Nederlands Instituut voor het Nabije Oosten

WEEK VAN HET OUDE SCHRIFT – Alweer de derde editie van het Week van het oude Schrift staat voor de deur! 12 t/m 19 september 2024 is het zover! 🖊

En er is een prachtig programma:
• Donderdag 12: Toon Sykora – oud-Egyptisch hiërogliefenschrift
• Vrijdag 13: Koen Wylin – Etruskisch
• Maandag 16: Mark de Kreij – Grieks als wetenschapstaal
• Dinsdag 17: Alwin Kloekhorst en Willemijn Waal – Kalašma en Kaška; spijkerschrifttalen uit Anatolië
• Woensdag 18: Olaf Kaper – hiërogliefen uit Berenike
• Donderdag 19: Pieter Houten – Palaeo-hispaanse schriften

Het RMO opent op deze dagen de tempelzaal (gratis, maar aanmelden is verplicht). We hopen u te zien!

https://www.rmo.nl/aanmelden-week-van-het-oude-schrift/

Deze week wordt samen met het Rijksmuseum van Oudheden georganiseerd.

CALL FOR PAPERS – NINO Annual Meeting 30 January 2025, topic: Heritage and politics in the Middle East: historical perspectives. https://mailchi.mp/4cf3eb0bbb33/cfp-nino-annual-meeting-2025

Bekijk de oudste en uit het Midden-Oosten in de Leidse van dichterbij dan ooit in de Universiteitsbibliotheek!
➡️edu.nl/u7mt6

Meld je nu aan voor onze 'In Contact Met Collecties' :
🕞Dinsdag 17 september - 15.30 - 16.30 uur.
📍UBLeiden

85 years of NINO: CALL FOR MEMORIES! – Have you spent time at NINO in Leiden? Share your memories with us! We are collecting them for an English-language newsletter, to appear in December 2024.

Please send texts and photos to [email protected] before 15 November 2024! https://mailchi.mp/dcb23dac99d2/nino-85-call-for-memories

extra NINO-nieuwsbrief – Op 17 augustus 2024 is het precies 85 jaar geleden dat het NINO werd opgericht!

Deze speciale editie van onze nieuwsbrief staat volledig in het teken van herinneringen aan het NINO – dat onlangs voor de tweede keer in zijn bestaan is verhuisd. https://mailchi.mp/6b3ef24fc4a3/nino-nieuwsbrief-augustus-2024

NEW: NVIC/NINO PhD – We are very happy to announce that as of this year, NVIC and NINO offer a joint PhD scholarship. The PhD student will conduct their research at the NVIC in Cairo, with several research stays at NINO in Leiden. The PhD student will also enroll in the LIAS Graduate School.

It is with great pleasure that we introduce the first NVIC/NINO PhD student: Andrés Martín García de la Cruz.
Andrés completed his MA in Archaeology and Heritage at Universidad Autónoma de Madrid in 2021, and his rMA in Egyptology at Leiden University in 2024. His PhD research project is titled “In the Centre of Egyptology: Cairo and the Role and History of the Foreign Archaeological Institutes in Egypt” and is supervised by prof. Olaf Kaper and dr. Marleen De Meyer.
https://www.universiteitleiden.nl/en/nvic/news/meet-our-new-nvic-nino-phd-student-andres-martin-garcia-de-la-cruz
https://www.nino-leiden.nl/message/new-nvic-nino-phd-scholarship

NINO-nieuwsbrief juni 2024: NINO-onderzoekscentrum verhuisd; funding reports, nieuws van Visiting Research Fellows, publicaties & podcasts, en meer – https://mailchi.mp/f3bc0d2af0ff/nino-nieuwsbrief-juni-2024

NINO THESIS PRIZES 2024 – Attention students! Did you recently receive a really good grade (8 or higher) on your BA or MA thesis on the Ancient Near East or Egypt? Send it in to compete for a NINO Thesis Prize: €400 (BA) or €600 (MA), plus eternal glory, of course.

