Conceptualizing Past, Present and Future

This book contains the proceedings of the 9th Melammu Symposium which took place in Helsinki and Tartu from May 18-24, 2015. The meeting was part of Robert Rollinger's "Finland Distinguished Professorship", a position he held from 2010-2015 at the Department of World Cultures, University of Helsinki where he was Research Director of the project "Intellectual Heritage of the Ancient Near East". One of the major tasks of this position was to revitalize the Melammu Project, thus encouraging international, transdisciplinary research in studies of the Ancient World. The 9th Melammu Symposium was a kind of final event of the "Intellectual Heritage of the Ancient Near East" project which was conceptualized, planned, and organized by the two editors of this volume together with an international committee of renowned scholars who were in charge of the different thematic sessions of the meeting. The dense program of the conference consisted of 42 papers and 15 poster-presentations, which, in particular, enabled young scholars to present their research to an international audience of specialists in different fields. The main aim of this specific Melammu Symposium was to foster collaboration between Classicists and Assyriologists. Accordingly, we conceptualized eight thematic sessions, which were organized by two session organizers, one of them a classicist, the other an Assyriologist (or Hittitologist). In addition, a general session and a young researcher's workshop took place. The session organizers invited the participants for their sessions and discussed the topics with them. All the sessions were framed by a general introduction to the topic and a response to the papers by the session organizers.