Research Center of Ancient Near Eastern and Mediterranean Cultures

CAEMC winter school for postgraduate students dealing with topics connected with the ancient world (mostly in Estonian), 21-22 February 2025 in Tartu: https://caemc.ut.ee/talvekool-2025/

Melammu Workshop 2024: Big and Small, High and Low, Proud and Humble: Constructing Significance in Ancient Near Eastern and Mediterranean Cultures, 13–15 September 2024, Tartu

Conference programme is now available on the website: https://caemc.ut.ee/melammu-workshop-tartu-2024/
The conference takes place onsite in Tartu, but is streamed on Zoom at https://ut-ee.zoom.us/j/96166601893?pwd=RUF983REPcQC5Fbo2SJvhnbqE3090a.1

Melammu Workshop 2024: Big and Small, High and Low, Proud and Humble: Constructing Significance in Ancient Near Eastern and Mediterranean Cultures – RESEARCH CENTER OF ANCIENT NEAR EASTERN AND MEDITERRANEAN CULTURES (CAEMC) The conference takes place onsite in Tartu, Estonia, but sessions will also be streamed via Zoom, to give access to a wider audience (link will be available here). Due to unforeseen circumstances, a couple of papers are prerecorded.

CALL FOR PAPERS

Melammu Workshop 2024: Big and Small, High and Low, Proud and Humble: Constructing Significance in Ancient Near Eastern and Mediterranean Cultures
12–15 September 2024, Tartu, Estonia

We expect abstracts (up to 250 words) to be sent to [email protected] until March 31, 2024.

Confirmed keynote speakers:

Prof. Reinhard Müller (Göttingen, Germany)
Prof. em. Gebhard J. Selz (Wien, Austria)
Prof. Christoph Ulf (Innsbruck, Austria)



The conference is dedicated to discussing social and cultural prestige in the ancient world. Reputation can be of local significance, global importance or both. Global trends and fashions in the modern world have their precursors in ancient times when communication took more time because the information circulated mainly by word of mouth. Accordingly, social or cultural prestige usually took much more time to develop. Much of the communication between peoples and civilisations – both on the local and global levels – was concerned with the reputations of people, ideas, things, technologies etc. Significance implies a relationship: something is essential for somebody, a group or a culture. Cultural meaning is usually a hierarchical construct, indicating that a person or phenomenon is deemed more important, better and more influential than others. These hierarchies can be created, maintained and manifested in various ways, highlighting the social, economic and political relations and cultural codes of the given societies. The conference calls for papers that study the strategies for acquiring reputation and will discuss the general questions of (inter)cultural prestige in the Ancient Near Eastern and Mediterranean world.

An individual’s reputation can be related to age and gender or personal qualities like appearance, wisdom, skills or physical strength. On the social level, significance usually involves wealth, pedigree and power, and consequently, the strategies of wealth acquisition, claims of illustrious ancestry and power building. Power building plays a prominent role in the relations between political communities, making some polities, or rulers, more powerful and respectable, thus more significant, compared to others. Often, though not always, reputation directly relates to power, even if reflecting the social or political hierarchies or contributing to their establishment. Good examples are spiritual authority and artistic fame. In the religious domain, the divinities, rites, festivals, and cult places can have variable reputations for different population groups, which can make the estimation of their significance a matter of dispute. In a similar way, it might be challenging to establish the degrees of significance in art and literature, although certain artefacts and literary works, genres and authors surely outweighed others in public esteem. Literature, either oral or written, has been, however, the principal means to convey and articulate reputation to all kinds of things and people and serves for us as a crucial source for discussing the subject.

We plan the workshop to discuss the ways of establishing, maintaining, manifesting and losing significance in all these and possibly other fields. We expect papers considering the related questions in the cultures evolving from Iran, Mesopotamia and Egypt to the western Mediterranean, from the emergence of civilisations to the fall of the Roman Empire. The questions to be asked could be the following: What made some persons, social groups, communities, religious phenomena, artworks, genres or authors more significant than others in various societies and cultures? How did the strategies of attaining significance relate to the character of the given society or culture? To what extent were the variable ways of attaining significance conditioned by the societal and cultural variabilities, or how did cultural diversity contribute to the different manifestations of significance in the Ancient Near Eastern and Mediterranean world?

We expect abstracts (up to 250 words) to be sent to [email protected] until March 31, 2024.

***

The conference is planned to take place onsite in Tartu, Estonia, but sessions will also be streamed via Zoom, to give access to a wider audience.

