)
Dr. Seth Richardson, Oriental Institute, University of Chicago
Sennacherib at Jerusalem: The First World Event

29th October 2013
Dr. Barbara Böck, Institute for Languages and Cultures of the Mediterranean and Near East, CSIC, Madrid
On Religious Thought in Ancient Babylonian Medicine: Medicinal Plants and Diseases Associated with the Healing Goddess Gula

12th November 2013
Dr. Martin Worthington, Department of Archaeology, University of Cambridge
Miscellanies in Neo-Assyrian grammar

26th November 2013
Prof. Johannes Haubold, Department of Classics and Ancient History, University of Durham
Seleucid euergetism: Greek and Babylonian perspectives 

Lent Term 2013

Prof. Eliezer Oren (Ben Gurion University): Canaanite Temples, Rites and Rituals: Archaeological Evidence from Tel Haror, Israel

Prof. Nicholas Postgate (Cambridge): Three Gentlemen of Assyria: Inside Middle Assyrian Government Circles

Dr Paul Collins (Ashmolean Museum): Contract and Narrative in the Art of Mesopotamia 

2012

Jennie Bradbury (Durham University): Living and Dying in the the 4th-3rd millennium BC Levant

Nicholas Reid (Oxford University): TBC

Heather Baker (University of Vienna): At Home in the Babylonian City: new light on domestic housing and urban living conditions

Alan Greaves (Lecturer in Archaeology, University of Liverpool): John Garstang's Work in Turkey - and the New Exhibition at the University of Liverpool (31st January)

Graham Philip (Professor of Archaeology, Durham University): Exploiting the Landscape of the Levant: a long-term perspective (7th February)

Caroline Waerzeggers (Lecturer in the Ancient Near East, UCL): Babylonia in the 1st Millennium (14th February)

Karen Sonik (Post-Doctoral Fellow at the University of California, Los Angeles): Frontality and the Gaze in Mesopotamian Art (21st February)

Greta Van Buylaere (Research Fellow, Assyrian-Babylonian Scholarly Literacies, University of Cambridge): Assyrian and Babylonian Scholarly Literacies (6th March)

Assaad Seif (Co-ordinator of Archaeological Research, Ministry of Culture, Lebanon): Paradigm Shifts and the Politics of the Past in Lebanon: Urban Archaeology in the Making (13th March)

Ruth Horry (HPS, University of Cambridge): Doctors, divination and museum displays: the multiple lives of a Babylonian clay liver model (1st May)

DT Potts (Edwin Cuthbert Hall Professor of Middle Eastern Archaeology, University of Sydney): From sedentism to nomadism: Transformations in Iranian history and prehistory (8th May)

Mark Altaweel (Lecturer in Near Eastern Archaeology, UCL): New Investigations in the Iraqi Hilly Flanks: Social-Environmental and Historical Investigations from 2009-2012 (15th May)

Professor Elizabeth Stone and Professor Paul Zimansky (State University of New York, Stony Brook): Tell Sakhariya and the Urban Matrix of Mesopotamia (12th June) 

2011

Tony Wilkinson (Professor of Archaeology, University of Durham): Upper Mesopotamian Trajectories: Settlement and Community within a Fragile Environment (25th January)

David Wengrow (Reader in Comparative Archaeology, UCL): Why did cross-cultural trade matter in the ancient Near East? (1st February)

Alasdair Livingstone (Reader in Assyriology, University of Birmingham): Hemerologies (15th February)

Ronan Head (Research Fellow in Ancient Law, Brigham Young University): The Babylonian Merchant-Slave (22nd February)

Frances Reynolds (Shillito Fellow in Assyriology, University of Oxford): Chaos in Akkadian Myth and Ritual (1st March)

Yoram Cohen (Dept of Archaeology and Near Eastern Cultures, Tel Aviv University): The Emar Scribal School (10th May)

Jon Taylor (Assistant Keeper of the Cuneiform Collections, British Museum): Squeezed, broken and lovingly preserved: Neo-Babylonian copies of ancient inscriptions (24th May)

Ilya Yakubovich (Fellow in Indo-Iranian Philology at the University of Oxford): Reconstructing multilingualism in ancient societies (11th October)

Christopher Metcalf (University of Oxford): New parallels in Hittite and Sumerian praise of the Sun (18th October)

Johanna Tudeau (University of Cambridge): Architectural planning in Assyria according to the royal inscriptions, state archives and omen series (1st November)

Marie-Françoise Besnier (Research Fellow, The Geography of Knowledge in Assyria and Babylonia, University of Cambridge): The Transmission of Divinatory series and their "Standardization" throughout second and first Millennia: the Examples of šumma izbu and ālu Series (22nd November)

