Author(s):
Renger, Johannes (Berlin)
Renger, Johannes (Berlin) [German version] A. Name and definition (CT) Ancient Near Eastern Philology and History (ANEPH) is part of Ancient Near Eastern Studies, which includes the archaeology of the ancient Near East as well as philology and history. The term ‘ancient Near Eastern’, in the context of Western European and American scholarship, refers to the geographical area of the Near East and its pre-Christian or pre-Islamic civilizations in the territory of present-day Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Jordan, Iraq, the Arabian peninsula and Iran. As understood by Eastern European scholars, the term ancient Near Eastern includes all ancient advanced civilizations between the Mediterranean and the China Sea. Originally, and to some degree even today, the discipline has borne the traditional name Assyriology, since it was inscriptions from ancient Assyria that marked the beginning of research on the culture of ancient Mesopotamia. In comparison with that term the designation Ancient Near Eastern Studies proved to be increasingly appropriate the more ancient Near Eastern civilizations became known. The enormous increase in inscriptions and archaeological material over the years led to the development of two sub-disciplines: Ancient Near Eastern Philology and Near Eastern archaeology, which, however, remain linked by a shared goal - which is to reconstruct an ancient advanced civilization on the basis of written and material evidence. In that regard, ANEPH, as a historic…