Home page:

caemc.ut.ee

ICAEM 2023: ANGRY GODS: divine wrath and the human sphere in Ancient Near Eastern and Mediterranean cultures. 2–4 June 2023, Lossi 3, Tartu.

Conference website: http://caemc.ut.ee/icaem-2023

Zoom link: https://ut-ee.zoom.us/j/97810340147?pwd=dWZSeGtlTWt5cTIrY3BJMG5ON0h3UT09

This week: ICAEM 2023: ANGRY GODS: divine wrath and the human sphere in Ancient Near Eastern and Mediterranean cultures, programme available at http://caemc.ut.ee/icaem-2023

Zoom link: https://ut-ee.zoom.us/j/97810340147?pwd=dWZSeGtlTWt5cTIrY3BJMG5ON0h3UT09

CfP for ICAEM 2023: ANGRY GODS: divine wrath and the human sphere in Ancient Near Eastern and Mediterranean cultures, 2–4 June 2023, Tartu, Estonia

Deadline for submissions: 1 March 2023.

KEYNOTE SPEAKERS
Hugh Bowden (King's College London, UK): Who are the gods angry with? Coping with divine wrath in fifth-century Athens
Sebastian Fink (University of Innsbruck, Austria): A woman's wrath versus the worldorder: The case of Inanna

More information: http://caemc.ut.ee/icaem-2023

Now available online: Richard Hunter, "What first? What last? Lists and the sense of order in Greek culture" (keynote at the conference "ICAEM 2022: Making Lists in the Ancient World: Memory, Status, Identity"). Note that link to the handout is in the video description!
https://youtu.be/AC4DzJWdzWI

Richard Hunter, What first? What last? Lists and the sense of order in Greek culture Keynote paper at the conference ICAEM 2022: Making Lists in the Ancient World: Memory, Status, Identity, 4 June 2022Link to the handout: http://caemc.ut.ee/f...

Now available online: Mark Geller, "Listing data: the stubborn persistence of a typically Babylonian epistemology" (keynote at the conference "ICAEM 2022: Making Lists in the Ancient World: Memory, Status, Identity").
https://youtu.be/T-nPszfRAzw

Mark Geller, Listing data: the stubborn persistence of a typically Babylonian epistemology Keynote paper at the conference ICAEM 2022: Making Lists in the Ancient World: Memory, Status, Identity, 3 June 2022

Preliminary programme of ICAEM 2022 conference "Making Lists in the Ancient World: Memory, Status, Identity" is now available on our web page: http://caemc.ut.ee/icaem-2022
There you can also find a link to register for the Zoom meeting.

KEYNOTE SPEAKERS

Mark Geller
Listing data: the stubborn persistence of a typically Babylonian epistemology
Richard Hunter
What first? What last? Lists and the sense of order in Greek culture
Guy Darshan
From Lists to History: The Growth of the Biblical Table of Nations (Genesis 10) in Its Eastern Mediterranean Context

PRELIMINARY PROGRAMME

Friday, 3 June 2022

9.00–9.30 Opening

9.30–10.00 Vladimir Sazonov (University of Tartu), Historical kings in the Sumerian King List (SKL) and Tummal inscription: One or two different traditions?

10.00–10.30 Pavel Cech (University of Prague), Wider context of data processing in the western cuneiform periphery.

10.30–11.00 Vladimir Shelestin, Did the Hittite geographical lists exist?

11.00–11.30 Andrew Schumann (University of Information Technology and Management in Rzeszow, Poland, Poland), Legal Codes of the Ur III Dynasty and of the Qin Dynasty. The Comparative Analysis of their Societal Roles.

11.30–11.50 Coffee pause

11.50–12.40 Keynote: Mark Geller (UCL, London), Listing data: the stubborn persistence of a typically Babylonian epistemology.

12.40–14.30 Lunch break

14.30–15.00 Ronald Blankenborg (Radboud University, Nijmegen), Aesthetics of List(en)ing: Catalogues as Bits-and-Pieces Poetry.

15.00–15.30 Velizar Sadovski (Austrian Academy of Sciences), Taxonomies in lists and catalogues in Indo-European sacred text traditions from the Indo-Iranian up to the Aegeo-Anatolian language domains.

15.30–15.50 Coffee pause

15.50–16.40 Keynote: Guy Darshan (Tel Aviv University), From Lists to History: The Growth of the Biblical Table of Nations (Genesis 10) in Its Eastern Mediterranean Context.

