PhD research
Doctoral research is a central component of the KIŠIB project’s explorative agenda. Over the course of the project, several doctoral dissertations will be written at LMU Munich and the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities (BBAW), each based on an in-depth exploration of a selected corpus or topic. The dissertations are guided by the project’s overarching conceptual framework, which investigates how sealing practice and seal design established and maintained trust on interpersonal and societal levels in ancient West Asia. By working directly with the KIŠIB corpus and its digital infrastructure, doctoral researchers contribute to both the scholarly exploration of the material and the continued refinement of the project’s data and methods.
Saman Sajedi
Topic: Horns of the Gods: A Diachronic Analysis of the Horned Headdress
The first doctoral project within KIŠIB is conducted by Saman Sajedi at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München (LMU). His dissertation, Horns of the Gods: A Diachronic Analysis of the Horned Headdress, examines the origins, functions, and meaning of the Horned Headdress — the primary visual marker distinguishing divine and supernatural beings from mortals in ancient West Asian imagery. Although the headdress appears across media such as figurines, reliefs, and stelae, it is most often found on glyptic material. While the Horned Headdress was introduced sometime during the Early Dynastic period, it became a defining attribute of divinity from the Akkadian period onward; its emergence and early development remain insufficiently understood. Sajedi’s study addresses this gap through a focused analysis of third-millennium BCE evidence drawn from the KIŠIB corpus. Further details will be added as the research progresses.