Robert Rollinger (born 17 September 1964 in Bludenz, Austria) is an ancient historian and Assyriologist, known for his works on Herodotus, the Persian-Achaemenid Empire, ancient empires and cross-cultural encountering in the ancient world. He is a full professor at the University of Innsbruck and a full member of the Austrian Academy of Sciences (ÖAW).
He studied Ancient History, History, and Ancient Near East studies at the University of Innsbruck from 1984 to 1989, where he earned his MA in 1989 with an interdisciplinary thesis on Herodotus’ Babylonian Logos. 1993, he earned his Ph.D with. a dissertation focused on early forms of historical thinking in the Ur III-period. In. In 1999, he finished his habilitation on cultural connections between Greece and the Ancient Near East during the 8th and 5th century BCE. He was a lecturer, senior lecturer and reader in the department of Ancient History and Ancient Near Eastern Studies at Innsbruck from 1990 until 2005. Since 2005, he has been holding the chair for “cultural interactions between the ancient Near East and the Mediterranean” in the department of Ancient History and Ancient Near Eastern Studies at the University of Innsbruck. His academic teachers were Reinhold Bichler and Karl Oberhuber. [1]
In 2007, he was a visiting professor at the University of Hildesheim. From 2010-2015, he was the Finland Distinguished Professor at the University of Helsinki in the Department of World Cultures where he headed the research project “Intellectual Heritage of the Ancient Near East.” From 2006-2008 and 2010-2011, he was a visiting professor at the Institute for the Study of Muslim Civilisations at the Aga Khan University in London. From 2013-2017, he was chair of the “Melammu” project (an endeavor dedicated to studies on the “intellectual Heritage of Assyria and Babylonia on East and West”), which gathers together scholars with international renown. In 2019, the Getty Research Center in Los Angeles invited him to become a Getty Scholar. Since 2020, he holds the NAWA-chair at the University of Wrocław where he is the head of the international project “From the Achaemenid to the Roman Rule: Empires in Contexts – the Processes of Long Lasting.” [1]
Rollinger is editor and co-editor of numerous journals and series, among which are Oriens et Occidens (Franz Steiner Verlag), Classica et Orientalia (Harrassowitz), Studies in Universal and Cultural History (Springer), Philippika (Harrassowitz), Melammu Symposia (Austrian Academy of Science), Empires Through the Ages in Global Perspective (de Gruyter), and the Ancient History Bulletin, Ancient West & East. [1]
He is a member of international research groups hosted at the Collège de France and the Durham University, as well as a member of the core group of the European Network for the History of Ancient Greece. He is a full member of the Austrian Academy of Sciences (ÖAW), a corresponding member of the German Archaeological Institute (DAI), and a member of the European Academy of Sciences and Arts. [2]
In recent years, his research has focused on the history of empires in the ancient Near East and the Classical world as well as universal history with a comparative approach. He has published over 150 articles and is editor/co-editor of over 70 volumes. [3]
Lydia was an Iron Age kingdom of western Asia Minor located generally east of ancient Ionia in the modern western Turkish provinces of Uşak, Manisa and inland Izmir. The ethnic group inhabiting this kingdom are known as the Lydians, and their language, known as Lydian, was a member of the Anatolian branch of the Indo-European language family. The capital of Lydia was Sardis.
The Medes were an ancient Iranian people who spoke the Median language and who inhabited an area known as Media between western and northern Iran. Around the 11th century BC, they occupied the mountainous region of northwestern Iran and the northeastern and eastern region of Mesopotamia in the vicinity of Ecbatana. Their consolidation in Iran is believed to have occurred during the 8th century BC. In the 7th century BC, all of western Iran and some other territories were under Median rule, but their precise geographic extent remains unknown.
Arame or Aramu was the first known king of Urartu.
Cyaxares was the third king of the Medes.
Helmut Rix was a German linguist and professor of the Sprachwissenschaftliches Seminar of Albert-Ludwigs-Universität, Freiburg, Germany.
