Sachs Lecture in Assyriology: Jacob Lauinger – “Seventy-Five Years (More or Less) of Cuneiform Epigraphy at Bronze Age Alalah”

The Department of Egyptology & Assyriology is pleased to present the 2024-25 Sachs Lecture in Assyriology. Jacob Lauinger, Associate Professor of Assyriology, The Johns Hopkins University, will give the 2024-25 Sachs Lecture “Seventy-Five Years (More or Less) of Cuneiform Epigraphy at Bronze Age Alalah” on Thursday, October 17 at 6:00 p.m. in Rhode Island Hall (Room 108).About Jacob Lauinger: Jacob Lauinger is an Associate Professor of Assyriology at The Johns Hopkins University. He received his Ph.D. in Assyriology in 2007 from the University of Chicago and has been a staff epigrapher of Mustafa Kemal University’s Expedition to Alalakh/Tell Atchana since 2002. His most recent monograph, The Labors of Idrimi: Inscribing the Past, Shaping the Present at Late Bronze Alalah (2024) has just been published; it combines textual and material perspectives on the famous Statue of Idrimi to reconstruct the statue’s social-political context. His 2015 monograph Following the Man of Yamhad: Settlement and Territory at Old Babylonian Alalah studied the cuneiform tablets from Middle Bronze Age Alalah that record the purchase or exchange of entire settlements and the social-economic practices that these texts reflect. He has a particular interest in the use of cuneiform Akkadian outside of Mesopotamia.About the Sachs Lecture Series: The Sachs Lecture is one of three lectures named after the founding members of the Departments of Egyptology and History of Mathematics, which were merged in 2006 to form the current Department of Egyptology & Assyriology: Richard Parker (Egyptology), Otto Neugebauer (History of Exact Science in Antiquity), and Abraham Sachs (Assyriology). After receiving his doctorate from The Johns Hopkins University in 1939, Abe Sachs worked on the Chicago Assyrian Dictionary at the University of Chicago, where a chance meeting with Otto Neugebauer led Sachs to Brown University in 1941. After two years at Brown as a Rockefeller Foundation Fellow, Sachs became one of the founding members of the History of Mathematics Department (instituted in 1943), eventually serving as its chair. Sachs collaborated on important contributions to the history of mathematics and astronomy, and, together with Albrecht Goetze, he founded the Journal of Cuneiform Studies in 1947. Sachs was a beloved teacher and respected colleague, and after his retirement he remained active at Brown as an adjunct professor until his untimely death in 1983.