David Wengrow (Reader in Comparative Archaeology, UCL): Images between worlds: Egypt and Mesopotamia in the fourth millennium BC (29th November)

2010

Andrew George (Professor of Babylonian, SOAS, University of London): Translating Gilgamesh (1st February)

Yağmur Sarıoğlu (Doctoral Candidate, Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, University of Cambridge): Texts Meet Archaeology: Ritual Vessels in Anatolian Domestic Cults in the 2nd Millennium B.C. (8th February)

John MacGinnis (Research Fellow, McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, University of Cambridge): Sun readers are not all the same: investigating the archives of the Neo-Babylonian Shamash Temple in Sippar (22nd February)

Luis Siddall (Doctoral Candidate SOAS, University of London): A New(ish) stele of the Assyrian king, Adad-nirari III and what it can tell us about text genre and chronology (1st March)

Jacob Lauinger (Gaylord and Dorothy Donnelley Research Fellow, Corpus Christi College, Cambridge): Following the Man of Yamhad: Alalakh and Syria in the Late Old Babylonian Period (26th April)

Stephanie Dalley (Senior Research Fellow in Assyriology, Faculty of Oriental Studies, Oxford University): Kish according to Cuneiform Sources: Overview of an Overview (10th May)

Roger Matthews (Professor of Near Eastern Archaeology, Institute of Archaeology, UCL): The Central Zagros Archaeological Project: new research into Neolithic society of west Iran (24th May)

Francesca Rochberg (Professor of Near Eastern Studies, Department of Near Eastern Studies, University of California, Berkeley): Cultural Matrix for Babylonian Astral Science in the Hellenistic World (31st May)

Nicole Brisch (University Lecturer in Assyriology, University of Cambridge): Letters to the Gods: Royal Letters of Petition as a Genre of Sumerian Scholarly Literature (26th October)

Jacob Dahl (University Lecturer in Assyriology, University of Oxford): Early Writing in the Ancient Near East (2nd November)

Johannes Haubold (Senior Lecturer in the Department of Classics and Ancient History, University of Durham): The Barbarian Writes Back: Reading Berossos (16th November)

Mark Weeden (British Academy Post-Doctoral Fellow, SOAS): Tabal and the Limits of Assyrian Imperialism (23rd November)

Mesopotamianists at Cambridge

University teaching in ancient languages is given by Dr Jonathan Tenney and Dr Steve Renette; University teaching in Mesopotamian archaeology and history is given by Dr Steve Rennette. These staff members and advanced PhD students and post-doctoral scholars also give most of the College undergraduate supervisions in ancient Near Eastern subjects. All staff members have ongoing research projects in the archaeology, social history and languages of Mesopotamia and are able and willing to supervise MPhil and PhD students in a wide range of topics.

 

Nicholas Postgate is Emeritus Professor of Assyriology in the Division of Archaeology and a Fellow of Trinity College. He works on the social and economic history of Mesopotamia, especially Assyria. He was Director of the British School of Archaeology in Iraq (Baghdad) during the 1970s and conducted excavations at the Sumerian city of Abu Salabikh, in southern Iraq, from 1975 to 1989. From 1994 to 1998, he directed the excavation of the Bronze and Iron Age site of Kilise Tepe in southern Turkey, and this project resumed in 2007-2012. Apart from excavation reports and editions of cuneiform texts, his books include The First Empires(1977) and Early Mesopotamia: society and economy at the dawn of history (1992). He is a former Chair and Council Member of the British Institute for the Study of Iraq. Contact : jnp10@cam.ac.uk.  

Previous Projects

This research project studied the scholarship of Assyria and Babylonia by editing the contents of four ancient libraries as the Corpus of Ancient Mesopotamian Scholarship (CAMS), and by analysing their changing socio-political contexts.

Bulletin on Sumerian Agriculture

A series of eight volumes publishing the results of conferences held initially in Cambridge and then in other centres of Assyriology (e.g. Leiden, Heidelberg and Barcelona) in the 1980s and 1990s (Vols. 1-8 1984-1995). Edited by J.N. Postgate and M.A. Powell.

The early centuries of Assyria

There are more administrative archives from the early centuries of Assyria (14th-11th centuries BC) than from any other Late Bronze Age state. Nicholas Postgate’s book Bronze Age Bureaucracy: Writing and the practice of government in Assyria (Cambridge U.P. 2013) describes the written evidence for the administrative system, not only in Assyria but also in the neighbouring centres of Nuzi, Alalakh and Ugarit.