Tomyris also called Thomyris, Tomris, or Tomiride, reigned over the Massagetae, an Iranian Saka people of Central Asia. Tomyris led her armies to defend against an attack by Cyrus the Great of the Achaemenid Empire, and, according to Herodotus, defeated and killed him in 530 BC.
Simo Kaarlo Antero Parpola is a Finnish Assyriologist specializing in the Neo-Assyrian Empire and Professor emeritus of Assyriology at the University of Helsinki.
Michael Douglas Roaf is a British archaeologist specialising in ancient Iranian studies and Assyriology.
The Melammu Project investigates the continuity, transformation and diffusion of Mesopotamian and Ancient Near Eastern culture from the third millennium BCE through the ancient world until Islamic times. It does so by organizing conferences and by providing resources relevant to the project on its website.
Sugunia was the first capital of Arame of Urartu. The city was mentioned in an inscription by the Assyrian king Shalmaneser III, who destroyed it in 858 BC.
The name Syria is latinized from the Greek Συρία. In toponymic typology, the term Syria is classified among choronyms. The origin and usage of the term has been the subject of interest, both among ancient writers and modern scholars. In early Hittite, Luwian, Cilician and Greek usage between the 9th century BC and 2nd century BC, the terms Συρία (Suría) and Ασσυρία (Assuría) were used almost interchangeably to specifically describe solely Assyria in northern Mesopotamia, modern-day Iraq, Southeast Turkey and Northeast Syria, but in the Roman Empire, the terms Syria and Assyria came to be used as names for distinct geographical regions. "Syria" in the Roman period referred to the region of Syria, while Assyria in Mesopotamia was part of the Parthian Empire and then Sasanian Empire and only very briefly came under Roman control. Henceforth, the Greeks then applied the term "Syrian" without distinction between the actual Assyrians of Mesopotamia, Northeast Syria and Southeast Anatolia, and now also to the Arameans and Phoenicians of the Levant who had not previously had the term applied to them or their lands.
The Çineköy inscription is an ancient bilingual inscription, written in Hieroglyphic Luwian and Phoenician languages. The inscription is dated to the second half of the 8th century BC. It was uncovered in 1997 near the village of Çine, that is located some 30 km south of Adana, capital city of the Adana Province in southern Turkey.
Pentti Aalto was a Finnish linguist who was the University of Helsinki Docent of Comparative Linguistics 1958–1980. Aalto was a student of G. J. Ramstedt. He defended his doctoral dissertation in 1949 in Helsinki.
The Achaemenid Empire or Achaemenian Empire was the ancient Iranian empire founded by Cyrus the Great of the Achaemenid dynasty in 550 BC, also known as the First Persian Empire. Based in Western Asia, it was the largest empire the world had ever seen at its time, spanning a total of 5.5 million square kilometres from the Balkans and Egypt in the west to Central Asia and the Indus Valley in the east.
Spargapises was the son of queen Tomyris of the Massagetai.
The Achaemenid conquest of the Indus Valley refers to a process beginning in the 6th century BCE and ending in the 4th century BCE, whereby the Achaemenid Persian Empire established control over the northwestern regions of the Indian subcontinent, today predominantly comprising the territory of Pakistan. The first of the two main invasions was conducted around 535 BCE by Cyrus the Great, who annexed the areas to the west of the Indus River, consolidating the early eastern border of the Achaemenid Empire. With a brief pause after Cyrus' death, the campaign continued under Darius the Great, who began to re-conquer former provinces and further expand Persia's political boundaries. Around 518 BCE, Persian armies under Darius crossed the Himalayas into India to initiate a second period of conquest by annexing regions up to the Jhelum River in Punjab.
Heidemarie Koch was a German Iranologist.
Karen Radner is an Austrian Assyriologist, the Alexander von Humboldt Professor of Ancient History at the University of Munich.
Michael Gehler is an Austrian historian. He has been teaching at the German University of Hildesheim since 2006.
Persica is a lost Ancient Greek text, divided in 23 books, on Assyrian, Median and Persian history written by Ctesias of Cnidus, a physician at the court of the Persian king Artaxerxes II. The work's style and value for the study of the Achaemenid history have been a subject of much controversy among modern scholars.