Eva Strommenger

Eva Strommenger (born June 20, 1927 in Dortmund ) is a German archaeologist from the Middle East .

Life

From 1948 to 1954 Eva Strommenger studied Near Eastern antiquity , ancient oriental philology and Islamic studies at the Free University of Berlin . She was one of the first students of Anton Moortgat , who in 1948 became full professor of Near Eastern antiquity. In 1954 she received her doctorate here with the work of grave forms and burial customs in Mesopotamia and Syria from prehistory to the middle of the first millennium BC . The unprinted dissertation was followed in 1960 by the work The Image of Man in the Ancient Mesopotamian Round Sculpture from Mesilim to Hammurapi , which was the result of an investigation suggested by Moortgat. In it, due to the style development of the sculptural figures, she came to a time division within the early dynastic period of Mesopotamia . She found features to differentiate between the Isin and the later Larsa styles.

Strommenger began archaeological excavations in 1959 as a consultant at the German Archaeological Institute in Baghdad (until 1961). In Uruk , where the German excavations were resumed in 1954 under the direction of Heinrich Lenzen , she mainly worked on the ceramic finds. In Ras al 'Amiya, a small southern Mesopotamian settlement from the Obed period near Kiš , she excavated together with the British archaeologist David Stronach .

In 1967, under Ernst Heinrich and on behalf of the German Orient Society, excavations began in Habuba Kabira , a stone age city on the Syrian Euphrates, surrounded by a wall . The heyday of the place was 3500 to 3300 BC. In 1969, Strommenger took over the management of the other excavation campaigns, which lasted until the Assad reservoir was flooded in 1975. The pottery finds showed for the first time a Sumerian colony in this area.

From 1971 to 1992 she was a research assistant at the Ancient Near Eastern Department at the Museum of Prehistory and Early History in Berlin; During this time she expanded the inventory through acquisitions and held a number of exhibitions. In 1974 she completed her habilitation for Near Eastern Antiquities at the Free University of Berlin. She was chairwoman of the German Orient Society from 1973 to 1980, deputy chairwoman from 1980 to 1986 and has been an honorary member of the society since 1986 and has been a corresponding member of the German Archaeological Institute since 1982.

In 1977 Strommenger took over the management of the excavation in Isin in southern Iraq for one season. At this time, the soundings for a larger project in the Syrian Jazīra region, which was found with the still unexcavated settlement mound of Tell Bi'a , the ancient Tuttul, also fell. From 1980 until the provisional end of 1995, the team of the German Orient Society under the direction of Strommenger uncovered a palace and a walled city from ancient Babylonian times in Tell Bi'a under Roman and Byzantine remains . The detailed excavation reports in several volumes have not all been published (early 2010).

The main focus of their work is subject archeology, which divides the time by examining iconographic changes. In the area of ​​historical archeology, the chronological classification takes place via dated inscriptions. Strommenger describes the connection of stylistic features of the found objects to historical texts as basic archaeological research, whereby she critically comments on the limitation to philological work among her (younger) colleagues.

She is married to Wolfram Nagel (* 1923), professor emeritus for Near Eastern antiquity at the University of Cologne .

Works (selection)

• The image of man in the ancient Mesopotamian round sculpture from Mesilim to Hammurapi. Baghdader Mitteilungen 1, Berlin 1960
• Five millennia of Mesopotamia. Art from its beginnings around 5000 BC Until Alexander the great. Hirmer, Munich 1962.
• Ur. Hirmer, Munich 1964.
• (Red.): Sumer. Assyria. Babylon. 7,000 years of art and culture on the Euphrates and Tigris. Neue Galerie - Sammlung Ludwig, Aachen, 1978 (exhibition catalog).
• Habuba Kabira. A city 5000 years ago. Excavations of the German Orient Society on the Euphrates in Habuba Kabira - Syria. Philipp von Zabern, Mainz 1980.
• Mari is worth the trip. From the Mediterranean to the Euphrates 4000 years ago. Philipp von Zabern, Main 1982.
• They built with clay - examples of early clay architecture in the Middle East. State Museums, Prussian Cultural Heritage, Berlin 1985.
• with Wolfram Nagel: Kalakent. Early Iron Age grave finds from the Transcaucasian area of ​​Kirovabad / Jelisavetopol. (Berlin Contributions to Pre- and Early History NF 4), Berlin 1985.
• with Kay Kohlmeyer, H. Schmid: Resurrecting Babylon. An ancient metropolis in the focus of research. Berlin 1991.
• with Kay Kohlmeyer: Tall Bi'a / Tuttul – I. The ancient oriental burials. Scientific publications of the German Orient Society (WVDOG). Saarbrücken printing and publishing house, Saarbrücken 1998.
• with Kay Kohlmeyer: Tall Bi'a / Tuttul – III. The layers of the 3rd millennium BC In the central hill E. Saarbrücker printing and publishing house, Saarbrücken 2000.
• with Peter A. Miglus : Tall Bi'a / Tuttul – VIII. City fortifications, houses and temples. Saarbrücken printing and publishing house, Saarbrücken 2002.
• with Wolfram Nagel, Christian Eder : From Gudea to Hammurapi. Fundamentals of art and history in ancient Near East Asia. Böhlau Verlag, Cologne 2005.
• with Peter A. Miglus: Tall Bi'a / Tuttul – VII. The A. Harrassowitz Palace , Wiesbaden 2007.
• with Barthel Hrouda, Wolfram Nagel: Vorderasiatische Altertumskunde: Research contents and perspectives since 1945. Böhlau Verlag, Cologne 2009.
• with Wolfram Nagel, Christian Eder: Archaic chariots in the Middle East and India. Construction and use. Reimer Verlag, Berlin 2017. ISBN 978-3-496-01568-0

literature

• Barthel Hrouda : Introductory words. In: Barthel Hrouda, Stephan Kroll, Peter Z. Spanos: From Uruk to Tuttul. A commemorative publication for Eva Strommenger. Studies and essays from colleagues and friends. Profil Verlag, Munich / Vienna 1992, pp. 9-10.
• Wilfried Menghin (Ed.): The Berlin Museum for Pre- and Early History. Festschrift for the 175th anniversary. State Museums in Berlin, Prussian Cultural Heritage, Berlin 2005, ISBN 3-88609-907-X , p. 549. (Acta praehistorica et archaeologica 36/37)

Web links

• Literature by and about Eva Strommenger in the catalog of the German National Library

Individual evidence

1. ↑ From Gudea to Hammurabi. 2005, pp. 12-18.