On the 8th of March, Bushra Alkhamees successfully defended a doctoral thesis. The Leiden University Centre for Linguistics congratulates Bushra on this achievement!

This is a Special Issue of the peer-reviewed journal 'Social Sciences and Missions', which provides a forum for exploration of the social and political influence of Christian missions worldwide.

This project looks at the Ancient Greek language from the perspective of the ordinary writer. A large corpus of more than 60.000 Greek texts on papyrus, from private letters to petitions and contracts, offers an excellent opportunity to study the Greek language as written by non-literary writers in…

On Tuesday 30 April 2024 Jonny Russell successfully defended a doctoral thesis and graduated.

On Wednesday 11 June 2025 Steffie van Gompel successfully defended a doctoral thesis and graduated.

On Wednesday 3 July 2024 Renata Schiavo successfully defended a doctoral thesis and graduated.

Are you thinking about studying Classics and Ancient Civilizations? Learn more and watch the introduction video.

Fokelien Kootstra defended her thesis on 23 April 2019

Research on papyri has provided new insights into the history of the origins of Islam. Petra Sijpesteijns’s book,'Shaping a Muslim State', is based on these ancient Arabic letters and documents. Her new research on a Viennese collection of untranslated papyri is expected to produce more discoveries.

The book explores how ceramic studies illuminate interactions among ancient Mediterranean communities. By integrating post-colonial perspectives and network analysis, the volume transcends traditional

Which plants in the Mediterranean garden were already known to the ancient Greeks and Romans, and how were they utilized?

This project investigates ancient water management of streams, springs and runoffs on the archaeological site of Monte Albán, Mexico, as a means to contribute with different stakeholders in the development of sustainable solutions to water problems today such as floods and scarcity.

Clara ten Hacken defended her thesis on 16 December 2015

This monograph by dr. Kim Beerden compares Greek divination to divinatory practices in Neo-Assyrian Mesopotamia and Republican Rome.

On Thursday 28 March 2024 Said Reza Huseini successfully defended a doctoral thesis and graduated.

Did you know that Arabic was for centuries the lingua franca in an area stretching from the south of Spain to the Chinese border? And that the Middle East under Muslim rule was the world’s beating heart of trade, but also of science and scholarship? Want to learn more? Then sign up for the new MOOC…

The civilizations of ancient China and Mesoamerica, although not historically related and obviously different in many specific aspects (such as language and writing), show many interesting commonalities and similar tendencies in their cultural manifestations.

Material Crossovers

Experience, Narrative, and Criticism in Ancient Greece pursues a new approach to ancient Greek narrative beyond the taxonomies of structuralist narratologies.

Late Antiquity is characterized by migration movements, political unrest and religious strife. The way we assess these religious conflicts is often coloured by a post-Reformation understanding of ‘religion’. In my research, I show that late ancient authors understood religion in a way that differs much…

This volume publishes the proceedings of the eleventh annual University of Chicago Oriental Institute Seminar. It uses the sphere of legal institutions as a prism through which to consider gender relations in the ancient world, both in the Near East and beyond. It examines how similar issues were manifested…

This book examines how gender relations were regulated in ancient Near Eastern and biblical law. The textual corpus examined includes the various pertinent law collections, royal decrees and instructions from Mesopotamia and Hatti, and the three biblical legal collections. The book explores issues beginning…

Middle East Studies Lecture

The Centre is the proud home of several research programmes.

Patterns of paleomobility in the Caribbean were studied through an inter-disciplinary approach using a combination of archaeological, osteological, mortuary, and isotopic data.

The Egyptian hieroglyphic script was exceptionally versatile, as becomes clear when studying its multiple uses both within Ancient Egypt and beyond its borders.

For three millennia, carved sculptures were ubiquitous among ancient peoples in the Americas. Sculpted in stone, metal or wood, they developed into the well-known totem poles, colossal Olmec heads, royal Maya stelae and golden Inca statues.

In this dissertation, the types of context Dutch speakers need to interpret the poly-interpretable word ergens ‘somewhere/anywhere’ are studied.

This book surveys a distinct human phenomenon in the history of the ancient Near East: individuals who were born males but, under various social and historical circumstances, their masculine identity was considered ambiguous. They bore specific titles and were engaged in cult or palace administration.…

This publication of the School of Advanced Study of the University of London is one of the outcomes of the Landscapes of Early Roman Colonization project and the Colonial Rural Networks project (NWO, Dr. T.D. Stek). The volume, edited by Tesse Stek and prof. Gert-Jan Burgers of the Free University Amsterdam,…

Since the end of the nineteenth century Arabic book designers have influenced the social and cultural situation in the Middle East with their work. Huda Smitshuijzen Abi-Farès has written the first global overview of this neglected field of science. PhD defence 10 January.

When we think about ancient Egypt, the first things that come to mind are usually mummies and sarcophagi. According to researcher and Rijksmuseum van Oudheden curator Lara Weiss, that impression is unjustified. She made an audio tour for the Rijksmuseum van Oudheden that focuses on living Egyptians…

The NVIC offers academic courses in Arabic & Islamic studies and in the study of Ancient Egypt, in the framework of study programmes at the Dutch and Flemish universities that support the institute. NVIC also puts its teaching experience at the disposal of companies, embassies, international organisations…

War and terrorism overshadow interest in the pre-Islamic heritage of the Arabic peninsula. The new Leiden Centre for the Study of Ancient Arabia aims to make the general public more aware of the ancient history of this region.

This article is aimed to shed light on the Swahili-‘Ajam ī manuscripts, focusing on the major Swahili classical genre: the

Conference, L*CeSAR Research Workshop

How did Fustat develop between 640 and 750 to become the capital of Egypt? At the time Egypt was a province of the Islamic empire - the caliphate - that had been started by the prophet Muhammad. Original sources used by Arabist Jelle Bruning give new insights into the city. PhD defence on 2 April.