For the critical edition of the Greek prose writings by the Byzantine theologian John of Damascus (700- ca. 750) the authentic works and the works attributed to him are edited, including the Barlaam novel, which is traditionally written under his name and was completed in 2008. The work is coordinated by the Patristic Commission of the German Academies of Sciences, whose aim is to produce critical…
The project Hethitische Forschungen has been based in Mainz for more than 20 years. The project has grown out of fifty years of collecting and editing and of participating in the excavations of the German Archaeological Institute in Bogazköy-Hattuša (Turkey).
The task has existed since the beginning of the research project in:
1. the archival collection of cuneiform tablets found during excavations…
The life, work and character of the archaeologist and scholar Johann Joachim Winckelmann (1717-1768), who was born in Stendal and worked in Rome as of 1755, repeatedly offered cause for engagement and critical confrontation for archaeologists, art historians and literary scholars in the past. A scientific edition of the works of Winckelmann hasn’t existed until now. With financial support of the…
The work attributed to John Malalas was compiled in the 6th AD as a universal chronicle – an outline of the history of the world from Adam up to the author’s own time. Little is known about the author himself, of whom we have no trace outside his work. If it is at all possible to infer any biographical details from the chronicle, he must have lived in Antioch (present-day Antakya, Turkey) under…
The task of the project “Inscriptiones Graecae” is the critical edition of all known ancient Greek inscriptions, divided into regions and landscapes. This plan was modified in 1903. Since then, the edition has been limited to the inscriptions of the Greek mainland and the Aegean islands, which are indispensable sources of documentation for the study of ancient Greece. The epigraphic material…
By means of the present project, an important contribution to Greek philology is realised, and a large step towards filling a current lacuna in the understanding of literature from Classical Antiquity (and thereby the history of education) undertaken.
Large swathes of Greek literature, in particular that of the Archaic, Classical, and Hellenistic periods, are not attested in fully preserved…
The research project “Kulte im Kult” aims to analyse a specific type of Greek sanctuaries on two levels. These so called extraurban sanctuaries, that are situated outside the ancient cities, normally consist of a main sanctuary and additional smaller cult areas. On the one hand, it is aimed to reconstruct and analyse the sacral structures of these sanctuaries and their functions in the project. On…
The name of Dionysius the Areopagite refers to the Athenian, who according to Acts 17:34 was converted by St. Paul’s speech on the Areopagus and then followed him. The name was adopted by a prolific unknown author around 500 A.D., with a vast number of writings based on the tremendous influence of his synthesizing of neo-platonic philosophy and Christian theology. The manuscript tradition is a…
The research project “Hebräisches und aramäisches Lexikon zu den Texten vom Toten Meer - Qumran-Lexikon” is one of the most important manuscript finds of the 20th century. Between 1947 and 1956 remains of about 1000 scrolls were discovered in caves near the ruined settlement of Chirbet Qumran on the western shore of the Dead Sea, mainly in Hebrew and Aramaic languages. The manuscripts date from…
The Encyclopaedia for the Antiquity and Christianity (RAC) is a fundamental instrument for researching Late Antiquity. In interdisciplinary investigations, the “examination of Christianity with Antiquity” is investigated, which means the multifaceted examination process of Christian, Jewish, as well as pagan Antiquity and the accompanying transformations into late antique culture up to the 7th…
Papyrology, epigraphy, and numismatics frequently enrich our knowledge about the cultures of the old world by means of newly discovered materials. Therefore, the above mentioned professions may be regarded as disciplines conducting fundamental research and thus they provide the groundwork for further historical as well as literary research. The project is devoted to the editing, translation, and…
The main focus of the research project SAPERE is to preserve Greek and Latin texts of particular importance for the history of religion, philosophy, and culture of the late antiquity (1st–4th cent. CE). These texts were part of the educational canon until the 19th century but then fell prey to a classicistic perspective on literature. Since then, they have almost been forgotten except those which…
Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling (1775-1854) is with Fichte and Hegel one of the most important representatives of German Idealism. The Historical-Critical Edition of Schelling’s Works presents Schelling’s works, his posthumous papers, transcripts and letters in three series (I: published works, II: unpublished works and notes, III: Letters from and to Schelling). The edited texts are being…
The company's mission is to critically edit the Septuagint, the Greek Old Testament, using the entire tradition, i.e. the Greek manuscripts from pre-Christian fragments to the 15th century AD, the daughter translations (in Latin, Syrian, Coptic, Ethiopian and Armenian) and the quotations of the Greek and Latin church fathers. The company operates according to the guidelines established by the…
The older section of the North European Bronze Age Cultures (approx. the 2nd millennium BC) is in large parts only represented by graves and deposits- settlements are insufficiently tapped. This applies especially to the southern zone (Schleswig-Holstein as well as parts of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania and Lower Saxony), in which only a few ground plans of houses have been uncovered yet. Primary…
The Egyptian-Coptic language is the human language with the longest documented lifetime, clocking at 4,500 years prior to its extinction. Its vocabulary reflects the knowledge and worldviews of one of the formative cultures of the ancient world. In order to explore the linguistic and cultural evidence of this historical episteme, the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities (BBAW) and…
The project “Textdatenbank und Wörterbuch des Klassischen Maya (TWKM)” is funded with 5,42 Million Euros and is set to run for 15 years. It is located at the institute for Archaeology and Cultural Anthropology of the University Bonn. The project manager is Professor Dr. Nikolai Grube, who is an internationally renowned expert in the field of Maya research and a member of the North…
Human evolution is a story of expansions. During the last two million years the genus Homo spread from Africa into Asia and Europe in several waves of migration. New species developed and old groups became extinct (range expansions). As early as three million years ago, hominins had established new ways of dealing with their specific environment through culture. Stone tools produced with the help…
The task of the Thesaurus Linguae Latinae (TLL) project is to compile the first comprehensive scholarly dictionary of ancient Latin from its beginnings until 600 CE. The work is based on an archive of approximately 10 million slips, which takes account of all surviving texts and is constantly updated. The older texts are covered word for word, the later ones mostly with a selection of…
The staff of the project “Turfanforschung” edits central Iranian and old Turkic texts from the Turfanian text corpus (Turfansammlung). The texts of the “Turfansammlung” originated from the Central Asian oases along the silk road and date from the 7th to the 14th century CE. In the year 1902, the former Prussian Academy of Sciences received a considerable amount of texts from an expedition to East…