Since the adoption of agriculture people have cultivated fields. The project concerns all kinds of aspects related to raising crops.

The Leiden Papyrological Institute is the only papyrological institute in the Netherlands. The members of our staff publish Greek (and Latin), Demotic (and Abnormal-Hieratic) and Coptic papyri from collections all over the world, including our own collection.

This project focuses on urban commercial space in Roman Italy and deals with the impact of economic growth on urban communities in the late Republic and the Imperial period (200 BCE – 300 CE).

How do we explain the fact that certain areas had many large cities, while other areas were studded with large numbers of small towns and yet other areas had very few urban agglomerations of any kind?

This thesis analyses the existence and the functioning of the urban labour market in the early Roman empire by looking at the crucial influence of social structures, such as the family and non-familial labour collectives.

An international team of researchers, involving members from the ERC Synergy project NEXUS 1492 based at the Leiden University, the Universities of Oklahoma, Copenhagen and York reveal challenges when studying ancient microbiomes in a recent issue of Scientific Reports.

The material and intellectual presence of Egypt is at the heart of Western culture, religion and art from Antiquity to the present. This volume aims to provide a long term and interdisciplinary perspective on Egypt and its mnemohistory, taking theories on objects and their agency as its main point of…

The Research MA Classics and Ancient Civilizations covers two years and can be studied in four tracks: Classics is one of them. While diving into the literary, cultural and intellectual worlds of Greece and Rome, you will be involved in current research, and stimulated to reflect on the significance…

Ahab Bdaiwi, University Lecturer of Islamic history, religion and philosophy, was received the first Faculty Impact Award. His interest lies in ‘everything that has to do with antiquity’, especially the religious and philosophical ideas that arose at that time. ‘They can move people. And many of those…

Nietzsche says

Early Christian Encounters with Town and Countryside - Essays on the Urban and Rural Worlds of Early Christianity.

An investigation into how racial stereotypes were created and used in the European Middle Ages.

Different ways in which physical environments impacted on the cultural imagination of Greco-Roman antiquity.

Modern receptions of Graeco-Roman Antiquity are important ideological markers of the ways we envisage our own twenty-first-century societies. An urgent topic of study is: what kinds of narratives – sometimes controversial – about Antiquity do people create for themselves at this moment in time, and…

My research addresses the function of the much-debated particle -nā in Biblical Hebrew, often translated with “please”, from the point of view of the most important ancient Bible translations (Greek, Syriac, Latin). It combines textual criticism, translation technique, discourse pragmatics, and the…

The foundation of the ‘Leids Papyrologisch Instituut’ took place on 19 January 1935. Prior to then, the founders – J.C. van Oven (1881-1963, Roman Law), B.A. van Groningen (1894-1987, Greek) and M. David (1898-1986, Legal History) – had already been teaching Greek papyrology at Leiden University.

Update : March 2020 A.J. Mills

Dynamics of material, social and ideological relationships in the pre-Columbian insular Caribbean

Two-day Seminar

Scientists, including our faculty colleague Dr. Mike Field, studying an exceptionally well-preserved woolly rhinoceros have revealed details of what Britain's environment was like 42,000 years ago. The beast's remains were discovered in Staffordshire in 2002, buried alongside other preserved organisms…

Subproject of

This study links up the concept of place with memory, with the idea of transience and the transition from life to death.

Surveying Indigenous Peoples’ culinary practices prior to the advent of European invasions in the Greater Caribbean

Are traces of fire use detectable in ancient hominin genomes?

Papyrology+, founded in 2014, is a collaboration of Leiden scholars studying (Abnormal) Hieratic, Demotic, Aramaic, Greek, Latin, Coptic, and Arabic papyri from a socio-historical, economic and linguistic perspective. Papyrology+ aims to explore new opportunities and directions in the study of ancient…

In several Mediterranean regions archaeological sites have been mapped by fieldwalking surveys, producing large amounts of data. These legacy site-based survey data represent an important resource to study ancient settlement organization. Methodological procedures are necessary to cope with the limits…

This thesis explores several aspects of these Early Old Babylonian Amorites.

Set up in 1991, this unique project aims to identify and describe the common lexical heritage of the most important Indo-European languages and language branches. The project has thus far resulted in twelve volumes published as The Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series (Brill, Leiden).

Associates of Leiden University Center for Intercultural Philosophy

On the 23rd of June Arianna Sacco successfully defended a doctoral thesis and graduated.

The one-year History specialisation in Ancient History offers an attractive mix of theoretical knowledge and practical experience.

Otrar as a Case Study for a 6-10th century Transition Zone

Berthe Jansen receives an Early Career Award from the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) for her research on Buddhism and law in ancient Tibet. She receives the prize, an amount of 15,000 euros and an artwork, for her innovative research.

A comprehensive analysis of Nietzsche's conception of conflict and the way in which relations of struggle condition the organisation of complex systems (with a specific focus on the human psyche and the body politic).

In a podcast episode of 'New Books in History' Claire Weeda talks about her book 'Ethnicity in Medieval Europe 950-1250: Medicine, Power and Religion'.

The programme consists of 60 EC, to be completed in one year.

Three alumni of our Master’s degree programme in Ancient History talk to us about how they found a job after graduation during the coronavirus pandemic. During the interview, Gabriël hung a huge board covered in post-it reminders behind his laptop, Molly was glad that the members of the selection committee…

The principle aim of the project is to study the genesis and the quantitative properties of the Early Roman urban network of the Balkan and the Danube provinces.

The main research objective is to map the cities of Roman Asia Minor in terms of location, size, urban amenities and juridical status, with the specific aim to understand the reasons how this urban settlement pattern arose.

How can theories about modern disinformation help to understand how Roman documentary fictions functioned?

This project intends to provide an integrated linguistic assessment of the hypothesised migration route of the Tocharians.