The Melammu Project investigates the continuity, transformation and diffusion of

Mesopotamia Mesopotamia ''Mesopotamíā''; ar, بِلَاد ٱلرَّافِدَيْن or ; syc, ܐܪܡ ܢܗܪ̈ܝܢ, or , ) is a historical region of Western Asia situated within the Tigris–Euphrates river system, in the northern part of the F ...

n and

Ancient Near East The ancient Near East was the home of early civilizations within a region roughly corresponding to the modern Middle East: Mesopotamia (modern Iraq, southeast Turkey, southwest Iran and northeastern Syria), ancient Egypt, ancient Iran ( Elam, ...

ern

culture Culture () is an umbrella term which encompasses the social behavior, institutions, and norms found in human societies, as well as the knowledge, beliefs, arts, laws, customs, capabilities, and habits of the individuals in these groups.Tyl ...

from the third millennium BCE through the ancient world until

Islam Islam (; ar, ۘالِإسلَام, , ) is an Abrahamic religions, Abrahamic Monotheism#Islam, monotheistic religion centred primarily around the Quran, a religious text considered by Muslims to be the direct word of God in Islam, God (or ...

ic times. It does so by organizing

conferences A conference is a meeting of two or more experts to discuss and exchange opinions or new information about a particular topic. Conferences can be used as a form of group decision-making, although discussion, not always decisions, are the main pu ...

and by providing resources relevant to the project on it
website

History, purpose and organization

The Melammu Project was founded during its first conference in

Helsinki Helsinki ( or ; ; sv, Helsingfors, ) is the Capital city, capital, primate city, primate, and List of cities and towns in Finland, most populous city of Finland. Located on the shore of the Gulf of Finland, it is the seat of the region of U ...

Finland Finland ( fi, Suomi ; sv, Finland ), officially the Republic of Finland (; ), is a Nordic country in Northern Europe. It shares land borders with Sweden to the northwest, Norway to the north, and Russia to the east, with the Gulf of B ...

, in 1998, as an offshoot of the

Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project The Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project is an international scholarly project aimed at collecting and publishing ancient Assyrian texts and studies based on them. Its headquarters are in Helsinki in Finland. State Archives of Assyria State Archives ...

. Its purpose is to investigate the continuity, transformation and diffusion of Mesopotamian and Ancient Near Eastern culture from the third millennium BCE through the ancient world until Islamic times. It has two main activities: to organize conferences, and to provide resources relevant to the project on its website. Melammu Symposia are held regularly and serve to promote

interdisciplinary research Interdisciplinarity or interdisciplinary studies involves the combination of multiple academic disciplines into one activity (e.g., a research project). It draws knowledge from several other fields like sociology, anthropology, psychology, ec ...

and cross-cultural studies by providing a forum in which cultural continuity, diffusion and transformation in the ancient world can be assessed systematically on a long-term basis. The emphasis is on continued interchange of ideas between specialists in different disciplines, with the goal of gradually but steadily increasing the number of participants and thus breaking down the walls separating the individual disciplines. Although each symposium focuses on a different theme, since the primary purpose of the symposia is to encourage interdisciplinary cooperation per se, papers and posters not necessarily related to a specific theme but contributing to the overall scope of the project are welcome at every meeting. The online resources provided by the Melammu Project include a

database In computing, a database is an organized collection of data stored and accessed electronically. Small databases can be stored on a file system, while large databases are hosted on computer clusters or cloud storage. The design of databases sp ...

, a

bibliography Bibliography (from and ), as a discipline, is traditionally the academic study of books as physical, cultural objects; in this sense, it is also known as bibliology (from ). English author and bibliographer John Carter describes ''bibliography ...

