MORPHEUS seeks to understand the earliest concepts and cross-cultural interplay of dreams from Early to Late Antiquity (c. 3000 BCE – 1000 CE) in the Eastern Mediterranean and Middle East. It will initially differentiate between actual, fictional and theoretical dreams in the respective cultures determining what kind of images were recorded in dreams, subsequently which dream images were circulated across cultural boundaries with what outcomes and why. As such, it will finally close the long-standing knowledge gap regarding the possible modes of knowledge transfer on early dream interpretation. The result of MORPHEUS will be an innovative conceptual framework not only applicable to the fields of Assyriology, Egyptology, Classical Studies, Judaic Studies, and early Islamic studies, but will also be of interest to modern dream research.
