My research focuses on the literatures, religions, and mythologies of early Greece and the Ancient Near East. I approach such texts from a comparative perspective, ranging from the outlining of broader shared patterns and motifs to small-scale parallels between specific texts in terms of phraseology and imagery. My dissertation examines and compares narratives from Greek, Sumerian, Akkadian, Hittite, Egyptian, and Ugaritic mythologies, as well as the Hebrew Bible. These texts, whose common narrative pattern I aim to identify, all tell of the disappearance or death of a god, its consequences, and its resolution. This feeds into my broader interest in the ritual and religious Sitz im Leben and function of mythological texts in the Near East, especially Mesopotamia and Hatti. Besides this, I am also undertaking editorial work preparing editions of unpublished cuneiform texts, and work as a research assistant for the Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (https://cdli.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/).
Publications:
‘The Lion(ess?), the Weeping, and the Warrior Trope: Images of animals mourning in the Iliad, the Epic of Gilgameš, and beyond’ (accepted for publication with the Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies).
'Walk about the city and see its walls: an allusion to the Epic of Gilgameš in Psalm 48? in Kultur-Kontakt-Kultur: Proceedings of the 66th Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale (Zaphon).
‘Lying Down Like a Bull in Sumerian Lamentations and Erra and Išum.’ Nouvelles Assyriologiques Brèves et Utilitaires, 2024/1 (2024): 38-40.
