August 24, 2022
التّنَوع الثّقافي واللغوي للأردن القديم كما هو مستوحىً من النّصوص والكِتابات الأثرية
محاضرة بالتعاون مع دائرة الاّثار العامة الأردنية
Location: Department of Antiquities, Amman, Jordan
Date: Tuesday, September 6
Time: 6:30 – 7:30 pm (Amman)
11:30 a.m. – 12:30 p.m.
Please note that registration is required to attend either in person or remotely. In-person attendees must present their confirmation ticket and wear a face mask during the lecture.
The lecture will be delivered in Arabic and will also be livestreamed on Zoom with English-language interpretation.
Inscriptions are written documents engraved on a hard surface (stone, metal, ceramics) that come to us mainly through excavations or surveys. They include a large variety of texts that were engraved with the intention to transmit their content to as large an audience as possible. These inscriptions provide information about a particular event, dynasty, law and order, dates and other achievements of the rulers and the public. Inscriptions in Jordan represent early written forms of the Semitic and non-Semitic languages in the Levant and elsewhere and are evidence that these written forms were already well developed by the time the inscriptions were made. The archaeological surveys of Jordan has identified thousands of inscriptions of Ancient North Arabian inscriptions and a considerable number of Ammonite, Moabite, Edomite, and Nabataean inscriptions, representing different chronological groups and epochs, and these are of immense value for constructing the history of ancient Jordan and its languages and scripts. Incised on rocks, gravestones, altars, and so on, inscriptions provide information about the most important features of civic life in ancient times and capture in a unique way the pulse of the sociopolitical space. They reach us without intermediary, as opposed to the composed historical works of antiquity, which were transmitted by manuscripts copied and re-copied from one another for centuries.
About the speaker:
Hani Hayajneh is a professor and dean of the Faculty of Archaeology and Anthropology at Yarmouk University in Irbid, Jordan. He gained his PhD in 1998 from the Faculty of Cultural and Historical Studies (Ancient Near Eastern Civilizations, Semitic Cultures, and Languages) at the Freie Universität Berlin in Germany. In 2011/2012, the German Alexander von Humboldt Foundation granted him a Scholarship for Experienced Scholars to conduct research at the Centre of Middle and Near Eastern Studies of the Philipps University of Marburg in Germany. He has been the Ambassador of Science of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation in Jordan since 2016. Prof. Hayajneh is also one of the accredited members of the UNESCO international team of facilitators for the 2003 Convention for Safeguarding Intangible Cultural Heritage. He has published a number of research papers, books, articles, and reviews on the cultural heritage and history of the Levant and Arabia. Prof. Hayajneh has given guest lectures and participated in national and international conferences on international and national levels.
