This is the official blog of the Institut für Wissensgeschichte des Altertums/ History of Knowledge in the Ancient World, at the Freie Universität Berlin. It is meant to highlight the ongoing research and teaching in the institute itself, but also report on talks, publications and fascinating events that are relevant to the history of knowledge in the ancient world.

 The history of knowledge starts with the emergence of knowledge practices embodied in artefacts, especially notation systems and scripts. The focus of our institute is currently on the ancient world of the Mediterranean, but it stretches from the Middle East to Asia and beyond, spanning the period from the earliest phases of human activity to the first Millennium of our era.

Wissensgeschichte des Altertums embraces both traditional work on the history of science, sometimes referred to as the exact sciences, and also other forms of knowledge such as the history of medicine. In our view, all forms of knowledge should be taken into account, in so far as evidence of their practice or conceptualization in the ancient world is available.

Since April 2, 2021 the Institute is also the home of ZODIAC – Ancient Astral Science in Transformation (ERC Advanced Grant). The project ZODIAC investigates textual and iconographic sources from Babylonia, Egypt, the Greco-Roman World and beyond in order to find out how the zodiac and the astronomical, astrological and social practices connected to the zodiac circulated across the ancient world. The project team is headed by Mathieu Ossendrijver and includes Andreas Winkler (Egyptology), Marvin Schreiber (Assyriologie), and Michael Zellmann-Rohrer (papyrology, classical and semitic philology).

Cale Johnson and Mathieu Ossendrijver