16.40–17.10 Shira J. Golani (Gordon Academic College of Education, Haifa), At One Fell Swoop? Observations on the Lists of the Opposing Groups of Angels in the Book of Watchers.

17.10–17.40 Urmas Nõmmik (University of Tartu), The List of Divine Creation in Yahweh's Speech Job 38–39.

19.00 Reception

Saturday, 4 June 2022

9.30–10.20 Keynote: Richard Hunter (University of Cambridge), What first? What last? Lists and the sense of order in Greek culture.

10.20–10.50 Janika Päll (Univesity of Tartu), The lists of epithets in Orphic Hymns.

10.50–11.10 Coffee pause

11.10–11.40 Guillemette Mérot (University Sorbonne Nouvelle, Paris), Reception and Adaptation of Greek Literary Canons in Quintilian’s Reading List.

11.40–12.10 Juliane Zachhuber (University of Oxford), Cataloguing religious prestige: the Rhodian epigraphic habit of inscribing priest lists.

12.10–12.40 Mait Kõiv (University of Tartu), Lists of kings and contest winners, and the dates calculated for the Spartan early history.

12.40–14.30 Lunch break

14.30–16.00 Poster session (online):

Nadia Linder (Vienna), Of Leopards, Lions, and Lexical Lists: At the Intersection between Writing and Ritual.

Mieszek Jagiełło (Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań), Mythical Ogyges, the Greek Flood and the Sumerian King List: Comparison and Interpretation.

Jordan Miller (University of Oxford), Compiling Egyptian underworlds: modelling sources and ritual practice for the Amduat catalogue of king Thutmose III.

Priit-Hendrik Kaldma (University of Tallinn), The list of Athenian archons and the leading families of the Archaic Athens.

Zhang Duoduo (Northeast Normal University, Changchun), Between Hieron and Hosion: The Polis Life in the Parthenon Inventories of 5th Century BC.

Matthew Hewitt (University of Oxford), The Ideology of the Inscribed Manumission Lists from Epirote Bouthrotos.

16.00–16.20 Coffee pause

16.20–16.50 Netanel Anor (Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena), God Enumerations in Para-List Sources.

16.50–17.20 Adam Howe (University of Cambridge), A Litany of Offences: Lists and the Ideology of Divine Punishment in Mesopotamia.

17.20–17.50 Joanna Töyräänvuori (University of Helsinki), The Monster-Lists of the Ugaritic Texts as Symbolic Geography.

Sunday, 5 June 2022

9.30–10.00 Ana-Isabel Blasco-Torres (University of Salamanca), Greek lists in Graeco-Roman Egypt: types and purposes.

10.00–10.30 Elena Chepel (University of Vienna), Cataloguing festivals in Roman Egypt: the list of gifts P. Ross.Georg. II 41+P. Zereteli inv. 326.

10.30–10.50 Coffee pause

10.50–11.20 Juan Manuel Bermúdez Lorenzo (Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, Madrid), Lists and people in the tituli picti of inscriptions on Baetic oil amphorae found on Monte Testaccio in Rome.

11.20–11.50 Iulia Dumitrache, Roxana-Gabriela Curcă (University of Iași, Romania) Professionals listed in epigraphical records from Moesia Inferior.

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Picture: Athenian tribute lists, 5th century BC. IG I³ 273-280. CC BY-SA 3.0 / Επιγραφικόν μουσείον, Ateena / Μαρσύας

CfP: On 3-5 June 2022, the Research Centre of Ancient Near Eastern and Mediterranean Cultures (CAEMC), with its seat at the University of Tartu, Estonia, organizes another conference in the series of its International Conferences of Ancient East Mediterranean Studies (ICAEM 2022), this time on the topic "Making Lists in the Ancient World: Memory, Status, Identity".

We are planning for an on-site event (in Tartu, Estonia) as regards the presenters, but are prepared to move to a hybrid format in the event of a significant surge in local COVID infection rates vel sim. If a presenter selected for the conference programme is later unable to come to Tartu, we will arrange for an online presentation using Zoom. In any event we are planning to stream all sessions via Zoom, to give access to a wider audience. We believe that in the current conference environment this option has become unavoidable. Presenters have the option to save their talks for later viewing on the YouTube channel of CAEMC (see link at the end of the mail).

To submit a paper to the conference, please send a title together with a proposal abstract (around 150–200 words). We will not consider submissions without abstracts. Submissions are welcome from both experienced academics as well as postgraduates and doctoral students. Please send your submission to [email protected]. Closing date for submissions is 15 April 2022 and programme decisions will be made by 25 April 2022. There is no conference fee.

