During the excavations conducted by the German Oriental Society between 1903 and 1914 in the ruins of Assur, the Assyrian capital and royal residence located on the Tigris, tens of thousands of clay tablets were discovered, broken into small and minute fragments. For many years, the Assur Research Center at the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences and Humanities has been cataloging Academy of Sciences and Humanities finds and, from the shards of the tablets, bringing to life the literature of the Ancient Near East that had been forgotten for millennia.

The research center, founded by Prof. Dr. Stefan M. Maul, was established in 1998 and was initially funded by the Leibniz Prize. In 2003, the state of Baden-Württemberg took over funding until the research project found a new home in the federal and state Academies Program in 2004. This funding will finally expire at the end of 2023. Twenty-one volumes have been produced. The last six are scheduled to go to press in the coming months. Even though this by no means marks the end of the Heidelberg Assur research, the conclusion of funding under the Academies Program is an occasion to pause, celebrate, and thank all our supporters.

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Eckart Frahm (external link) is an ancient Near Eastern scholar and professor at Yale University. He earned his doctorate and habilitation under the project’s initiator and research center director, Stefan Maul, and collaborated on the research project.

More information about the project

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