Many of us have probably been there recently, to attend the 8th International Congress of Hittitology (2011), the 8th International Congress of the Archaeology of the Ancient Near East (2012) or the 60th Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale (2014) – but how much do we actually know about the University of Warsaw?
Thanks to Małgorzata Sandowicz, whom we thank for having kindly agreed to answer our questions, Mar Shiprim spotlights the past and present activities – as well as the future research plans – of this lively Polish University.
Please, tell us about yourself!
I am an Assyriologist working primarily on Neo-Babylonian legal texts, a genre that offers unique insights into the everyday lives of Babylonians, both of the elite and commoners. My scholarly interests focus on dispute settlement and legal procedures, as well as administrative and social frameworks that provided platforms for conflict resolution. But I am also interested in stories of crime and punishment and in the motivations that drove people to violate rules governing social conduct and the methods to which they resorted to seek – or evade – justice. I completed my PhD under Stefan Zawadzki of the Adam Mickiewicz University of Poznań, and I have held a post at the Department of the Ancient Near East since 2004.
Can you tell the readers something about the history of Assyriology and Hittitology at the University of Warsaw?
It began shortly after Poland regained independence in 1918. Akkadian and Sumerian were first taught in the Faculty of Catholic Theology and from the outset quite intensively: the Sumerian course comprised five lessons a week! After Moses Schorr moved to Warsaw, he taught the history and culture of the Ancient Near East, as well as Akkadian, at the Faculty of Oriental Studies. Schorr was a fascinating figure: apart from being an authority on Old Babylonian law and a leading expert on the historiography of Polish Jews, he was a prominent rabbi and a politician (a representative of Polish Jewry in the Senate). Another founding father of our department was Rudolf Ranoszek, a Wrocław (Breslau)- and Leipzig-educated Hittitologist, who studied with Bruno Meissner and Benno Landsberger. After WWII, Ranoszek began the process of rebuilding the departmental library (the original one perished during the war) and taught Akkadian, Sumerian, Hittite, and the history of the Ancient Near East. Among his students were the Hittitologist Maciej Popko, Assyriologist Krystyna Łyczowska, and Sumerologists Krystyna Szarzyńska and Jan Braun, as well as Piotr Michałowski and Piotr Steinkeller, who later moved to the US to further their academic careers in Sumerology. Scholars of the next generation who are active until today are all students of Łyczkowska and Popko: Assyriologists Olga Drewnowska and myself, and Hittitologists Piotr Taracha, and Magdalena Kapełuś. The third and youngest generation is represented by the Hittitologist Adam Kryszeń, who graduated under the scientific guidance of Piotr Taracha.
How do students generally come to study Assyriology and Hittitology in Poland? Are there many students who attend Sumerian, Akkadian, and Hittite classes?
It is difficult to identify one pattern here; each student probably has a story of where and how his or her interest sparked. We normally have a share of students of archaeology or history who either take a full course of Assyriology or Hittitology with us or join our language courses or seminars. As is the case elsewhere, I believe, classes are small. Currently, we have a group of five and another group of two undergraduates. We do not recruit students yearly but usually every second year.
How are Sumerology and Assyriology generally perceived in Poland outside of the University?
I imagine that the world outside largely sees them as auxiliary sciences of archaeology. But the University has a lengthy tradition of teaching ancient studies at various departments (Archaeology, History, Law, Classics) and, here, the contributions of our Hittitologists (Rudolf Ranoszek, Maciej Popko, and Piotr Taracha) are acknowledged.
The Department building
(photo: Mirosław Każmierczak, ©Uniwersytet Warszawski)
Are there perhaps any fun facts you can tell us about your Department, or about the University of Warsaw?
We currently have two major changes ahead of us. First, we have to move out of our cramped yet snug home for three years while our department building is renovated. The second change is more welcome. We recently became a part of a newly founded Centre for Research on Ancient Civilizations (CRAC), whose objective is to coordinate and consolidate ancient studies at the University. CRAC has received substantial funding for the next five years, and we intend to use its part to finance postdocs and to bring in more visiting scholars, including, obviously, Assyriologists and Hittitologists.
