Periodic Reporting for period 2 - GoviB (Governance in Babylon: Negotiating the Rule of Three Empires)
Okres sprawozdawczy: 2023-01-01 do 2024-06-30
Babylon was excavated by a German archaeological mission between 1899 and 1917. They found thousands of clay tablets from private and public archives that have never been published and studied. These documents have the potential to provide new insights into the development of elite families and the civic institutions from the late 8th to the 4th century BC. The first aim of GoviB is to produce a scholarly edition and thorough study of this treasure trove. In the second phase, we will use these new documents to investigate how the city was governed, how the physical shape of the city, its civic institutions and its elite families changed over time. Particular attention will be paid to the regime changes, how they occurred and what they meant for the local elite shortly thereafter, and one or two generations later. Regime changes are pivotal moments in history. How governance is perceived, regulated and implemented often determines the success or failure of states. GoviB aims to contribute a historical case study to this broader question of what makes states stable or unstable, and how regime change fails or succeeds.
We have presented our research on several international conferences and organised a panel workshop on “New Research on the City of Babylon”. We have also created an informative website (https://www.uni-muenster.de/GoviB/) for the general public, containing a description of the project, the methods used, blogs on the city of Babylon, the history of the excavations and the Babylon Guest Book.