Please note that Dr Jon Tenney will be on sabbatical for the academic year 2025-26.
Biography
My research is directed towards a better understanding of the social, economic, institutional, and ideological forces that affected Mesopotamian populations and the frameworks and contexts in which Mesopotamians made basic life choices. It also considers the epistemological underpinnings of Assyriological investigations into socio-economic matters and the transmission of knowledge across time and space. Most of the evidence I use dates to the Late Bronze and Early Iron Ages, but I have also written on the Middle Assyrian, Neo-Assyrian and Ur III periods.
I hold BAs in History and Anthropology from Edinboro University of Pennsylvania, and I completed a Ph.D. at the University of Chicago under the guidance of J. A. Brinkman. In 2009, I was awarded the dissertation of the year prize from The American Academic Research Institutes of Iraq.
Research
Much of my research is based upon the extraction of data using the traditional research methodologies of Assyriology—e.g., philology, lexicography, archival studies, and prosopography—which is then analysed with methodologies first developed for other fields, such as quantitative studies, comparative history, historical demography, intellectual history, microhistory, and political science theory.
Some of the topics on which I have written include:
-Population dynamics, socio-legal institutions, and labour capital in Babylonia.
-The family structure, and legal status of servile people.
-Mesopotamian religious, political, and intellectual expression, especially with respect to the so-called "elevated Marduk dogma".
-Legal, epistolary, and administrative intertextuality in cuneiform texts.
-The epistemology of Assyriological knowledge.
Information for Prospective Postgraduate Students
***The department is not accepting postgraduate applications in Assyriology for the academic year 2025-26 due to sabbatical leaves.***
Assyriological training in the Cambridge classroom emphasizes textual acumen, comparison, and source criticism. Assyriological research is led by the research question or hypothesis, which should be investigated with the preceding values and by crossing interdiscinplinary lines. I am best situated to supervise projects that use cuneiform texts to explore aspects of population, society, governance, economy, or ideology, especially in the Late Bronze or Early Iron Ages of Mesopotamia.
Key Publications
BOOKS
-Administrative Reality and Scribal Apparatus in the Kassite Period. Harvard Semitic Studies. Leiden: Brill. (In Press)
-Life at the Bottom of Babylonian Society: Servile Laborers at Nippur in the 14thand 13thCenturies B.C.Culture and History of the Ancient Near East 51. Leiden: Brill, 2011.
ARTICLES
-“Babylonian Populations, Servility, and Cuneiform Records."
Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 60/6
(2017): 1–73.
-“The Elevation of Marduk Revisited: Festivals and Sacrifices at Nippur during the High Kassite Period.” Journal of Cuneiform Studies 68 (2016): 153–80.
-“Uruk in Southern Babylonia under the Kassite Kings” in Uruk–Altorientalische Metropole und Kulturzentrum,in Colloquien der Deutschen Orient-Gesellschaft 9 (2021).
Publication
2022 (No publication date)
2021
2022 (No publication date)
2017
Doi: 10.1163/15685209-12341440
2016
Doi: 10.5615/jcunestud.68.2016.0153
2022 (No publication date)
2011
2009
Teaching and Supervisions
My primary teaching duties include all levels of Akkadian and Sumerian Language, as well as content surveys on Mesopotamian beliefs, thought, and society.
M1/G30 Babylonian Language I/ Introduction to Babylonian
M4/G33 Intermediate Babylonian/ Intermediate Akkadian Language and Texts
M5/G34 Advanced Babylonian with Assyrian/Advanced Akkadian Language and Texts
M2/G31 Mesopotamian Culture I: literature
M3/G32 Mesopotamian Culture II: religion and scholarship
