Current Research Projects

Teilprojekt B01 des SFB 1369 Vigilanzkulturen more

This project will produce a complete, modern scholarly edition of the corpus of Akkadian inscriptions of Assyria’s rulers from the late third millennium BC to the reign of Aššur-narari V (754–745 BC). more

The Electronic Corpus of Urartian Texts (eCUT) Project, a sub-project of the Munich Open-access Cuneiform Corpus Initiative (MOCCI), is the first electronic corpus of Urartian written sources from the kingdom of Urartu and the first corpus that makes the Urartian texts accessible through annotated (lemmatized) transliterations, English translations and an English glossary. more

Gird-i Rostam is a relatively small, but tall multi-period settlement mound in the easternmost part of the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, directly on the border with Iran. Despite the extensive archaeological work carried out in the Sulaymaniyah region during the past two decades, the area of Gird-i Rostam remained largely unexplored. Since 2018 NYU and LMU have been joining forces to conduct excavations at the site under the auspices of the Directorate of Antiquities of Sulaymaniyah. more

The Peshdar Plain is situated in the Kurdish Autonomous Region of Iraq, directly at the Iranian border. Our research sheds light on a hitherto little known frontier region of the Assyrian Empire, specifically the Border March of the Place Herald at the border to the kingdom of Mannea. more

• Preliminary report on the 2015 excavation season at Gird-i Bazar
• Preliminary report on the 2016 excavation season at Gird-i Bazar
• Preliminary report on the 2016 excavation season at Qalat-i Dinka
• Preliminary report on the 2017 excavation season in the Lower Town at Dinka (DLT2)
• Preliminary report on the 2017 excavation season at Gird-i Bazar
• Preliminary report on the 2018 spring excavation season at Qalat-i Dinka
• Preliminary report on the 2018 Dinka Lower Town Campaign (DLT3)
• Preliminary report on the 2019 spring activities at the Dinka Settlement Complex and in the Bora Plain – 19th April – 4th May 2019
• Preliminary report on the 2019 autumn activities at the Dinka Settlement Complex

The long-term excavation project in Tell Sheikh Hamad, begun in 1978 and ended by the outbreak of the Syrian civil war in 2011, is currently being published by Prof. Dr. Janoscha Kreppner (Münster) and Jens Rohde as part of the research portfolio of the Alexander von Humboldt-Professorship in the Ancient History of the Near and Middle East. more

This research project, launched by Stephan J. Seidlmayer and Robert Schiestl under the auspices of the German Archaeological Institute Cairo and in collaboration with the Egyptian Antiquities Authority, investigates the northern part of the western central delta. The low lying northern fringes of the delta have hardly been visited by archaeologists, let alone been scientifically studied. This survey is the first systematic study of this region. more

A key objective of the newly established Chair for the Ancient History of the Near and Middle East is the promotion of easily accessible open-access source databases. Our aim is to make many of the rich primary sources of Assyria, Babylonia, and their contemporaries available online for free in a fully searchable and richly annotated (lemmatized) format. more

This project will produce a complete, modern scholarly edition of the corpus of official inscriptions of the last native kings of Babylon (626-539 BCE) in print and in an annotated, open-access digital format. more

Published by Oxford University Press and envisioned as the successor of the much loved but now sadly out of date Cambridge Ancient History series, the Oxford History of the Ancient Near East strives for a comprehensive, comparative and integrative approach to writing the history of the communities and states of Western Asia and Egypt from prehistory to the conquests of Alexander the Great. The work of a diverse group of international and internationally recognized scholars, the five volumes are edited by Karen Radner (LMU Munich), Nadine Moeller (Yale) and Dan Potts (NYU) and showcase the latest epigraphic and archaeological discoveries in 65 chapters that will be of use to both students and professionals alike. more