Soon, scholars and students from all over the world will gather in Mainz to participate in the 66th Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale. To get ready for this year’s event, we have interviewed Doris Prechel and Alexander Pruß, who have kindly accepted to talk to us about Ancient Near Eastern Studies in the university that will soon be our host!
Please tell us about yourselves!
Doris Prechel: I have been Professor of Ancient Near Eastern Philology at the Johannes Gutenberg University since 2001. Before that, I had the opportunity to study at the universities of Constance, Berlin, Leipzig and Heidelberg and to work on various projects. This gave me the great opportunity to keep getting to know new perspectives on the huge diversity of Ancient Near Eastern Studies, both in terms of content and methodology. Through the close cooperation with the Hittitological projects at the Mainz Academy of Sciences, the field research of our institute in Haft Tappeh (Iran) and my preference for Middle Assyrian, a focus on research on the history and culture of the Late Bronze Age has developed.
Alexander Pruß: I became Professor of Near Eastern Archaeology at Mainz University in 2015. I took my undergraduate studies at Saarbrücken and continued them at Tübingen and Halle. After my PhD I had positions in excavation projects at the universities of Halle and Munich. I had teaching assignments at the Universities of Bonn, Bern, Jena and Munich before I was appointed at Mainz. Already at the beginning of my studies, I had the opportunity to join excavation projects in Syria, where I continued to work regularly until the outbreak of the civil war. From the excavation projects at Tell Chuera and Tell Beydar, my research interest in Bronze Age urbanism evolved. For many years I have been interested in coroplastic art, small-scale figurines of humans and animals.
Entrance to the University Campus
Can you tell our readers something about the history of Assyriology at Mainz?
Altorientalische Philologie was first established in Mainz in 2001 (as was Ancient Near Eastern Archaeology in 1996) via a Collaborative Research Centre of the German Research Foundation (DFG) and (fortunately) was consolidated in 2006 – one of the last new foundations of the discipline worldwide! Generous grants from various third-party donors and support from the University made it possible to build up a very good scientific library and a small teaching collection with replicas from various museums. Initially, Ancient Oriental Studies formed an institute together with Egyptology, but since 2013 it has been housed under the umbrella of the Institute of Ancient Studies, which brings together a large number of neighbouring disciplines.
How do students generally come to study Assyriology in your University?
Since we cannot yet look back on a very long tradition, students mainly find their way to Ancient Near Eastern Studies via other subjects at Mainz University. Particularly noteworthy is the joint degree programme in Archaeology, in which Near Eastern Archaeology is also offered. For students of linguistics, Assyriology has emerged as an interesting subsidiary subject.
Which projects are currently ongoing at your Department? How many people are involved, and which main goals are you pursuing?
Since 2001, archaeological investigations have been carried out by Behzad Mofidi-Nasrabadi in Haft Tappeh, during which hundreds of clay tablets were found. They represent the last evidence of Akkadian-language administration for Susiana before Elamite became established as the language of administration. These important texts are being processed for the first time within the framework of the DFG-funded project “Digital Edition of the Cuneiform Texts from Haft Tappeh (Iran)” with the participation of eight people. On the basis of 3D images, the editio princeps will be prepared entirely in digital format.
Many cuneiform projects in Mainz use digital methods
The more than 30,000 clay tablets and clay tablet fragments in cuneiform from the archives of the Hittite capital Ḫattuša (Central Anatolia) as well as from other Hittite sites are the focus of the project Thesaurus Linguarum Hethaeorum digitalis (TLHdig), which is being carried out by the Universities of Würzburg (PIs Gerfrid Müller and Daniel Schwemer), Marburg (PI Elisabeth Rieken), and Mainz and funded by the DFG. The aim of the project is to create a digital, open-access and annotated repository of the transliterations of all accessible cuneiform texts from the Hittite archives, which will be integrated into the digital infrastructure “Hethitologie-Portal Mainz” (HPM) and enable complex search functions. Ten people are directly connected to the project and, in different contexts, almost all Hittitologists of this world.
View out of the Black Cave in the Soran district of Kurdistan-Iraq (September 2021)
The focus of excavation projects of Near Eastern Archaeology at Mainz has become the Kurdistan Autonomous Region in Iraq. Tobias Helms has acted as co-director on several projects in the Soran district, situated within the western Zagros mountains. Investigations were carried out on a small tell and within a cave, settled from the Neolithic period until recent times.
Another excavation project is scheduled for Tell Derabun, a site at the Eastern Khabur river in the Zakho district of Dohuk province. According to the site layout and the analysis of survey data, the site contains the remains of a small town which was settled from the 3rd millennium BC until the Sasanian period. A first excavation campaign is scheduled for autumn of this year.
In addition to the excavation and editing projects mentioned above, continuing research areas of Ancient Near Eastern Studies in Mainz include interdisciplinary work on the topic of rule and religion.
Does the Altorientalistik Mainz make use of social media (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram etc.)? Do you think these tools might be useful for disseminating knowledge of our disciplines outside of academia?
We see social media primarily as useful tools for reaching people outside of academia and making Ancient Near Eastern Studies more visible. The channels are used for the latest news, announcements of lectures and conferences, information about studying, etc. We now increasingly use Instagram, because it is particularly well received by our students (Facebook is no longer used so often by students…). We use Twitter primarily for networking in the digital community, e.g. https://twitter.com/MainzIdcs or of course https://twitter.com/66rai_mainz.
What do you see as the main challenges and opportunities ahead for Assyriology as a discipline?
Outreach actions of the Department include the re-modelling of ancient terra-cotta figurines
In times of increasing economisation of universities, it is particularly difficult for a small subject dedicated to the study of non-European cultures in antiquity to successfully meet changing demands. It is a balancing act to keep up with social change in an increasingly competitive environment without neglecting Assyriological work, which is often rooted in basic research. However, I see the interest on the part of infomatics in the legacies of the Ancient Near East, whose complexity gives computers (still) a lot to learn, as a clear gain.
Last but not least … this year’s Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale will be a hybrid event, with presentations from Wednesday to Friday held in person there at Mainz. How are you getting ready for this event?
We had already planned and arranged many things in 2020, so we didn’t have to start from scratch for the second attempt. The decision to hold a hybrid, shortened RAI at only one venue was made in consideration of the uncertain circumstances with the still existing pandemic. This is a novelty, but we think we are well prepared to hold the conference in Mainz, also thanks to the support of our colleagues at Frankfurt. We will be very happy to welcome every participant, whether in person or on screen.
View into the corridor of the Department of Ancient Near Eastern Studies