Keynote speakers include Mark Geller, Richard Hunter, and Guy Darshan. More information and updates are available at the conference home page: http://caemc.ut.ee/icaem-2022

Conference description

Gathering, systematizing and presenting information usually involves its sequential ordering. Temporal sequences can easily be presented in the form of a narrative, which, however, proves inadequate for many other types of information, especially when a large amount of similar data is to be systematized and presented. Making either lists or catalogues has therefore been a conventional tool for information processing since the emergence of early civilisations and has remained an important part of human culture ever since. In various ancient cultures we see numerous lists, for example, of gods, kings, heroes, soldiers, slaves, artisans, authors, animals, plants, books, inventory, taxes, chronology, towns, countries etc.

The form of a catalogue with its appearance of completeness and exhaustivity is connected to various socio-political, economic and cultural issues. In addition to acting as inventories, catalogues and lists can express ideological, moral or aesthetic values, function as methods of control, etc. This conference welcomes papers that address these issues either at a general level or through specific case studies. Possible questions to be asked include but are not limited to the following:

* What was the purpose of making lists and compiling catalogues?
* Which kind of information and on which principles was included or excluded? (Consider, e.g., various social norms, possibilities of alteration or falsification and change, as in the case of a canon or a list of recommended authors.)
* How and by whom were the lists used?
* What was the impact of data gathering and sequential ordering on subsequent procession of information?
* Which forms of catalogic texts have been in use?
* Have the specifics of the information favoured particular documentary or literary forms and have the particular forms shaped the content?

Since 2021 we also have a YouTube channel, which currently offers recordings of three of last year's conference papers: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5_izxhC9lWUAi7KtSp1Xtw

Recording of the keynote paper by Christoph Levin | ICAEM2021, 18 July 2021

Christoph Levin, In Search of a Hebrew National Epic Keynote paper at the 19th International Conference for Ancient East-Mediterranean Studies in Tartu (ICAEM 2021): Epic, Society and Religion in the Ancient Ne...

Recording of the keynote paper by Margalit Finkelberg | ICAEM2021, 17 July 2021

Margalit Finkelberg, Beyond Literature and History: Homer and Vergil as Foundational Texts Keynote paper at the 19th International Conference for Ancient East-Mediterranean Studies in Tartu (ICAEM 2021): Epic, Society and Religion in the Ancient Ne...

19th International Conference for Ancient East-Mediterranean Studies in Tartu (ICAEM 2021): Epic, Society and Religion in the Ancient Near Eastern and Mediterranean cultures
takes place on 16–18 July 2021.

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, this conference, which was initially planned for 2020, takes place as a hybrid event, both onsite in Tartu (Senate Hall, main building of the University of Tartu, Ülikooli 18) and online via Zoom. Participation is free, but registration is required.

Programme and registration: http://caemc.ut.ee/icaem-2021

Keynote speakers are:
Dr. Natalie May (Leiden University): The Poem of Erra, the Epic of Healers
Prof. Margalit Finkelberg (Tel Aviv University): Beyond Literature and History: Homer and Vergil as Foundational Texts
Prof. Christoph Levin (University of München): In Search of a Hebrew National Epic

caemc.ut.ee

Last minute reminder!

You have until 31 January 2020 to submit a paper proposal for the 2020 conference on "Epic, Society and Religion in the Ancient Near Eastern and Mediterranean cultures" (5–7 June 2020, Tartu, Estonia).

Please send the proposed title together with a short abstract (100–200 words) to the e-mail address [email protected]. Acceptance of papers will be announced by 15 February 2020.

There is no conference fee but those wishing to take part without a paper should register by e-mail due to space limits; registration is open until 15 May 2020. If you need information on hotels and other practicalities, please contact the organisers at [email protected].

Confirmed keynote speakers:
Prof. Margalit Finkelberg, Tel Aviv University
Prof. Andrew R. George, University of London
Prof. Christoph Levin, University of München

See conference web page for more information:

http://caemc.ut.ee/icaem-2020

caemc.ut.ee

Final discussion

Raz Kletter's talk ends the first day of Melammu 9 workshop in Tartu.

ICAEM 2018: Power and (Op)position in the Ancient Near Eastern and Mediterranean World -- http://caemc.ut.ee/icaem2018

Preliminary programme of ICAEM 2018 now available on the web page!

http://caemc.ut.ee/icaem2018

caemc.ut.ee