Deadline for submission is 1 October. Don’t miss it!

Regulations and upload form on the NINO website: www.nino-leiden.nl/funding/nino-thesis-prizes

NINO THESIS PRIZES 2024 – Join our competition to win a prize for the best thesis on the Ancient Near East! We annually award two prizes to the best BA and (res)MA thesis on the ancient Near East (incl. Egypt) in the Netherlands. Calls are now open to send in your thesis within the scope of the NINO research areas, graded an 8 or higher at a Dutch university.

Deadline is 1 October 2024. Don’t miss the chance to win this year’s prize for Best Bachelor or Master thesis on the Ancient Near East! Submit your thesis through our website. For more information and the requirements, see our website www.nino-leiden.nl/funding/nino-thesis-prizes

PODCAST – New UBLpodcast “The tragic fate of Egyptologist Herta Mohr” with Nicky van de Beek (NINO Visiting Research Fellow starting 1 July 2024).

Leiden University recently named a new building for Egyptologist Herta Mohr. But who was she? Her life story has become more clear over the past few years, largely thanks to the detective work of Egyptologist Nicky van de Beek. In this episode of the UBL podcast, Van de Beek talks about the wonderful life and tragic fate of Jewish scholar Herta Mohr.

https://www.library.universiteitleiden.nl/news/2024/06/podcast-the-tragic-fate-of-egyptologist-herta-mohr

ONLINE EOL-LEZING – Rients de Boer geeft op 29 mei voor Oriente Lux een online lezing over NINO’s Böhl-collectie, de collectie spijkerschrifttabletten die prof. Frans de Liagre Böhl in de jaren 20 en 30 heeft verzameld. Deze collectie bestaat uit meer dan 3500 objecten en is de grootste verzameling kleitabletten in de Lage Landen. In de lezing gaan we kijken naar ontstaan en geschiedenis van de collectie alsmede enkele teksten in meer detail bespreken.

Woensdag 29 mei 2024, 20:00u. https://www.exorientelux.nl/activiteit/de-collectie-van-de-liagre-bohl/

BÖHL ARCHIVE – Blogpost on Leiden Special Collections Blog: “Travelling to ancient Mesopotamia with professor Böhl”, by NINO research assistants Koen Klein and Wouter Hofland!

Travelling to ancient Mesopotamia with professor Böhl The archive of professor Frans de Liagre Böhl (1882-1976) contains a wealth of knowledge and documentation about early 20th-century Middle Eastern archaeology. The archive, owned by the Netherands Institute for the Near East will soon be available for research via the Leiden Special Collections.

SEA PEOPLES – Jesse Millek (NINO Visiting Research Fellow) was interviewed for New Scientist on his research into the Sea Peoples. “No land could stand before their arms,” according to Ramses III’s account on the coalition of fighters that swept across the eastern Mediterranean 3200 years ago. New genetic and archaeological evidence is giving us the firmest picture yet about what really went on at this dramatic time.

To read the full article, log into your UBL account and go to https://advance.lexis.com/api/permalink/2672b5bf-407d-4fce-bf89-8bd0ff5d0788/

Who were the enigmatic Sea Peoples blamed for the Bronze Age collapse? Around 3000 years ago, several empires and kingdoms in the Mediterranean collapsed, with a group of sea-faring warriors implicated as the culprit. But new evidence shows that many of our ideas about this turbulent time need completely rethinking

VACATURE: TWEE STUDENT-ASSISTENTEN BIJ ONDERZOEKSCENTRUM NINO – Het NINO-onderzoekscentrum is op zoek naar twee student-assistenten: één redactie-assistent voor ons tijdschrift Bibliotheca Orientalis en één bureaumedewerker. Masterstudenten aan Nederlandse universiteiten in studies binnen de interessesfeer van het NINO worden uitgenodigd te solliciteren – uiterlijk 31 mei a.s.!

