About us:

The Institute of Near Eastern Archaeology has been a leading research and teaching institution in the field of the archaeology of Western Asia for over 50 years, and maintains a strong focus on interdisciplinarity in the study of West Asian cultural history.
In 2025, the academic project KIŠIB. Digital Corpus of Ancient West Asian Seals and Sealings / Digitales Korpus vorderasiatischer Siegel und Siegelabrollungen of the Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften BAdW (Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities) will be launched at the Institute under the direction of Prof. Dr. Adelheid Otto (LMU Munich).
The project will be jointly realised with the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities (BBAW) under the direction of Prof. Dr. Elisa Roßberger (Freie Universität Berlin).
The objective of KIŠIB’s interdisciplinary team of archaeologists, assyriologists, and IT specialists is to establish a representative digital corpus of ca. 80,000 West Asian seals and seal impressions (4000-100 BCE) and to generate a well-structured annotated dataset of the seals’ pictorial and textual components. Its research component will explore ancient mechanisms of
interpersonal and societal trust established through sealing practice and seal design.

We are looking for you:

Assyriologist (m/f/x)

in Munich

Your tasks and responsibilities:

• Research within the Bavarian Academy project KIŠIB.
• Optimisation and execution of semi-automated workflows for the annotation of text elements on seals and sealed artefacts (seal inscriptions, relevant information on clay tablets relating to seals etc.).
• Segmentation and indexing of the contents relating to seals or sealed artefacts.
• Extraction of names and named unities (deities, professions, institutions etc.) and analysis of the implied social networks.
• Presentation of the results at thematic KIŠIB- workshops and symposia.
• Close cooperation and exchange with the archaeologists involved in the project and with other projects in the field of digital cuneiform philology.
• Occasional travels to collections for data acquisition of sealed artefacts on site.

Your qualifications:

• You hold a doctoral degree or an excellent MA degree (or equivalent) in Assyriology / Ancient Near Eastern languages.
• You have an excellent command of Akkadian and Sumerian.
• You are experienced in the use of data bases and interested in applying digital methods.
• You like to closely cooperate with archaeologists and IT specialists in an interdisciplinary and international team.
• You have an excellent command of the English language. Since the working languages of the project will be German and English, we expect you to acquire functional German knowledge within the first two years, should German not be your mother tongue.

Benefits:

We offer you an exciting and responsible range of tasks in an inspiring academic environment. You will be working in an interdisciplinary team at an excellent research institution. The position is to be filled for 50 % of regular working hours in an employment relationship initially limited to two years. An option exists to to extend the contract for an additional two years (with prospective subsequent two-year extensions for the duration of the project). If the personal and pay scale requirements are met, remuneration will be in accordance with pay grade 13 TV-L.

Your place of work will be in Munich, centrally located in the heart of the town.

You are welcome to write a scientific (qualification) paper on the basis of the KIŠIB-corpus. You also have the possibility to do thematic, corpus-based research within the guiding research question of KIŠIB, which is the role seals or sealings played in building trust on an interpersonal and a societal level.

Our university promotes the compatibility of family and professional life. We especially welcome applications from women and LGBTQI+ persons.
Here you will find further information.

People with disabilities who are equally as qualified as other applicants will receive preferential treatment.

Contact:

Please send your application (covering letter, CV, publication list) in German or English language in one pdf-file (max. 5 MB) to: aotto@lmu.de
The application deadline is the 31st January 2025.
Should you have any queries, please contact Dr. Albert Dietz, albert.dietz@lmu.de or Prof. Dr. Adelheid Otto, aotto@lmu.de

Institut für Vorderasiatische Archäologie der LMU München
Geschwister-Scholl-Platz 1
80539 München

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