, a PDF library, and links to websites relevant to the project's focus. The database aims to collect textual, art-historical, archaeological, ethnographic and linguistic evidence concerning the heritage of Mesopotamia and the Ancient Near East and to make it easily accessible on the Internet. As the Melammu Project is envisioned as a 'community project', all resources are open-ended, which means that it is possible to submit information to enlarge and improve the database, bibliographies and lists of links through the website's submission forms. The project is governed by a

board Board or Boards may refer to: Flat surface * Lumber, or other rigid material, milled or sawn flat ** Plank (wood) ** Cutting board ** Sounding board, of a musical instrument * Cardboard (paper product) * Paperboard * Fiberboard ** Hardboard, a ty ...

, which consists of

scholars A scholar is a person who pursues academic and intellectual activities, particularly academics who apply their intellectualism into expertise in an area of study. A scholar can also be an academic, who works as a professor, teacher, or researcher ...

from a wide variety of disciplines related to the project's focus. The main function of the board members is to promote the project and its meetings in the academic community and to safeguard the continuity of the project. For that reason, although the exact board size can vary, the board always consists of equally sized groups of senior and junior scholars (loosely defined). These include the organizers of the next two meetings (if known), as well as scholars involved in the database. The board is always elected for two years at one of the Melammu Symposia; the last election took place in 2013, at Melammu Symposia 7. The board currently consists of eighteen members, and is chaired by Robert Rollinger.Melammu Project website
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Melammu Database

The Melammu Database contains documented links between the civilizations of Ancient Mesopotamia (

Assyria Assyria (Neo-Assyrian cuneiform: , romanized: ''māt Aššur''; syc, ܐܬܘܪ, ʾāthor) was a major ancient Mesopotamian civilization which existed as a city-state at times controlling regional territories in the indigenous lands of the A ...

Babylonia Babylonia (; Akkadian: , ''māt Akkadī'') was an ancient Akkadian-speaking state and cultural area based in the city of Babylon in central-southern Mesopotamia (present-day Iraq and parts of Syria). It emerged as an Amorite-ruled state c. ...

and

Sumer Sumer () is the earliest known civilization in the historical region of southern Mesopotamia (south-central Iraq), emerging during the Chalcolithic and early Bronze Ages between the sixth and fifth millennium BC. It is one of the cradles of c ...

) and contemporary and later civilizations that show the impact and continuity of

religion Religion is usually defined as a social- cultural system of designated behaviors and practices, morals, beliefs, worldviews, texts, sanctified places, prophecies, ethics, or organizations, that generally relates humanity to supernatural, ...

political system In political science, a political system means the type of political organization that can be recognized, observed or otherwise declared by a state. It defines the process for making official government decisions. It usually comprizes the govern ...

art Art is a diverse range of human activity, and resulting product, that involves creative or imaginative talent expressive of technical proficiency, beauty, emotional power, or conceptual ideas. There is no generally agreed definition of wha ...

and

iconography Iconography, as a branch of art history, studies the identification, description and interpretation of the content of images: the subjects depicted, the particular compositions and details used to do so, and other elements that are distinct fro ...

literature Literature is any collection of written work, but it is also used more narrowly for writings specifically considered to be an art form, especially prose fiction, drama, and poetry. In recent centuries, the definition has expanded to include ...

, and other cultural and social phenomena as a result of both direct influence and of cultural diffusion. There are two principal types of entries in the database. The first consists of

citation A citation is a reference to a source. More precisely, a citation is an abbreviated alphanumeric expression embedded in the body of an intellectual work that denotes an entry in the bibliographic references section of the work for the purpose of ...

from ancient texts. These entries are primary sources and consist of the ancient author's comments. Such entries have a "source" line which points to the ancient text and the Text-field contains a translation of the ancient source. There may be bibliographical citations as well if the passage has been discussed or commented on by other scholars. Wherever possible, there will be a hypertext link to the actual text of the ancient source. The second type of entry consists of modern comparisons between features or phenomena in the ancient world that may show the effects of cultural contact or cultural diffusion. Entries of this type generally have a "

" line that points to the scholarly assessment of this connection rather than a "source" line. However, if ancient sources are important for this connection, there may be a "source" line as well, sometimes including longer quotations, as in the first type. The Text-field will contain an outline of the argument connecting the features or phenomena.

