Department of Historical Studies

Notes

Writing represents, with language, one of the most powerful instruments to understand the reality, and to control society. Writing is at the same time a mirror and a product of culture and thought. And as an instrument of thought, writing requires the act of a conscious choice for the transmission of a certain message or a certain cultural content to a specific audience, in a specific cultural situation and according to specific devices.
As concerns the ancient Near Eastern societies, cuneiform writing also imposes a separation between those who know the art of signs and those who can neither understand nor use it. This has meant the formation of a class of writing specialists, members of social elites, responsible for managing and preserving the written material, and for passing on the writing technique.
The present project, which focuses the situation of Anatolia and the Syro-Anatolian Polities in the 2nd and 1st millennium BC, aims at investigating different aspects of the uses of writing:
- how writing and its specialists served the political power
- in which ways the writing specialists capitalized on the potentialities of this technology
- how the writing technology has been preserved over time.