Introduction

This master’s degree program is designed to provide students with specialist knowledge in two closely linked geographical areas of major historical importance which, seen in the light of ancient history, are characterised as much by their common cultural and historical ground as by their differences to one another: the Mediterranean and the Ancient Near East. The program will examine the languages used in these two areas and, in the widest sense, the varieties of cultural expression they have produced. The research undertaken in the program will therefore draw from practically all those disciplines contained within what may be considered as the scientific study of ancient history.

In the specific area of language studies, the program will range from the study of the Sumerian language and its importance in providing the origins of writing in Mesopotamia, to the examination of the principle Semitic languages (Akkadian, Hebrew, Aramaic) and Indo-European languages (Greek and Latin in particular, but also Indo-European itself and the Indo-Iranian and Anatolian languages), which together offer not only a trove of valuable knowledge but an essential tool for both historicist enquiry and for generative and modern language study. Bypassing intermediary documents in the way of translations and interpretations of greater or lesser reliability and quality, the program will give students access to the original texts of such seminal works as the Akkadian texts the Epic of Gilgamesh and the creation epic Enuma Elish, the complete Bible, Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, Attic tragedy from the fifth century BCE, examples of Latin poetry in the Augustan age, and the rhetoric and philosophical treatises of Cicero and Seneca—so ensuring that these works can be more correctly interpreted in their original cultural, social and historical context.

If we consider that the origins of our culture today are to be found in the ancient Mediterranean and Near East and that an important line of research at different departments in our faculty focuses on the reception, continuity and tradition of these ancient peoples and cultures as the legacy of past centuries, it follows that the program currently being offered may be of considerable relevance to our present context and times. Furthermore, it may be argued, the political conflict experienced today in these regions reinforce even further the relevance of such studies and of the historical examination and analysis of Mediterranean and Near Eastern language and culture as the means to shed light on the questions of the present.