As every Assyriologist now, July is the month of the Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale! This year we will finally meet again in Mainz, thanks to our hosts: the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz and the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University Frankfurt am Main. We are grateful to the RAI organizers, who have sent to us the contribution below so that we can all get ready for the event.
See you soon in Germany (and online)!
Three years after the Paris Rencontre and one year after the purely digital Torino RAI, we are pleased to welcome the ANE community this year to the hybrid 66th Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale with face-to-face events at Mainz, to be held from July 25–29 in 2022. Hosts are the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz and the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University Frankfurt am Main.
Programme
The first two days, July 25–26, are reserved for lectures presented online. The three remaining days, July 27–29, will see presentations given in person at Mainz.
All online lectures will be screened synchronously in the conference rooms at Mainz. All lectures presented in person at Mainz will be streamed via conference technology for registered participants online. Access to the online streams will be provided for registered participants via the conference homepage: www.66rai.uni-mainz.de.
A total of eight sessions with almost 100 lectures will take place on the main topic “Culture-Contact-Culture”. The sessions are entitled: Means and Routes of Contact, Agents of Contact, Material Manifestations of Contact, Manifestations of Contacts in Rituals, Cult and Society, Linguistic Contacts, Cultures of Contact, Reports on recent fieldwork, and Digital methods in Ancient Near Eastern Studies. You can find the abstracts of the presentations here: https://converia.uni-mainz.de/custom/media/RAI_66/pdf-vorlagen/66RAI_Abstracts.pdf.
The Preliminary Programme is available at the following address: Preliminary Program – Cultural Contact – Cultures of Contact 66e Rencontre Assyriologique International (RAI 66) (uni-mainz.de).
The 66th RAI will open on Monday, 10:00 CEST, with welcome addresses by representatives of the organizing institutions and the IAA followed by keynote lectures by Daniel Schwemer (Würzburg) and Barbara Helwing (Berlin).
A first reception is scheduled for Tuesday evening at the Kupferbergterrassen in Mainz, a second one for Thursday evening at a local winery. The IAA General Meeting will take place on Wednesday (July 27) afternoon (16:00–18:00 CEST).
The City and University of Mainz
Mainz, Roman Mogontiacum, probably best known as the place of work of Johannes Gutenberg, is located on the left bank of the Rhine. Remains of the Roman past (a theatre, an Isis and Magna Mater temple, and other landmarks) are still visible within the cityscape. As the seat of powerful archbishops, Mainz played an important role in the Holy Roman Empire. Several important museums host finds from Roman, medieval and early modern periods – above all, two of Gutenberg’s bible prints.
The importance of thriving medieval Jewish communities in the region was recognized by the inscription of the ShUM cities (Speyer, Worms and Mainz) as a UNESCO World Heritage site in 2021.
Further information on the history of Mainz can be found at: Stadtgeschichte | Landeshauptstadt Mainz.
The university, named after Johannes Gutenberg, was founded in 1477 and developed well. As a result of the Napoleonic wars, operations were gradually discontinued at the beginning of the 19th century. After World War II, the university reopened under its current name in 1946. Today, it is one of the largest universities in Germany with 33,000 students and around 100 institutes.
The City and University of Frankfurt
Frankfurt is one of the large urban and international centres of Germany. As a “free city” from early medieval times onwards, Frankfurt developed into an economic and financial hub, housing the Frankfurt Fair, Stock Exchange and numerous important financial institutions. Dominated by its citizens, the city’s cultural life is coined by their private engagement, which lead to numerous donations and trusts, such as the Städelstiftung, one of Germany’s foremost art institutions, and other museums.
Goethe University, today a full university comprising about 45,000 students, was founded in 1914 at the brink of World War I by an endowment of numerous rich citizens and is still partly an independent, non-state institution. Particularly obliged to the Frankfurt citizenship, Goethe University takes pride in its broad offers to the urban community, with a strong tradition in economic and social sciences, which gained fame as the “Frankfurt School”. The university was named in 1932 after Johann Wolfgang Goethe (1749–1832), most famous son of the city and foremost polymath in his times.
Ancient Near Eastern Studies at Mainz and Frankfurt
The ANE departments at Mainz are relatively recent institutions. Near Eastern Archaeology was established in 1996, Ancient Near Eastern Philology in 2001. Both departments have established research libraries with extensive holdings. The Academy of Sciences at Mainz hosts the Hethitologie Portal Mainz (HPM), one of the most important digital hubs in the field of Hittitology.
ANE studies in Frankfurt was initiated in the 1960s as part of the archaeological curriculum. A permanent professorship for Near Eastern Archaeology was installed in 1972; Ancient Near Eastern Philology was secured with a permanent position in 1998, and a new professorship for Islamic Archaeology and Art will be installed in October 2022, complementing the array of disciplines within the Institute of Archaeological Sciences in Frankfurt. Major scientific resources are the Oriental collections and the Tell Chuera Archive with documents and finds from the institute’s long-running field-projects in Syria.
Sponsors
The Rencontre is made possible with the financial support of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG), Mainz Ancient Studies (JGU Mainz), Enki e.V. Frankfurt and the Universities of Frankfurt (Institut für Archäologische Wissenschaften) and Mainz (Institut für Altertumswissenschaften).