Name and logo

The name Melammu and its logo were chosen to illustrate essential aspects of the cross-cultural processes that the Project investigates. The word melammu, which means "divine radiance, splendour, nimbus, aura," is an

Akkadian Akkadian or Accadian may refer to: * Akkadians, inhabitants of the Akkadian Empire * Akkadian language, an extinct Eastern Semitic language * Akkadian literature, literature in this language * Akkadian cuneiform Cuneiform is a logo- syllabi ...

loanword A loanword (also loan word or loan-word) is a word at least partly assimilated from one language (the donor language) into another language. This is in contrast to cognates, which are words in two or more languages that are similar because th ...

from

Sumerian Sumerian or Sumerians may refer to: *Sumer, an ancient civilization **Sumerian language **Sumerian art **Sumerian architecture **Sumerian literature **Cuneiform script, used in Sumerian writing *Sumerian Records, an American record label based in ...

. It thus concretely attests to the transfer and continuity of a centrally important doctrinal concept from an ideological system to a later one. In Mesopotamia alone, this concept has a documented continuity of over 4500 years, from the earliest

cuneiform Cuneiform is a logo-syllabic script that was used to write several languages of the Ancient Middle East. The script was in active use from the early Bronze Age until the beginning of the Common Era. It is named for the characteristic wedge-sha ...

religious and historical documents (ca. 2600 BC) until the present day. The iconography of the concept has gone a long way from the radiance surrounding Mesopotamian gods to the halos surrounding the heads of

Byzantine The Byzantine Empire, also referred to as the Eastern Roman Empire or Byzantium, was the continuation of the Roman Empire primarily in its eastern provinces during Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, when its capital city was Constantinopl ...

angel In various theistic religious traditions an angel is a supernatural spiritual being who serves God. Abrahamic religions often depict angels as benevolent celestial intermediaries between God (or Heaven) and humanity. Other roles include ...

s and

saint In religious belief, a saint is a person who is recognized as having an exceptional degree of Q-D-Š, holiness, likeness, or closeness to God. However, the use of the term ''saint'' depends on the context and Christian denomination, denominat ...

s and the loops hovering over the heads of

Christian Christians () are people who follow or adhere to Christianity, a monotheistic Abrahamic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus Christ. The words ''Christ'' and ''Christian'' derive from the Koine Greek title ''Christós'' (Χρι ...

angels, but the concept itself has survived amazingly well and spread far beyond its original home. The spread of the concept of "divine radiance" can be traced by observing the diffusion and transformations of the relevant iconographic motif. The logo of Melammu is taken from an

Achaemenid The Achaemenid Empire or Achaemenian Empire (; peo, wikt:𐎧𐏁𐏂𐎶, 𐎧𐏁𐏂, , ), also called the First Persian Empire, was an History of Iran#Classical antiquity, ancient Iranian empire founded by Cyrus the Great in 550 BC. Bas ...

seal discovered on the northeast coast of the

Black Sea The Black Sea is a marginal mediterranean sea of the Atlantic Ocean lying between Europe and Asia, east of the Balkans, south of the East European Plain, west of the Caucasus, and north of Anatolia. It is bounded by Bulgaria, Georgia, Roma ...

and represents the goddess Anahita, mounted on a

lion The lion (''Panthera leo'') is a large Felidae, cat of the genus ''Panthera'' native to Africa and India. It has a muscular, broad-chested body; short, rounded head; round ears; and a hairy tuft at the end of its tail. It is sexually dimorphi ...

and surrounded by the divine radiance, appearing to a

Persian Persian may refer to: * People and things from Iran, historically called ''Persia'' in the English language ** Persians, the majority ethnic group in Iran, not to be conflated with the Iranic peoples ** Persian language, an Iranian language of the ...

king King is the title given to a male monarch in a variety of contexts. The female equivalent is queen, which title is also given to the consort of a king. *In the context of prehistory, antiquity and contemporary indigenous peoples, the tit ...

