Imperial Language Politics in the Ancient Near East

Programme

This workshop will explore the various means by which empires in the ancient world employed language choice to wield their political power and presence. Each empire’s strategies for their imperial languages integrate uniquely into their larger ideological efforts, and papers in this workshop should investigate the particularities of a specific linguistic context or contexts. We welcome questions of lingua franca, administrative languages, colonial language negotiation, imperial cultic language and more. The frameworks engaged in this workshop may include, but are not limited to, empire studies, diaspora studies, migration studies, identity studies, sociolinguistics, comparative analysis, and inscriptional studies.

Keywords:

Chairs

Lisa J. Cleath

Princeton Theological Seminary

Dominik Markl

Syracuse 2023 Call for Papers

We welcome paper proposals that explore imperial language politics in the ancient Near East, especially, but not exclusively, in the Neo-Assyrian, Neo-Babylonian, Persian, and Hellenistic periods, and reflections of imperial language politics in biblical texts. Papers may investigate questions of lingua franca, administrative languages, colonial language negotiation, imperial cultic language and more. The frameworks engaged in this workshop may include, but are not limited to, empire studies, diaspora studies, migration studies, sociolinguistics, comparative analysis, and inscriptional studies.