About

The project aims, for the first time in the modern scholarship, to create a holistic picture of the history of temporal concepts, as developed by different peoples of the ancient Orient (Mesopotamia, Egypt, Israel, Anatolia, India, Persia). The cultural and historical context under consideration is that of the period from the 3rd millennium BC. to the end of the 1st millennium BC.

Upon completion, the results of the project are to be presented not only in the form of scholarly publications but also as an open-access electronic resource in Russian and English. The urgency and scholarly significance of the project are determined by the need to create a fundamental work that is absent in the modern historical scholarship, as well as a database containing all relevant sources on the perception of time. Work on the project will be carried out in the following three directions:

• researching textual and visual sources on traditional temporal concepts;
• writing analytical articles;
• compiling a database that would include time-related textual sources in the original languages, accompanied by their Russian and English translations, as well as analytical articles in English.

The authors of the project consider studying the influence of time and time-concepts on the traditional consciousness and political ideology of ancient societies an important task of their research, as well as studying the development of temporal concepts in sources of different epochs. The main result of the project is going to be an "Calendars and Festivals of the Ancient Orient", where everyone can find original sources and studies of views on time in the history of the peoples of the ancient Orient. The expected result can be used in the works of specialists in chronology, heortology, religious studies, mythology, ethnology, folklore, general history, political science, sociology, philosophy of culture and philosophical anthropology.