Project Details
Projekt
DigEanna: a Digital Reconstruction of the Eanna Archive
Applicant
Professor Dr. Johannes Hackl
Subject Area
Egyptology and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
Term
since 2024
Project identifier
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 533947529
Wider research context and theoretical framework: the project offers the first comprehensive study of the Eanna temple archive as an archive, as a body of documentary data. As an investigation in administrative history, the project also contextualizes the archive within the wider framework of Baby-lonian history in the first millennium BCE. Hypotheses / research questions / objectives: on the descriptive level, the project will provide an open-access database of all pertinent published and a significant part of the unpublished material, including digests and keywords, as well as editions of selected texts and a prosopography of key personnel. The texts will be sorted into Files based on their typology and content. On the interpreta-tive level, we test the hypothesis that the archive is actually to be divided into an earlier and a later archive and we study the circumstances that led to the two breaks in the documentation. Typological Files (an etic category) will be sorted into Dossiers that correspond to ancient archival realities, and Dossiers will be assigned to Bureaus – scribes or departments within the temple administration. Ar-chival procedures (and their intentionality) will be reconstructed and the question whether the temple can be considered at any time a single coherent bureaucratic entity will be investigated. Contextualiza-tion will test the hypothesis that rapid economic change and the increasing encroachment of the crown on temple affairs were the principal forces that transformed the temple and its administration during the long sixth century. The impact of these changes on the archive as an instrument of dom-ination will be a special research interest. Approach / methods: the project is built around the NaBuCCo platform (https://nabucco.acdh.oeaw.ac.at/). Eanna tablets will be collected there and made accessible through metadata, digests and prosopographical data. The assembly of Files and the reconstruction of Dossiers and Bureaus will be documented directly on the site as work progresses; at the end of the project, an Eanna handbook will be produced based on this work. Philological work will be sup-plemented by new approaches on diplomatics, palaeography, and Social Network Analysis and will also draw on what archaeological data are available. Level of originality / innovation: nothing like DigEanna has ever been attempted. The project will lead to a qualitative leap in our understanding of one of the most complex bodies of archival data from Ancient Mesopotamia. It will also produce an indispensable tool for all further research in the field.
DFG Programme
Research Grants
International Connection
Austria, France, Netherlands, Poland, USA
Partner Organisation
Narodowe Centrum Nauki (NCN)
