At IANES you will have the unique opportunity to get to know and explore the ancient Near East in all its complexity. You can choose between three subjects – Egyptology, Assyriology, and Near Eastern Archaeology.
Near Eastern Archaeology begins with the Neolithic Revolution and the onset of sedentism in the so-called Fertile Crescent, while textual sources first appear during the 3rd millennium BC and provide an immense wealth of written material in numerous languages – Sumerian, Akkadian, Egyptian, Hittite, Hurrian, Elamite, Ugaritic, Aramaean, Phoenician-Punic, Old Persian, Coptic, and many more.
The ancient speakers of these different languages were in close contact with one another, rather like their modern-day researchers at IANES. Long-standing and close interconnections of the institute's three subject areas have made the IANES a place especially well suited for studying the peculiarities of these cultural areas as well as the cultural contacts linking them together.