Archaeology and the Ancient Near East
Subject: The liturgical history of Uruk: local traditions and textual transmission
Supervisor: Prof. Uri Gabbay
Abstract: My doctoral thesisIn my doctoral thesis I will examine the continuity and change in the liturgy of Uruk in ancient Mesopotamia, in the second and first millennium BCE. Uruk (Warka, Iraq) is the first city known to us, with a long liturgical tradition. My research will be based on Sumerian and Emesal prayers, written in cuneiform on clay tablets. These prayers were regularly performed in Mesopotamian city temples, accompanied by musical instruments, incense and sacrifices, and their purpose was to pacify the gods and goddesses.
Bio: Ami Asyag is currently an MA Honor student in the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel School for Advanced Studies in the Humanities, The Hebrew University. He holds a BA in General History from the Open University of Israel (Summa cum laude). He is currently writing his MA thesis on Sumerian Emesal prayers, investigating an early Old Babylonian corpus from the city of Ĝirsu (modern Telloh) with a focus on local features and traditions related to the region of Lagash and its pantheon, and on the syllabic orthography in which these texts are written.
Publications:
Wasserman N. and Asyag A., “Addenda et Corrigenda to N. Wasserman, The Flood: The Akkadian Sources. A New Edition, Commentary, and a Literary Discussion, Leuven-Paris-Bristol, CT: Peeters, 2020”, NABU 2021 no. 94.
President Stipend 2022/23
MA Honors Program Alumni