Research is centred on the history of Mesopotamia on the basis of cuneiform sources, not in the least those from a unique priestly archive form the late Old Babylonian period with over 2000 tablets, excavated by Prof. De Meyer and Dr. H. Gasche. The investigations into this archive allow to draw conclusions concerning the composition and evolution of Old Babylonian archives in general and the social and economic life during this period. This research also involves texts from the neighbouring Old Babylonian city Sippar-Jahrurum spread over various museum collections, particularly the British Museum in London. Collections of transcriptions and databases with names of persons and seals have been elaborated in the frame of this investigation. This has made Ghent one of the centres for the study of the Old Babylonian period. The publication of 'school' texts from this same archive has led to the development of a specialty in this kind of texts.
The second major focus of research is the town of Susa in present day Iran. The history of Susa is studied starting from a large collection of unpublished texts dating from the Ur III, Old Babylonian and later periods there, completed with published material. The history of this town and of the Elamite cultural sphere to which it belongs still has a number of uncertainties and many new insights can be expected from the unpublished material. This history is also important because it is documented uninterruptedly over periods for which we have no sources from Mesopotamia. On this level too, much news can be expected. A first volume in the prestigious series MDP, now continued in Ghent, already offers a number of new interpretations and historical proposals.
A third important research topic is the ancient landscape of Mesopotamia. This research is conducted within a scientific project in collaboration between the Universities of Ghent, Leuven and Liège, together with a team from the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences. This project is an Interuniversity Attraction Pole, financed by the Belgian Science Policy. This project has been awarded for two successive terms of five years (each time after external scientific screening); a next phase of five years has been applied for. The aim of this project is expressed by its title:
Greater Mesopotamia, reconstruction of its landscape and history
. The research topic here is the history of Mesopotamia (and neighbouring cultures such as Elam and what is now Syria) approached from a landscape perspective. The central question here is the interaction between man and his environment. On the one hand there is the question how much the environment has determined human history: settlement patterns, economic opportunities and limitations. On the other hand there is the human influence on the environment such as use of land for agriculture with silting as a possible consequence and of course canalisation of watercourses and building of dykes or other hydrological works. Ancient Mesopotamia is particularly suited for the study of this interaction since it provides a nearly uninterrupted stream of documentation over six millennia, of which three millennia with written documents.
Specific Ghent research in this frame is the cuneiform sources for the reconstruction of the ancient hydrological network, an analysis of Arab geographical sources on this area and a research on the travel accounts of European travellers who visited the region in the 19
th
and earlier centuries.