Materiality of Writing in 3rd Millennium Mesopotamia
The planned workshop entitled “Materiality of writing in 3rd Millennium Mesopotamia” aims to bring together scholars of distinct fields of research, primarily working on the archaeological and philological material foundation of third millennium Mesopotamia. Particular focus is on inscribed objects and the relationship between the inscribed text and the object’s nature or shape such as bowl, tablet, cone, mortar, plaque, seal, statue, stele, vessel or vase, and material, e.g. alabaster, basalt, clay, dacite, diorite, gabbro, gypsum, limestone, rhyolite, with regard to the used contextual phrasal inventory (Sumerian, Akkadian).
The chosen timeframe of the workshop ranges from the epigraphic sources of the Fāra period (ca. 2500 BC), though older sources as those from Archaic Ur (ED I) can also be taken into account till the royal inscriptions of the Isin-Larsa–period (ca. 1800 BC). The textual sources of the early periods that comprise nearly 110000 texts on clay tablets and artifacts contain a lot of information about the ideology and legitimation of kingship but an investigation of its special relation to the used inscribed medium has not yet been undertaken. Moreover the further reception of certain written sources and both the re-utilization and contextual self-reference of certain kinds of objects should be taken in consideration.
All invited scholars will be asked to give a brief paper dealing in detail with one aspect of the chosen topic no longer than 30 min. with an immediately following discussion that is supposed to be intensified during a final summarizing round-table discussion. Contributions to all aspects of current archaeological and philological research such as the typology of inscription, e.g. commemorative votive inscription vs. economic or legal text vs. year formula, or the objects’ nature and scenic illustration are likewise generally welcome. As a whole it is expected that the workshop with its accompanying discussions will afford a stimulus and new impetus for the project C01 as regarding the research on the materiality and functional presence of writing in this early period of the Ancient Near East.
Kontakt:
Prof. Dr. Peter A. Miglus
Institut für Ur- und Frühgeschichte
und Vorderasiatische Archäologie
Universität Heidelberg
Marstallhof 4
69117 Heidelberg
Tel: +49 6221 543415
Fax: +49 6221 542526
E-Mail: peter.miglus@uni-heidelberg.de