. The details of the king's and the goddess's dress and crown are Persian, but in all other respects the seal is a faithful reproduction of centuries older Assyrian seals depicting appearances of the goddess Ishtar to members of the

imperial Imperial is that which relates to an empire, emperor, or imperialism. Imperial or The Imperial may also refer to: Places United States * Imperial, California * Imperial, Missouri * Imperial, Nebraska * Imperial, Pennsylvania * Imperial, Texa ...

ruling class In sociology, the ruling class of a society is the social class who set and decide the political and economic agenda of society. In Marxist philosophy, the ruling class are the capitalist social class who own the means of production and by exten ...

. It thus illustrates not only the adoption of the Mesopotamian concept of "divine radiance" by the Persians, but also the assimilation of an important Iranian deity to a Mesopotamian one with the concomitant adoption of a whole system of religious beliefs, cultic practices, ideological doctrines, and artistic conventions. The fact that the seal was found outside the area controlled by the Assyrian Empire and possibly carved by a Greek

artist An artist is a person engaged in an activity related to creating art, practicing the arts, or demonstrating an art. The common usage in both everyday speech and academic discourse refers to a practitioner in the visual arts only. However, th ...

, illustrates the dynamic diffusion of these ideas (through imperial propaganda) across geographical and cultural boundaries. The radiance emitted by the goddess symbolizes to the Project the powerful impact of Mesopotamian culture on the surrounding world and later cultures, while the king symbolizes the crucial role of imperial courts in the preservation, transformation and diffusion of this cultural heritage.

Simo Parpola Simo Kaarlo Antero Parpola (born 4 July 1943) is a Finnish Assyriologist specializing in the Neo-Assyrian Empire and Professor emeritus of Assyriology at the University of Helsinki (retired fall 2009). Career Simo Parpola studied Assyriology, C ...

, , in Sanna Aro and R. M. Whiting (edd.). ' Melammu Symposia 1. Helsinki: The Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project 2000, xxi. ()

Melammu Symposia

So far, the following symposia have taken place:
Melammu Symposia 1
''The Heirs of Assyria''.

Tvärminne Hanko (; sv, Hangö) is a port town and municipality on the south coast of Finland, west of Helsinki. Its current population is (). The town is bilingual, with a majority being Finnish speakers and a strong minority being Swedish speakers (). ...

, October 8–11, 1998.
Melammu Symposia 2
''Mythology and Mythologies''.

Paris Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. S ...

France France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of Overseas France, overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic Ocean, Atlantic, Pacific Ocean, Pac ...

, October 4–7, 1999.
Melammu Symposia 3
''Ideologies as Cultural Phenomena''.

Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name ...

USA The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country Continental United States, primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., ...

, October 27–31, 2000.
Melammu Symposia 4
''Schools of Oriental Studies and the Development of Modern Historiography''.

Ravenna Ravenna ( , , also ; rgn, Ravèna) is the capital city of the Province of Ravenna, in the Emilia-Romagna region of Northern Italy. It was the capital city of the Western Roman Empire from 408 until its collapse in 476. It then served as the cap ...

Italy Italy ( it, Italia ), officially the Italian Republic, ) or the Republic of Italy, is a country in Southern Europe. It is located in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, and its territory largely coincides with the homonymous geographical re ...

, October 13–17, 2001.
Melammu Symposia 5
''Commerce and Monetary Systems in the Ancient World''.

Innsbruck Innsbruck (; bar, Innschbruck, label=Bavarian language, Austro-Bavarian ) is the capital of Tyrol (state), Tyrol and the List of cities and towns in Austria, fifth-largest city in Austria. On the Inn (river), River Inn, at its junction with the ...

Austria Austria, , bar, Östareich officially the Republic of Austria, is a country in the southern part of Central Europe, lying in the Eastern Alps. It is a federation of nine states, one of which is the capital, Vienna, the most populous ...

, October 3–8, 2002.
Melammu Symposia 6
''Globalisation in the First Millennium''.

