Robartus Johannes (Bert) van der Spek (born 18 September 1949 in

Zoetermeer Zoetermeer () is a city in the Western Netherlands, in the province of South Holland. The municipality covers an area of of which is water. A small village until the late 1960s, it had 6,392 inhabitants in 1950. By 2013 this had grown to 123,328 ...

) is a

Dutch Dutch commonly refers to: * Something of, from, or related to the Netherlands * Dutch people () * Dutch language () Dutch may also refer to: Places * Dutch, West Virginia, a community in the United States * Pennsylvania Dutch Country People E ...

ancient historian Ancient history is a time period from the beginning of writing and recorded human history to as far as late antiquity. The span of recorded history is roughly 5,000 years, beginning with the Sumerian cuneiform script. Ancient history cove ...

, specializing in the

Seleucid Empire The Seleucid Empire (; grc, Βασιλεία τῶν Σελευκιδῶν, ''Basileía tōn Seleukidōn'') was a Greek state in West Asia that existed during the Hellenistic period from 312 BC to 63 BC. The Seleucid Empire was founded by the ...

. He was a full professor in Ancient Studies at

VU University Amsterdam The Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (abbreviated as ''VU Amsterdam'' or simply ''VU'' when in context) is a public research university in Amsterdam, Netherlands, being founded in 1880. The VU Amsterdam is one of two large, publicly funded research ...

from 1993 to his retirement in 2014, and is currently working on the

Babylonian Chronicles The Babylonian Chronicles are a series of tablets recording major events in Babylonian history. They are thus one of the first steps in the development of ancient historiography. The Babylonian Chronicles were written in Babylonian cuneiform, fr ...

of the

Hellenistic In Classical antiquity, the Hellenistic period covers the time in Mediterranean history after Classical Greece, between the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC and the emergence of the Roman Empire, as signified by the Battle of Actium in ...

Age (a collection of

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 ...

tablets in the

British Museum The British Museum is a public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is among the largest and most comprehensive in existence. It docum ...

). He is also the author of the best-selling first-year book for ancient history: '' An introduction to the Ancient World''. Van der Spek studied History beginning in 1967 at

Leiden University Leiden University (abbreviated as ''LEI''; nl, Universiteit Leiden) is a Public university, public research university in Leiden, Netherlands. The university was founded as a Protestant university in 1575 by William the Silent, William, Prince o ...

Publications

* L. de Blois & R. J. van der Spek, ''An Introduction to the Ancient World'' (1997 Routledge; London, New York) * I. Finkel & R. J. van der Spek, ''Babylonian Chronicles of the Hellenistic World'' (forthcoming)

External links

Babylonian chroniclesCuneiform sources for the history of Hellenistic Babylonia.Edition and Analysis
information about the BCHP Project in the scientific portal NARCIS (KNAW)

(in Dutch)
Personal page
contains overview of all publications {{DEFAULTSORT:Spek, Bert Van Der 1949 births Living people Dutch classical scholars 20th-century Dutch historians Historians of antiquity Leiden University alumni People from Zoetermeer Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam faculty 21st-century Dutch historians