Since October 2022 a new project has been established at the Department of Assyriology: Akkadian and Hittite Emotional Concepts 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 of Tel Aviv, Israel. The Team in Mainz is managed by Prof. Dr. Doris Prechel and Dr. Ulrike Steinert and deals with Akkadian, the Team in Tel Aviv is managed by Prof. Dr. Amir Gilan and deals with Hittite.
The research project pursues a comprehensive study of the semantic domain of emotions in both Akkadian and Hittite. The aim is to systematically examine how emotions in the two languages have been linguistically and contextually; the semantic properties, similarities and relationships between different emotional concepts, their use and developments in different text genres, periods and contexts are included as well. With its thematic focus and comparative corpus-linguistic approach, the proposed project will open up new opportunities for collaboration with other philological and historical disciplines, furthermore expand the scope of Ancient Near Easterm Studies and highlight its relevance by making an important contribution to a recent and extremely vibrant field of research.
Management: Prof. Dr. Doris Prechel, Dr. Ulrike Steinert
Academic Assistant: Jonas Klöker B.A.
Funded by the DFG (Since 2022)