In 2014, the University of Warsaw hosted the 60th Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale, “Fortune and Misfortune in the Ancient Near East”. Did this event have any impact on your Department in the following years? Do you think it raised the awareness on our discipline inside and outside the University itself?
It was indeed an important event in the history of our small community. It followed the 8th International Congress of Hittitology that the University hosted in 2011 and the 8th ICAANE (International Congress of the Archaeology of the Ancient Near East) in 2012; thus, over a short period of time, the paths of many scholars working on the Ancient Near East crossed in Warsaw. The Rencontre was certainly noticed at the University, but, more importantly, it was an opportunity for our students to meet both academic luminaries and celebrities and fellow students from around the world. The students relieved us of the responsibility for handling a substantial portion of organization duties, and it is thanks to their involvement that the Rencontre went smoothly.
Which research projects are currently ongoing at your Department? How many people are involved, and which main goals are you pursuing?
Piotr Taracha is currently working on a philological edition of a group of texts classified under CTH 668 related to the Old Hittite cult in the city of Hanhana and its vicinity. The monograph will also include commentaries on general religious and cultic matters associated with Hittite Anatolia. A new project at our Department – launched this year – will study the ecological, physical, historical, sociological, and ideological aspects of the Hittite city. Adam Kryszeń intends to bring together various types of evidence, ranging from archaeological data through cuneiform texts in Hittite and Akkadian as well as Hieroglyphic Luwian inscriptions to theoretical studies on urbanism, to better understand urbanism in Hititte Anatolia. An ongoing program overseen by Olga Drewnowska and Magdalena Kapełuś aims at the translation of major works of Akkadian and Sumerian literature into Polish (nine volumes have already been published). Magdalena Kapełuś is working on a new edition of the texts of the Hittite royal funerary rituals (CTH 450 and 451). I myself hope to soon bring to a close my own project on Neo-Babylonian law and administration and to see my two PhD students complete their theses on Sippar scribes of the first millennium BCE (Paulina Pikulska) and on the Neo-Babylonian royal establishment (Łukasz Klima).
What is a project you would like to work on, if you had all the time and funding in the world?
Given ample time, funding, and other recourses, I would love to be able to work on Neo-Babylonian tablets held in Istanbul and Baghdad. The tablet collections of museums in these cities are extremely difficult to access for different reasons, but I sincerely hope to see it change in my lifetime.
What do you see as the main challenges and opportunities ahead for Assyriology as a discipline?
Political turbulence in the Middle East has for some time hindered the work of archaeologists and limited access to new material. Now, Covid-19 has closed museum reading rooms and, to an extent, libraries. These are, in my view, the main two challenges that Assyriology currently faces, and they leave far behind the other problems that our discipline faces. However, I think that many Assyriologists, as well as many academics in general, have emerged from the worst stage of this crisis so far better off than people working in many other professions. The burden posed by university bureaucracy was reduced, and many of us consequently found time to complete long-unfinished papers and books, to read, and to plan for the future. I am convinced that, paradoxically, the lockdown will result in a mass of new publications. In addition, the importance of digital humanities programmes for both research and education became even more obvious. Without the resources available through projects such as CDLI and Oracc, we would hardly have been able to teach online and to conduct research during the lockdown. I am truly thankful to the people behind these initiatives for making them freely accessible to the entire academic world.
If you could change one thing about the field of Assyriology, what would it be?
I would love for the legacy of the Ancient Near East to be better recognized. It is disturbing to see chapters on Mesopotamia, or on the Ancient Near East in general, shrink and even disappear from school textbooks and history courses (a phenomenon that directly translates into the low numbers of candidates that turn up in our departments). Assyriology certainly deserves a more prominent place among disciplines studying the ancient world, more researchers, and a better appreciation of the influence of ancient Mesopotamia and the entire Ancient Near East on our civilization.
The 60th Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale “Fortune and Misfortune in the Ancient Near East” at the University of Warsaw