Objective
Cities first developed in the fourth millennium BCE in Mesopotamia and quickly became the centers of civilization. Despite extensive work on urban landscapes from an archaeological perspective, these ancient cities remain poorly understood. Even less studied are royal capitals, the seats of kingship when empires emerged in the first millennium BCE. This project explores capitals from the two main, competing empires—Neo-Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian—to address key questions: what constitutes a royal capital and what distinguishes it from other important cities? How are capitals conceptualized by the kings who inhabit, establish, and renovate them? What are the effects of the kings’ presence in and patronage of the capital cities on the urban fabric and the social and economic structure of the urban population? By juxtaposing the Assyrian capitals in Assur and Nineveh with the Babylonian capital of Babylon as case studies, this research uses a novel comparative approach based on a methodology that combines philology, religious studies, and social and political history to answer these questions. Uniting materials from the highest levels of state such as royal inscriptions, decrees, and letters with administrative, economic, and private archives, and joining these textual records with archaeological evidence through the lens of royal patronage, this project employs an innovative holistic and interdisciplinary framework to reveal how the kings’ ideological and official relationships to their capitals affects the social and bureaucratic structures of these cities. The project capitalizes on the knowledge transfer between the researcher’s Neo-Assyrian specialty and the host institution’s Neo-Babylonian expertise. The project’s results have great potential to revolutionize our understanding of cities and royal power in the ancient world, and to make accessible a wealth of new data for fields as diverse as history, anthropology, sociology, urban studies, and political science.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
- humanities history and archaeology history ancient history
- social sciences sociology anthropology
- social sciences social geography urban studies
- social sciences political sciences
- humanities languages and literature literature studies history of literature
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Programme(s)
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
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H2020-EU.1.3. - EXCELLENT SCIENCE - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions
MAIN PROGRAMME
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H2020-EU.1.3.2. - Nurturing excellence by means of cross-border and cross-sector mobility
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Topic(s)
Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
Funding Scheme
Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
MSCA-IF-EF-ST - Standard EF
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Call for proposal
Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
(opens in new window) H2020-MSCA-IF-2016
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Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.
1010 Wien
Austria
The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.