Sofia Sofia ( ; bg, София, Sofiya, ) is the capital and largest city of Bulgaria. It is situated in the Sofia Valley at the foot of the Vitosha mountain in the western parts of the country. The city is built west of the Iskar river, and ha ...

Bulgaria Bulgaria (; bg, България, Bǎlgariya), officially the Republic of Bulgaria,, ) is a country in Southeast Europe. It is situated on the eastern flank of the Balkans, and is bordered by Romania to the north, Serbia and North Macedon ...

, September 1–3, 2008.
Melammu Symposia 7
''Mesopotamia in the Ancient World: Impact, Continuities, Parallels''. Obergurgl,

, November 4–8, 2013.
Melammu Symposia 8
''The Iranian World''.

Kiel Kiel () is the capital and most populous city in the northern Germany, German state of Schleswig-Holstein, with a population of 246,243 (2021). Kiel lies approximately north of Hamburg. Due to its geographic location in the southeast of the J ...

Germany Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwe ...

, November 11–15, 2014.
Melammu Symposia 9
''Conceptualizing Past, Present and Future''.

and

Tartu Tartu is the second largest city in Estonia after the Northern European country's political and financial capital, Tallinn. Tartu has a population of 91,407 (as of 2021). It is southeast of Tallinn and 245 kilometres (152 miles) northeast of ...

Estonia Estonia, formally the Republic of Estonia, is a country by the Baltic Sea in Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by the Gulf of Finland across from Finland, to the west by the sea across from Sweden, to the south by Latvia, a ...

, May 18–22, 2015.
Melammu Symposia 10
''Societies at War''.

Kassel Kassel (; in Germany, spelled Cassel until 1926) is a city on the Fulda River in northern Hesse, Germany. It is the administrative seat of the Regierungsbezirk Kassel and the district of the same name and had 201,048 inhabitants in December 2020 ...

, September 26–28, 2016.
Melammu Symposia 11
''Evidence Combined: Western and Eastern Sources in Dialogue''. Held in

Beirut Beirut, french: Beyrouth is the capital and largest city of Lebanon. , Greater Beirut has a population of 2.5 million, which makes it the third-largest city in the Levant region. The city is situated on a peninsula at the midpoint o ...

Lebanon Lebanon ( , ar, لُبْنَان, translit=lubnān, ), officially the Republic of Lebanon () or the Lebanese Republic, is a country in Western Asia. It is located between Syria to the north and east and Israel to the south, while Cyprus li ...

, 2017.

Proceedings of the Melammu Symposia

*Sanna Aro and R. M. Whiting (edd.). ' Melammu Symposia 1. Helsinki: The Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project 2000. () *R.M. Whiting (ed.). ' Melammu Symposia 2. Helsinki: The Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project 2001. () *A. Panaino and G. Pettinato (edd.). ' Melammu Symposia 3. Milan: Universita di Bologna & IsIAO 2002. () *A. Panaino and A. Piras (edd.). ' Melammu Symposia 4. Milan: Università di Bologna & IsIao 2004. () * Robert Rollinger, Christoph Ulf and Kordula Schnegg (edd.). ' Melammu Symposia 5. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag 2004. ()

The International Association for Intercultural Studies of the Melammu Project (2001-2013)

At the Third Annual Symposium of the Assyrian and Babylonian Intellectual Heritage Project (Chicago, USA, October 27–31, 2000), the general assembly deliberated the foundation of an "International Association for Intercultural Studies of the Melammu Project", to be officially established through legal channels. However, during the general discussion at the end of the Melammu Symposia 7 (2013), it was decided by majority vote to absolve the association. The argument for doing so was that the association had never developed or functioned beyond its initial creation., in *A. Panaino and G. Pettinato (edd.). ' Melammu Symposia 3. Milan: Universita di Bologna & IsIAO 2002, 257-264. ()

References

External links

The website of the Melammu Project
{{DEFAULTSORT:Melammu Project Ancient Near East organizations Research projects Ancient Mesopotamia Projects established in 1998