By Stephanie Pambakian

Nadia Vidro presents to an engaged audience.

It is a great pleasure to open our blog with an account of our first international workshop! 

On Monday the 27th of October we held our first NEAstr workshop at UCL:  ‘Cosmic architectures in the late antique and early medieval Near East’.

Prof Sacha Stern, our project’s Principal Investigator, opened the day by welcoming our guests and extending his thanks to the UCL Institute of Advanced Studies (IAS). After providing an introduction to the NEAstr project, (funded by UKRI, selected by the ERC), Prof Stern chaired the morning session. 

Our first speaker was Prof Mathieu Ossendrijver (FU Berlin), the PI of the ERC Project ZODIAC, whose presentation ‘Mesopotamian conceptions of the universe – traditions and developments’ provided a thorough overview of the types of textual and visual material dating to the Late Babylonian period. The paper focused in particular on “Goal Year” texts, which are characterised by direct observation of astral phenomena and the development of their prediction. Alongside a detailed account of the development of predictive texts and tables, Prof Ossendrijver dove into descriptions of the universe emerging from Late Babylonian sources, and the prominence of circles over spherical representations, highlighting the use of architectural vocabulary such as “doors” and “houses” in the context of astronomy.  

The second speaker of the morning session was Dr Emilie Villey (CNRS Paris) who presented on ‘Celestial matter and cosmic architecture according to Syriac authors’. Dr Villey presented the cosmological accounts found in Syriac authors through Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages, identifying two main groups: the Syriac Orthodox Church tradition (for example Jacob of Edessa and Moses bar Kepha), which shows traces of Greek influence, such as the sphericity of the earth and heavens, and the East Syriac Church tradition (for example the Commentary on Genesis in Diyabarkir 22, Theodore bar Koni, and Išo‘dad of Merv), in which the sky’s shape is described as a vault rather than spherical. As well as highlighting the architectures of the universe described in this body of literature, Dr Villey also stressed the differences in the doctrines of the elements found in these texts. She also presented new research carried out in partnership with Dr Abigail Pearson (NEAstr, UCL) during her visit to the NEAstr Project at UCL.

The afternoon session, chaired by Dr Abigail Pearson, opened with a talk entitled ‘Architectures of the universe in the seventh-century cosmology attributed to Anania Širakac’i’, given by the author of this post. My presentation offered a brief introduction to the scientific networks between late-antique Armenia and Byzantium, and of the context for Anania Širakac’i’s activity. I then read a selection of passages from the Cosmology attributed to this 7th-century author with a particular focus on architectural terminology.  

Prof Sacha Stern and Reseach Fellow Dr Nadia Vidro (NEAstr, UCL) then took the floor for the second presentation of the afternoon entitled: ‘Cosmic architecture in the Hebrew Baraita de-Shemuel’. Prof Stern opened the talk with an introduction to the Baraita de-Shemuel, stressing its lack of apparent connections to the rabbinic literary tradition. Dr Vidro then provided a detailed analysis of a selection of passages, stressing the use of architectural terms such as qubba or ohel for “tent”, kippa for “dome” and mishkan for “tabernacle”, although translating such description into images is not always straightforward.   

After a tea break, I had the honour of chairing the final session. Prof Karen ní Mheallaigh (Johns Hopkins) presented a paper titled ‘Intercultural cosmology: the Phoenician History of Philo of Byblos’. This paper dealt with a cosmological description known via indirect, late-antique textual tradition, which Philo of Byblos claims to derive from a very ancient Phoenician author referred to as Sanchouniathon. This text presents a rich and unusual cosmogony, which Prof ní Mheallaigh analysed in detail, stressing the vocabulary found in the Greek text, and posing questions about the direction in which cosmogonic traditions travelled.   

The final presentation was from Dr Olivier Defaux (CNRS Paris) who spoke on ‘The Scientific Correspondence of Severus Sebokht: Unedited Letters’. His talk presented his current project, Alexandrian Scientific Tradition in Eastern Rome, Europe and Syria (ASTERES), which shall include editions of a selection of Syriac letters from the corpus of Severus Sebokht (7th century). Dr Defaux gave an overview of the rich material transmitted in this epistolary collection, including letters pertaining to calendars and Easter computations and cycles. 

Prof Stern made final remarks and announced that more workshops of this kind will be held during the course of our project. (Watch this space!)