The International Association for Assyriology (IAA) was founded in July 2003 in order to promote the fields of Cuneiform Studies, ancient Near Eastern History and Archaeology on an international basis and to act as a representative body for these fields in relationship to national, international and private institutions, as well as the general public (Rules and Regulations).
The IAA manages the regular organization of an annual congress, the Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale that assembles scholars from all over the world at centres of Near Eastern research. The traditional title of the Rencontre Assyriologique also determined the original designation as “International Association for Assyriology (IAA)”. This name was confirmed by a majority of its members in an electronic vote in April 2018.
In our association, the old-fashioned term “Assyriology” covers all scholarly fields related to the study of the ancient Near East in the time of the cuneiform cultures, from the fourth millennium BCE to the first century AD in the historical regions of Mesopotamia, Syria and the Levant, Iran, and Anatolia, including periods and regions of influence and contact. Our understanding of “Assyriology” covers philological disciplines dealing with texts written in Akkadian, i. e. Babylonian and Assyrian, Sumerian, Hittite, Elamite, Hurrian, and other languages, linguistics of these languages, the history of the ancient Near East and the archaeology and art history of the respective regions and periods.
In response to concerns raised about the role IAA members play within their own societies, and in the countries in which they work, the IAA has published a guideline “For an ethical practice in our disciplines”.
IAA takes the development of its scholarly fields seriously and therefore awards various prizes and subsidies. The prizes acknowledge two doctoral dissertations and the first published article, and the winners typify the high quality and the scope of research stemming from the next generation. A subsidy supports project work for a doctoral student or early career scholar; and subsidies also support recent PhDs to attend the Rencontre Assyriologique.
Dear Mar Shiprim Readers, This month we thank Troels Arbøll, Associate Professor of Assyriology at the Department of Cross-Cultural and Regional Studies at the University of Copenhagen, for taking the time to tell us about Read more
Dear Mar Shiprim readers, Please join us in congratulating Evelyne Koubková for winning this year’s IAA Dissertation Prize for her dissertation on the Mesopotamian exorcist’s self-presentation. Applications are now open for next year’s prizes. For Read more
Dear Mar Shiprim readers, This month we meet Prof. Philippa Steele at the University of Cambridge who shares with us the goals and current activities of the VIEWS (Visual Interactions in Early Writing Systems) project. Read more
List of Publications: January – March 2026 Dear Mar Shiprim readers, See below for new titles in Assyriology and related fields shared through the Agade mailing list between January 1st and March 31st, 2026. Read more
The Institute for Ancient Near Eastern Studies (IANES) of the Faculty of Humanities at the University of Tübingen invites applications for a Full Professor (W3) for Near Eastern Archaeology and Digital Archaeology (f/m/d) to commence Read more
The Institute of Near Eastern Studies, Indo-European Studies and the Archaeology of Prehistory to the Early Middle Ages at the Friedrich Schiller University Jena invites applications for the position of a Research Assistant in Ancient Read more