Vorderasiatische Altertumskunde (Ancient Near Eastern Studies)

Are you interested in the history of the Near East, the cultures of what was once known as the Ancient Orient? Have you always wanted to learn about the beginnings of issues that are matter of course today, such as the environment and nature, agriculture, writing, bureaucracy and urban life, but also the origins of sovereignty and social injustice? Maybe cuneiform script fascinates you, and you would like to be able to read some of the oldest written laws, epics and letters in the original? Perhaps you are keen to learn about the social interaction of architecture, everyday objects and art objects, as well as paintings and many other artifacts from the past? This is the essence of Ancient Near Eastern Studies at the University of Freiburg.

Reconstruct how people lived together several millennia ago

As a major or minor, the Bachelor in Ancient Near Eastern Studies at the University of Freiburg combines Near Eastern archaeology and ancient oriental philology: here, you will not only study archaeology, or the material remains, but also surviving cuneiform script sources. Research and teaching focus on a critical examination of the history or construction of history of past societies, the development of the cultures, the emergence of script and languages in the Ancient Orient. In geographic terms, we look at the region that forms the heart of today’s Turkey in the north to Yemen in the south, from the Lebanon in the west to Pakistan in the east. In time and content terms, as Near Eastern archaeologists our research begins with the Stone Age and investigates the first signs of settled ways of life more than 14,000 years ago. We are interested in the processes of urbanization and the appearance of the earliest written records of people during the organization of the first cities in the 4th millennium before Christ. We examine how and why great empires such as the Akkads, Assyrians, Babylonians, Hittites and Persians rose and fell, right up to the time of Greek and Roman domination in the centuries before and after Christ and what life in those great empires and under the domination of others means to social coexistence.

Interested in the traces of the past?

For a Bachelor degree in Ancient Near Eastern Studies you should be enthusiastic about the geography of the Near East and Middle East. You should be curious and interested in the lives of people, in different ways of life and organization, above all in past and contemporary societies, and want to learn how we reconstruct them using material relics and written documents that we collect in excavations, and how to present this in specialist literature.

If you are keenly curious about the range of sociocultural, political and economic, and religious manifestations as well as the processes of formation and change, then Freiburg’s Near Eastern Archaeology is the place for you.

You will preferably also undertake practical work and create the basis for the reconstruction of past realities, e.g. using the information obtained from excavations on the basis of material and written relics.

You will need good written and spoken German, strong knowledge of English and basic French.

Ancient Near Eastern Studies in Freiburg

Near Eastern archaeology and ancient oriental philology expand both the teaching on offer and the research profile of the Institute of Archaeology (IAW) at the University of Freiburg to include Near Eastern cultural and social history. Both subjects are also represented on the joint degree program Archaeology as well as on the Ancient Civilization Studies degree program. The IAW has a total of six departments which form a strong network and place their work in a cultural history context.

Ancient Near Eastern Studies in Freiburg is a historic cultural and social science, which not only looks at WHAT and WHEN, but also the HOW and WHY as well as the possibilities and conditions for events, results and developments in sociocultural, political, economic, religious and biogeophysical perspectives. Using findings and results, it attempts to understand and explain human actions of the past.

Combined Studies – Interdisciplinary Learning

Freiburg’s Ancient Near Eastern Studies offers you not only the exceptional opportunity to study archaeology and the ancient philology of the Near East in combination, but also to acquire and reason with profound knowledge of the archaeological material and textual cultures of this area, as well as specific deeds, events and developments in their historic dimension. With our exceptional understanding you will also become familiar with the principles of social science studies and thinking, and be introduced to interdisciplinary learning, teaching and research.