Lees de hele vacaturetekst op https://www.nino-leiden.nl/message/vacature-twee-student-assistenten-bij-onderzoekscentrum-nino-(15-5-2024)

NEW NINO DIRECTOR STARTING SEPTEMBER 2024 – Miriam Müller has been chosen as new Director of the NINO Research Centre, starting 1 September 2024. The rotating post is currently occupied by Willemijn Waal, who will return to her other duties at Leiden University.

Miriam is university lecturer at Leiden University, specializing in Egyptian Archaeology, Art and Material Culture. After obtaining her MA from the University of Heidelberg and her PhD from the University of Vienna, she has been a postdoctoral fellow at the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at Yale University, the Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology and the Ancient World at Brown University and the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago.

* Research *
As an Egyptian archaeologist she is especially interested in the spatial organization of domestic architecture in the pharaonic period and its social implications. She is currently working on aspects of the formation of identity at the household level, in particular through ancestor cults.

Miriam has also worked on settlements from different time periods, from core and periphery of the Egyptian empire, and participated in excavations in Egypt, Sudan, Israel, Austria and Germany. Through her work at Tell el-Dabʿa Miriam has gained a broad knowledge of the Near East and Mediterranean, especially of Levantine archaeology.

* Publications *
Miriam’s dissertation, a study into material from the Austrian Archaeological Institute’s excavations in Tell el-Dabʿa in the eastern Nile delta, is published as Tell el-Dabʿa XIV.2: Das Stadtviertel F/I in Tell el-Dab'a/Auaris – multikulturelles Leben in einer Stadt des späten Mittleren Reiches und der Zweiten Zwischenzeit. On the basis of the documentation and finds of a residential area she explored the field of household archaeology and its benefits for Egyptian archaeology.

In August 2023, the 13th International Congress of Egyptologists was held at Leiden University – NINO being one of the supporting institutions. As a member of the Organizing Committee, Miriam is now one of the editors of the Proceedings of the Congress which are to be published soon.

* Plans for NINO *
The NINO Research Centre is set to move in the Herta Mohr Building in June 2024. The new environment will certainly pose new challenges as well as opportunities for the new director. Among Miriam’s plans for the near future are a new lecture series, renewing the Visiting Professorship scheme, senior research fellowships, a larger funding scheme for excavations, early career mentoring opportunities, and further NINO community building.

https://www.nino-leiden.nl/message/new-nino-director-starting-september-2024-miriam-muller

TOP 450 UNIVERSITEIT LEIDEN – Het NINO behoort tot het “mooiste en belangrijkste” van de Universiteit Leiden / Leiden University, die volgend jaar haar 450-jarig bestaan viert:

Top 450 Universiteit Leiden Het mooiste van 450 jaar Universiteit Leiden - Top 450 Universiteit Leiden

OPROEP VOOR HERINNERINGEN! NINO-nieuws, extra editie: Het NINO-onderzoekscentrum en de NINO-bibliotheek gaan verhuizen in juni en juli. Stuur je verhalen en anekdotes in!

In april-mei zijn er lezingen, book launches, borrels en meer. https://mailchi.mp/3aec72544893/nino-oproep-voor-herinneringen

DEADLINE COMING UP – Attention students! The call for applications for NINO Student Research Assistantships is open until 15 May.

A senior researcher in Ancient Near Eastern Studies and a BA or MA student (both at a university in the Netherlands) can apply for a joint project, in which the student will be appointed as part-time assistant (max. 9 months, 0.2 fte). The student gains experience and acquires new skills (and a parttime salary), while the researcher receives support for an ongoing project. Get your supervisors on board for this opportunity!

