Department of History and Philology of the Near East

The key element of the Department’s academic activity is the teaching of the ancient Near Eastern languages: Sumerian, Akkadian, Ugaritic, Phoenician, ancient Hebrew, Aramaic, classical Ethiopic (Ge’ez). At the same time, considerable attention is paid to teaching living Semitic languages: Literary (“Standard”) Arabic and Arabic dialects, Amharic, Tigrinya, Soqotri and Neo-Aramaic languages. The Department’s academic scope thus covers virtually all major languages and scripts of the Near East from the oldest known samples to this day. In this respect, our division has every right to be considered unique not only in Russia, but also worldwide.

The Department offers instruction within the following five areas:

– Assyriology (Curator: L. Kogan)
– Biblical Studies and the History of Ancient Israel (Curator: M. Seleznev)
– Aramaic Studies and the Christian East (Curator: S. Loesov)
– Arabic Philology (Curator: D. Cherkashin)
– Ethiopic-Arabic Philology (Curator: M. Bulakh)

The Department’s fellows work in long-term partnership with leading national bodies in the sphere of Near Eastern Studies: the State Hermitage, the Institute for Oriental Studies (RAS), the Art Museum of the Peoples of the East.

Over the last decade, the Department’s members published hundreds of works covering a wide range of subjects: political and economic history of ancient Mesopotamia, Akkadian and Sumerian literature, Akkadian and Sumerian linguistics, comparative Semitic Studies, Biblical, Aramaic and Ethiopic Studies, languages and folklore of South Arabian peoples. Many of these works were printed in leading international academic journals and issued by major Orientalist publishers, such as Brill, de Gruyter, Oxford University Press.

For more information on the academic problems addressed by the Department, see in the “Academic Activities” section.

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