2022Y893YS - Urban Economy Begins: Structural and Quantitative Aspects of Early City State Economies in the Ancient Near East (2900-2350 BCE)

Areas: History of the Ancient Near East, Assyriology, Digital Humanities

Abstract:
The project aims to rethink the core features of the economies of the early city-states through an in-depth analysis of cuneiform texts from Mesopotamia and Syria dating from the Early Dynastic period (ca. 2900-2350 BCE). A large number of new textual sources have been published in recent years, but these valuable materials have not yet been fully exploited for the reconstruction of economic developments within the early city-states. The corpus consists of about 7.500 tablets, most of which are currently difficult for non-specialists of cuneiform sources to access for a variety of reasons (lack of English translations, editions scattered in numerous articles, lack of consistency in the treatment of early period texts, etc.). Using an interdisciplinary approach that combines current methodologies in the fields of History of the Ancient Near East, Assyriology and Digital Humanities, the project will re-evaluate the economic structures of the early urban systems (temples, palaces, private entrepreneurs, trade and market, etc.), with a focus on quantitative aspects. The project is carried out by three units (Ca' Foscari University of Venice, University of Bologna, CNR-ISMed) led by experts in the academic fields relevant to the project. The expected outcome of the projects is thorough and up-to-date monograph on the early urban economies of the Ancient Near East, complemented by the edition of unpublished texts, the publication of special volumes on the primary sources collected and studied for the project (edition of cuneiform texts, catalogs, indexes, English translations), as well as an innovative open-access platform for the study of Early Dynastic cuneiform texts, which is a desideratum in the field of Mesopotamian studies.

Duration of the project: 28/09/2023 – 28/09/2025

Co-Principal Investigator: Palmiro Notizia

Principal investigator: Massimo Maiocchi (Ca' Foscari University of Venice)
Partnership: Ca’ Foscari University of Venice Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche

Budget of the University of Bologna: 47.286 EUR

ERC sectors: SH6_6 Ancient history

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