More information, including terms & conditions, on the NINO website: www.nino-leiden.nl/funding/nino-student-research-assistant

NEW ANATOLICA ISSUE – Out now! Anatolica Volume 49 (2023) featuring six articles on the history and archaeology of Anatolia and adjacent regions:

• From Hellenistic neighbourhood to bath-gymnasium and beyond. The archaeology east of the Upper Agora of Sagalassos — Bas Beaujean et al.
• The Yörükselim stele. A Neo-Hittite period stele from the Kahramanmaraş museum — Ali Çifçi, Gülşen Başpınar
• Dealing with the Dead in Roman Seleukeia Sidera. Reconstructing funerary culture from ex situ material — Tamara M. Dijkstra et al.
• Die Gottheit (DEUS)CRUS+MI in der hieroglyphen-luwischen Inschrift ANCOZ 9 — Tatiana Frühwirt, Zsolt Simon
• Storage and food management in northern Syria from the Iron Age I to the Iron Age III (12th-6th centuries BC) — Mariacarmela Montesanto
• Ties that bind. A new interpretation of the Hittite verb šai-/šiye- — Willemijn Waal

View more information on the NINO website: www.nino-leiden.nl/publication/anatolica-xlix

Order at Peeters Publishers: https://poj.peeters-leuven.be/content.php?url=issue&journal_code=ANA&issue=0&vol=49

Great opportunity for Egyptian archaeologists and museologists offered by DAI Kairo - German Archaeological Institute Cairo!

CALL FOR APPLICATIONS: STUDY AND CONTACT TOUR 2024

The German Archaeological Institute Cairo is excited to announce a Study and Contact Tour for 8 to 12 Egyptian archaeologists and museologists!

Eligible candidates are invited to send their applications to [email protected]

APPLICATION DEADLINE on May 7, 2024

Please check for eligibility and read the application instructions carefully.

https://www.dainst.org/newsroom/noslug/358

To download the Application Form visit
https://cumulus.dainst.org/index.php/s/DdPyLmo4zz28PF5

Please note: Incomplete applications will be rejected immediately. Applications submitted after the deadline will not be considered.

Applications via Facebook messages are NOT accepted.

IN MEMORIAM – We are sad to share the news that our colleague and long-time board member Dr A.H. de Groot has passed away.

We remember Sander as an expert on Ottoman Turkish history, and a gentleman with a taste for the finer things in life. His eminently readable “The Ottoman Empire and the Dutch Republic” was first published with NINO in 1978, and a revised edition of this study on the start of 400 years of political and economic relations between Turkey and the Netherlands was published in 2012 (PIHANS 122). In 2007, his friends and students dedicated the volume “Ottoman Izmir. Studies in honour of Alexander H. de Groot” (PIHANS 107) to him. Following many years as member of the “Directorium” (Scientific Board) of NINO and NIT, he went on to serve as a member of our “Curatorium” (General Board) from the merger of the two boards in 2004 until 2019. In that position he steadfastly guarded the best interests of the NIT-Netherlands Institute in Turkey.

Alexander Hendrik de Groot, 3 April 1943 – 1 April 2024

📷 Sander de Groot at his retirement as board member of NINO & NIT, January 2019.

NINO-nieuwsbrief maart 2024 – Nieuws over de verhuizing van bibliotheek, onderzoekscentrum, Böhl-collectie, en meer https://mailchi.mp/b009f4cee8a1/nino-nieuwsbrief-maart-2024

DUSANE – On 11th April, the annual DUSANE symposium is held. Organized collectively by Nabu Na'id (subgroup of L.A.S. Terra study association) and Pleyte, it is a project in the field of archaeology, focused on the lively and historically rich region of the Near East. This year we bring you the theme of Interconnectivity with talks from speakers Prof. Bleda Düring, Stephanie Black (PhD candidate), Maria Hadjigavriel (PhD candidate), The Warsaw Mummy Project, and more professionals to be announced.

The symposium is hosted 11th April 2024, from 10:00 to 18:00, ending with drinks. Join for a day full of interesting knowledge on the Near East!

