A new project has been based in Ancient Near Eastern Philology since October 2022: Akkadian and Hittite Emotional Terms in Context (subtitle: Towards a Lexicon of Emotions in Cuneiform Texts from Ancient Mesopotamia and Asia Minor). The project is a cooperation with the university in Tel Aviv, Israel – the Mainz team, headed by Prof. Dr. Doris Prechel and Dr. Ulrike Steinert, is working on Akkadian, the Israeli team under Prof. Dr. Amir Gilan on Hittite.

The research project prosecutes a comprehensive study of the semantic domain of emotions in both Akkadian and Hittite. The aim is to systematically investigate how emotions have been linguistically and contextually differentiated and delimited in the two spokespersons; the investigations will include the semantic properties, similarities and relationships between different concepts of emotion, their use and developments in different text genres, periods and contexts. With its thematic focus and its comparative, corpus-linguistic approach, the proposed project will open up new possibilities for collaboration with other philological and historical disciplines, broaden the scope of Ancient Near Eastern Studies and emphasize its relevance by making an important contribution to a recent and extremely lively field of research.

Head: Prof. Dr. Doris Prechel, Dr. Ulrike Steinert

Graduate assistant: Jonas Klöker B.A. (2022-2023), Letizia Savino M.A. (since 2023)

Funded by the DFG (since 2022)

The city of Haft Tappeh (Kabnak) is located about 15 km southeast of the important city of Susa, in the present-day Iranian province of Khuzestan. Due to its geographical location on the edge of the Mesopotamian plain and at the foothills of the Zagros Mountains, the region represents an important contact zone between Mesopotamia in the west and the Iranian highlands in the east.

Ezatollah Negabhan’s excavations, which were carried out between 1965 and 1978, unearthed monumental building structures as well as numerous clay tablets, most of which shed light on administrative processes and thus indicate the importance of the city at the beginning of the Late Bronze Age.

The archaeological investigations in Haft Tappeh were continued by Behzad Mofidi-Nasrabadi from 2001 onwards. During the excavation campaigns of 2005 and 2007, a building complex was uncovered in which a further 634 clay tablets and tablet fragments were found. The texts are also of an administrative nature and written in Akkadian. They thus represent the last diplomas of Akkadian-language administration in the region before Elamite prevailed as the language of administration.

This important text find is being processed for the first time as part of the DFG-funded project “Digital Edition of the Cuneiform Texts from Haft Tappeh (Iran)”. Based on 3D images, the editio princeps will be carried out completely digitally in an innovative approach. As part of this project, the Ancient Near Eastern Philology working group is cooperating with the Mainz / Mainzed higher education institution.

Management: Doris Prechel, Kai Christian Bruhn

Coordination: Tim Brandes

Academic staff members: Tim Brandes, Timo Homburg (9/2019-2/2022)

Graduate assistants: Ali Zalaghi, Lukas Ahlborn

Funded by the DFG (2019-2023)

The more than 30.000 clay tablets and clay tablet fragments in cuneiform script from the archives of the Hittite capital Ḫattuša (Central Anatolia) as well as from other Hittite sites include texts in Hittite, the oldest documented Indo-European language, as well as in other Anatolian and non-Anatolian languages (Luwian, Palaic, Hattic, Hurrian, Akkadian, Sumerian) and represent one of the richest and most important textual traditions of the ancient Near East. The transliterations of the various texts and fragments are currently mainly available in the Hittitological specialist literature, and only to a lesser extent in the form of digital editions. However, the challenges of modern research require a comprehensive digital collection that functions as a searchable database of texts in transliteration.

This desideratum of Hittitology will be fulfilled by the DFG-funded project Thesaurus Linguarum Hethaeorum digitalis (^TLHdig), in which the universities of Mainz, Würzburg, Marburg and the Academy of Sciences and Literature in Mainz are involved. The aim of the project is to create a digital, open-access and annotated repository of transliterations of all accessible cuneiform texts from the Hittite archives, which will be integrated into the digital infrastructure “Hittitologie-Portal Mainz” (HPM) and enable complex search functions. An online creator interface will allow the thesaurus to be regularly updated by the Hittitological community beyond the planned duration of the project. ^TLHdig will thus open up new access to the Hittite primary sources in transliteration and offer sophisticated research opportunities.

Head: Gerfrid G. W. Müller (ADW), Doris Prechel (JGU), Elisabeth Rieken (UMR), Daniel Schwemer (JMU)

Academic staff members: Fabio Bastici (JGU), Birgit Christiansen (UMR), Björn Eyselein (JMU)

Graduate assistants: Paul Herdt (UMR), Gudrun Samberger (JMU), Letizia Savino (JGU)

Funded by the DFG (2020-2023)