Eckart Frahm

Professor, Assyriology

Acting Department Chairman & Director of Graduate Studies

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Bio:

Eckart Frahm (PhD Göttingen 1996, Habilitation Heidelberg 2007) was appointed Assistant Professor of Assyriology at Yale in 2002 and Professor in 2008. His main research interests are Assyrian and Babylonian history and Mesopotamian scholarly texts of the first millennium BCE. His undergraduate courses at Yale include topics in Mesopotamian history, religion, and literature, and the Bible in its ancient Near Eastern setting.

Frahm is the author of four books: a study of the inscriptions of the Assyrian king Sennacherib (Einleitung in die Sanherib-Inschriften, AfO Beih. 26, Vienna 1997); an edition of new historical and historical-literary texts from Assur (Keilschrifttexte aus Assur literarischen Inhalts 3, WVDOG 121, Wiesbaden 2009); a volume of hand copies of two hundred Late Babylonian letters and documents from Uruk, co-authored with Michael Jursa (Neo-Babylonian Letters and Contracts from the Eanna Archive, YOS 21, New Haven 2011); and a comprehensive study of ancient Near Eastern hermeneutics (Babylonian and Assyrian Text Commentaries: Origins of Interpretation, GMTR 5, Münster 2011). He is currently working on a history of Mesopotamia for Reclam (in German) and a “Companion to Assyria” for Wiley-Blackwell. Frahm has written numerous articles, book chapters, and encyclopedia entries on subjects including Sumerian royal inscriptions, cuneiform grammatology, the ancient reception of the Gilgamesh epic and the Babylonian epic of creation, Mesopotamian prophecy, Babylonian prisons, and the history of modern scholarship on the ancient Near East.

Before coming to Yale, Frahm was a research assistant for a project under the direction of Stefan Maul devoted to the reconstruction and publication of the cuneiform texts from the Assyrian capital of Assur (Iraq), and Assistant Professor of Assyriology at Heidelberg. He served in 2001 as epigrapher in the German excavations at Assur and has worked extensively in the collections of the British Museum in London and the Vorderasiatisches Museum in Berlin. In 2004, Frahm was an instructor in a USAID sponsored summer course for Iraqi archaeologists and assyriologists held at the American Center for Oriental Research in Amman (Jordan).

Frahm is co-founder and editor, together with Michael Jursa, of the series “Guides to the Mesopotamian Textual Record” (Münster: Ugarit Verlag) and subject editor for Assyriology of the series “Culture and History of the Ancient Near East” (Leiden/Boston: Brill). He serves as an external advisor for the project “Imperium and Officium: Comparative Studies in Ancient Bureaucracy and Officialdom” at the University of Vienna, and a few other projects. He is also a member of the advisory board of the Zeitschrift für Orient-Archäologie (Berlin: De Gruyter). In 2007, Frahm was elected Corresponding Member of the German Archaeological Institute. At Yale, he is co-organizer, together with Benjamin Foster, of the Assyriological Seminar series, and, together with John Collins and Joseph Manning, of the Ancient Societies Workshop.

Most of Frahm’s articles can be downloaded at http://yale.academia.edu/EckartFrahm/Papers.