HERTA MOHR-GEBOUW – De universiteit is begonnen met het inrichten van het nieuwe gebouw waarin de volgende onderdelen worden gehuisvest:
• Middle Eastern Library, incl. NINO-bibliotheek
• LIAS, incl. NINO-onderzoekscentrum
• African Studies Centre Leiden, incl. bibliotheek
• KITLV/Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies
• International Institute for Asian Studies
• LeidenGlobal
• Faculteitsbureau Geesteswetenschappen

Op deze pagina een aantal foto’s van het nu nog lege interieur:

Nieuwe fase voor Middle Eastern Library: sleuteloverdracht Herta Mohr gebouw - Universiteit Leiden Met de sleuteloverdracht van het Herta Mohr gebouw eerder deze week, werd een nieuwe fase in de realisatie van de nieuwe Middle Eastern Library ingeluid. De bouw is officieel afgerond, wat betekent dat het gebouw nu verder kan worden ingericht. In de aankomende maanden worden de kantoren door het he...

In Memoriam Frans Wiggermann (1948-2024)

It is with great sadness that we share the news that Frans Wiggermann has passed away. The below message was related to us by David Kertai (Rijksmuseum van Oudheden, Leiden):

With profound sorrow, we mourn the passing of our friend and colleague, Frans Wiggermann, who passed away Wednesday morning, March 6, at the age of 76. Born in Amsterdam in 1948, Wiggermann studied ancient Near Eastern languages and religions at the Free University of Amsterdam, where he would work as a lecturer from 1973 until his retirement in 2005.

Frans was a leading scholar in the study of Mesopotamian myths, monsters, religion, medicine, and their iconographies. His work was epitomised by its comprehensive nature, the integration of textual and visual sources, and a search for the underlying principles and interconnectedness of the subjects he investigated. His approach comes to the fore in his early monograph “Mesopotamian Protective Spirits: The Ritual Texts” (1992), which has become a classic in the field, and in his later articles, many of which were written for the “Reallexikon der Assyriologie und Vorderasiatischen Archäologie”. From 1993 onwards, Wiggermann was involved as the epigraphist of the archaeological excavations at Tell Sabi Abyad, Syria, leading to a focus on the Middle Assyrian period.

An almost complete bibliography, and a more extensive biography, can be found in the 2013 Festschrift that was dedicated to him: “From the Four Corners of the Earth. Studies in Iconography and Cultures of the Ancient Near East in Honour of F. A. M. Wiggermann” (AOAT 441).

The funeral will take place on Friday 15 March at 12.30 hrs (CET) at De Nieuwe Ooster in Amsterdam. There will be opportunity to say goodbye to Frans on Wednesday 11 March at 19.00 hrs at that same location. Condolences can be sent to his daughter Eva Wiggermann: [email protected]

https://www.nino-leiden.nl/message/in-memoriam-frans-wiggermann-(1948-2024)

In memoriam: Juan José Jaime Aloísio Archidona Ramírez (1992 - 2024) On Monday 26 February the terrible news reached us that our gifted former Egyptology student – and former student assistant at the Leids Papyrologisch Instituut – Juan Archidona Ramírez had succumbed to cancer.

CALL FOR PROPOSALS – Van Moorsel en Rijnierse 2024: Onderzoek naar het Koptisch-Orthodoxe christendom in Egypte en het Nijldal.

Het doel van de Stichting Van Moorsel en Rijnierse is het stimuleren van onderzoek naar het christendom in Egypte en het Nijldal. De stichting zoekt aanvragers voor twee postdoc-projecten op het gebied van (kunst)geschiedenis en archeologie. Twee projecten van elk maximaal €180.000, met een maximale looptijd van twee jaar, kunnen worden gefinancierd. De deadline voor aanvragen is 9 april 2024. Meer informatie kunt u hier vinden: https://www.nwo.nl/calls/van-moorsel-en-rijnierse-2024

De middelen van de stichting zijn afkomstig uit het legaat van J.A. Rijnierse (1917-2013). Zij leverde een belangrijke bijdrage aan het werk van P.P.V. van Moorsel (1931-1999), hoogleraar vroegchristelijke en later Koptische kunstgeschiedenis aan de Universiteit Leiden. Het fonds, beheerd door NWO, wordt aangewend voor de continuering van het werk op Van Moorsels vakgebied.

