Congratulations to our alumna Beatrice Baragli for achieving the ERC grant!
15 September, 2025
Warm Congratulations to our alumna, Dr. Beatrice Baragli, on winning the prestigious ERC Grant for her project on Late Sumerian Culture! (See abstract below.)
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Beatrice began working on this application while she was still a fellow at the MBSF. We are very proud and happy for you on this wonderful achievement!
Sumerian is probably the earliest recorded language of mankind, and its writings are among the
most important sources for the study of the ancient Near East. It has been documented in the
cuneiform script for over three millennia, from approximately 3300/3200 BCE to 74/5 CE. However,
two fundamental questions remain unanswered: Why did Sumerian continue to be used by the
cultural and religious elite until the beginning of the Common Era, if the last native Sumerian
speaker passed away no later than the beginning of the second millennium BCE? What enabled
Sumerian to trump Akkadian, Aramaic, Persian, Parthian, and many other languages of that time in
the lottery of longevity? The core assumption of LASU is that Sumerian survived for so long because
it was considered sacred.
Modern scholars often consider this phase of Sumerian “corrupted” in comparison to the earlier
stages, when it was likely still a spoken language. They have therefore tended to overlook Late
Sumerian. Taking an innovative philological and religious-historical approach to the unsolved puzzle
of Sumerian linguistic longevity, LASU aims to apply a unique, language-order-based framework for
deciphering Sumerian’s interactions with other languages of the multilingual ancient Near East of
the first millennium BCE. LASU has the potential to open up new perspectives on the interactions
between ancient languages and to lay the foundations for a fundamentally new understanding of
how ancient societies viewed bilingualism. Ultimately LASU offers the potential to establish a new
subfield called “Late Sumerian Studies” within Assyriology.
Sumerian is probably the earliest recorded language of mankind, and its writings are among the
most important sources for the study of the ancient Near East. It has been documented in the
cuneiform script for over three millennia, from approximately 3300/3200 BCE to 74/5 CE. However,
two fundamental questions remain unanswered: Why did Sumerian continue to be used by the
cultural and religious elite until the beginning of the Common Era, if the last native Sumerian
speaker passed away no later than the beginning of the second millennium BCE? What enabled
Sumerian to trump Akkadian, Aramaic, Persian, Parthian, and many other languages of that time in
the lottery of longevity? The core assumption of LASU is that Sumerian survived for so long because
it was considered sacred.
Modern scholars often consider this phase of Sumerian “corrupted” in comparison to the earlier
stages, when it was likely still a spoken language. They have therefore tended to overlook Late
Sumerian. Taking an innovative philological and religious-historical approach to the unsolved puzzle
of Sumerian linguistic longevity, LASU aims to apply a unique, language-order-based framework for
deciphering Sumerian’s interactions with other languages of the multilingual ancient Near East of
the first millennium BCE. LASU has the potential to open up new perspectives on the interactions
between ancient languages and to lay the foundations for a fundamentally new understanding of
how ancient societies viewed bilingualism. Ultimately LASU offers the potential to establish a new
subfield called “Late Sumerian Studies” within Assyriology.
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