Project Description

Imperial Powers: The Roles of Deputies, Substitutes, the Sun God and the King in the Assyrian Empire

Presented by Mikko Luukko, PhD

University of Helsinki

Mikko Luukko (PhD Helsinki 2004) studied Assyriology, Semitics and Linguistics at the University of Helsinki and the Freie Universität Berlin. He is currently a member of Research Team 1 of the “Ancient Near Eastern Empires” project at the University of Helsinki. This project is employing Digital Humanities approaches of social network analysis and language technology to the study of the records of the Assyrian empire. Dr. Luukko is currently preparing the first Akkadian Treebank based on Assyrian royal inscriptions of the first millennium BCE. His main research interests include Neo-Assyrian studies, ancient letter-writing practices, and Assyrian grammar.

In his talk, “Imperial Powers: The Roles of Deputies, Substitutes, the Sun God, and the King in the Assyrian Empire”, Dr. Luukko will consider the importance of deputies and substitutes, and the relationship between the sun god, who is the divine judge, and the Assyrian king, the supreme judge on earth. This lecture will offer a new interpretation of the nature of and interconnections between the powers of the Assyrian empire.