ARCHON DAY – On 15 March, Archon National Research School of Archaeology organizes the ARCHON Day 2024. There are only a few days left to sign up! Go to the event page on the ARCHON website until the 6th of March, both to attend and to present a poster. Here you will also find further information on venue, time, programme, and credits.

ARCHON DAY 2024 - 15 March 2024 - Archonline ARCHON Day 2024 Date: 15 March 2024 Location: Room HG12A00, VU main building, De Boelelaan 1105, 1081HV, Amsterdam. Credits: 1 or 2 EC Every year Archon organizes the ARCHON Day. During this day, we want to bring students, researchers, and professional archaeologists from the commercial sector toget...

BÖHL COLLECTION – We have moved our collection of cuneiform inscriptions to UBLeiden. The *De Liagre Böhl Collection* consists of ca. 3,000 clay tablets dating to ca. 2,400–100 BC. This is part of a larger moving operation: NINO and its Near Eastern Library will move into the Herta Mohr Building in June 2024. Part of of Leiden University’s Humanities Campus, this newly renovated building is located some 200 meters from NINO’s current location. The Böhl Collection will now be curated by UBL’s Special Collections and remain accessible for academic research and education.

The Böhl Collection is the largest collection of clay tablet in the Netherlands. Its cuneiform texts regularly attract researchers from all over the world. They are also habitually used in Leiden University’s academic courses on the Ancient Near East; Universiteit Leiden / Leiden University students in Assyriology may learn Akkadian directly from the originals.

NINO’s collection of clay tablets and cuneiform inscriptions was collected in the early twentieth century by Frans de Liagre Böhl, Professor of Assyriology at Leiden University and (together with his colleague in Egyptology) Director of NINO. The ca. 3,000 texts are varied in nature: in addition to administrative texts the collection contains letters, school exercises, royal inscriptions, and literary texts – among the latter, a part of the famous Gilgamesh Epos. The oldest tablet in our collection dates to the 24th century BC, the youngest to the first century BC. Due to its great diversity, the collection provides a unique cross-section of the rich history of the Ancient Near East.

*Safeguarding the future of the Böhl Collection*
Moving our Böhl Collection to Leiden University Libraries’ Special Collections is the final step in a larger project initiated in 2018: we have worked hard on cataloguing, digitisation, conservation, and professional storage of the collection.

In the years leading up to the move all clay tablets have been checked, stabilised or restored when necessary, and placed in individual open boxes. This specialised work was carried out by Carmen Gütschow from Berlin. A dedicated clay tablet restorer with experience in many different collections and excavations, she is one of very few professionals worldwide to whom this specialised work could be entrusted. At the UBL Special Collections Reading Room the clay tablets can again be accessed upon request.

The complete Böhl Collection has already been digitised by the Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative and will soon be completely available.

*Collaboration*
Ever since NINO was founded in 1939 there has been a strong collaboration with Leiden University on many fronts. In 2018, the institute has been officially integrated into the Faculty of Humanities.

NINO’s Near Eastern Library, internationally renowned for its near-complete collection of scholarly works on the Ancient Near East, is now curated by Leiden University Libraries. It is being integrated in the Middle Eastern Library which will open in the Herta Mohr Building in June 2024.

The Rijksmuseum van Oudheden is NINO’s partner in the practical care for our Böhl Collection. A few highlights from our Böhl Collection are on permanent display in the museum’s Near Eastern Galleries.

Photos by Patrice Börger.

https://www.nino-leiden.nl/message/bohl-collection-of-cuneiform-inscriptions-moves-into-a-new-home