The subject of the interdisciplinary project, which combines egyptological research with methods from computer philology, consists of the ancient Egyptian scripts called Hieratic and cursive hieroglyphic script, both having been used alongside monumental hieroglyphic script for over 3000 years. The inventory of signs taken from selected texts is systematically and digitally recorded with different…
From 2012 to 2025, the project explores the beginning and end of the Roman era in the central Alpine region. Through excavation projects in Pfaffenhofen (North Tyrol) and San Martino/San Silvestro (Trentino), the project opens up new archaeological source material from two important transitional periods. In Pfaffenhofen-Hörtenberg, the largest Iron Age settlement in North Tyrol is being…
The research project is dedicated to the material appearance of ancient cities, which is investigated as a mirror as well as a formative component of social structures and processes. Furthermore, the commission develops and supports projects on the archaeology of ancient cities and the testing of interdisciplinary methods.
The systematic research into the Ethiopian manuscript culture is the aim of the long-term project “Die Schriftkultur des christlichen Äthiopiens und Eritreas: Eine multimediale Forschungsumgebung” (“Beta maṣāḥǝft: Manuscripts of Ethiopia and Eritrea”). Ethiopia and Eritrea are situated, from the perspective of cultural history, both at the periphery of the so-called Christian Orient and in the…
The aim of the project described below is to develop two fundamental desiderata of Koranic research: an edition of the Koranic text that meets critical standards and a comprehensive commentary on the Koran that consistently interprets it in the context of its historical context of origin. In contrast to the Kairen Koran edition of 1923, which is currently widespread, the project presented here is…
The Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum contains the Latin inscriptions from the entire space of the former Roman Empire in a geographical and systematic order; since its foundation by Theodor Mommsen, it has been the authoritative documentation of the epigraphic heritage of Roman antiquity. Today, the Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum has about 180,000 inscriptions and supplementary volumes with plates…
As part of the Union Académique Internationale’s research project launched in 1921, the Interacademic Commission for the Corpus Vasorum Antiquorum (CVA) publishes the holdings of Greek, Etruscan, and Italian antique clay vessels in German museums. The time frame covers the period from the Minoan-Mycenaean to the Hellenistic period, i. e. from about 1500 BCE to the beginning of Common Era. However,…
The festival texts are the most extensive but also the least investigated group of cuneiform texts from Hittite Anatolia. At the same time, among the ancient Near Eastern cultures, they also offer a uniquely dense documentation of the cult system and its state administration. The aim of the project is an editorial reconstruction of the corpus, accessible in the form of web-based text editions.…
The research project “Die frühbuddhistischen Handschriften aus Gandhāra: religiöse Literatur an der Schnittstelle von Indien, Zentralasien und China” was established in 2012. On the basis of philological and historical methods, it provides new insight into the early history of Buddhism on its way to becoming a world religion. The project studies manuscripts found in the 1990s in northern Pakistan…
The Coptic-Sahidic Bible is one of the most important literary witnesses of Christianity in the eastern Mediterranean. The Coptic Old Testament, which essentially dates back to the 4th century, is one of the earliest and most extensive versions of the Greek Septuagint (LXX). The translation of the Bible into Coptic was source and inspiration for the entire Coptic-Christian literature of Egypt. In…
For some 3,500 years (34th century BC to 1st century AD), cuneiform served to document, preserve and disseminate intellectual content. The capacity for great cultural and political achievement found among the empires of the Near East was closely bound to the development and use of this medium.
Characteristic to the cultures of the ancient Near East is thus not in the least the extraordinary…
The reciprocal word pair “Forschungskontinuität und Kontinuitätsforschung” (continuity of research and research of continuity) in the project-title outlines the significant difficulties and opportunities of the traditional, but not unproblematic history of the archaeological sciences in landscapes, that are very rich in findings and important for the development of northern and eastern Europe.…
The project “Galen als Vollender, Interpret und Vermittler der antiken Medizin” edits, translates, and comments on medical texts by Galen, which - from today’s perspective - are in the field of tension between the natural sciences and the humanities.
Galen von Pergamon, who worked in Rome in the 2nd century CE as medical advisor to Emperor Marcus Aurelius, became with his extensive oeuvre the…
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 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 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 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…
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…