Karen Radner is an expert on ancient Assyria. – Munich

After Karen Radner returned from Iraq in the spring, she dreamed of this trip for weeks. It was not dreams of fairy tales, myths or palaces that she would have discovered as a researcher. No, it was the stories of the people she had met that haunted her sleep.

The orientalist is an expert on ancient Assyria. This was once the cultural center of the world. The earliest superpower in history. A multicultural empire stretching from the Indus to the Nile, with the first major cities and urban life. Its inhabitants invented writing, so today’s researchers can read a lot of what was thought and written back then. Karen Radner is one of the few specialists who can read cuneiform. She has already deciphered thousands of clay tablets. And she is convinced that the history of Europe and that of the Middle East are much more closely connected than is commonly known. “If we understood that, our view of the region would look different,” she says.

The 51-year-old holds a Humboldt Professorship for the Ancient History of the Near and Middle East at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität (LMU). The Humboldt Prize is the highest German academic award. Finally, the Leibniz Prize was added, with the associated money she was able to finance her new project: the excavation of the new town of Assur. In the past year alone, she has been to the city on the Tigris five times to prepare for the project.

“I’m really happy that I can now do research again at the place where my scientific career began,” says the professor, while she brews tea in her office and distributes two pains au chocolat on plates. Even as a student, she analyzed text panels from Ashur at the Pergamon Museum in Berlin. The enthusiasm for the culture of the Assyrians never left her.

Her office is very modest compared to her reputation

Measured against its scientific reputation, the office in the LMU’s historicum on Schellingstraße is small and inconspicuous, anything but an executive office. But anyway, the researcher prefers to be outside, in the field and in contact with people. Wearing jeans and a cotton shirt, she sits down on the small sofa, with maps of the country between the Euphrates and Tigris hanging on the wall above her. Iraq, Iran, Turkey, Syria, the countries are familiar to her.

20 years ago Radner was already in Assur. Then the Americans invaded Iraq. The historian then conducted research in Syria, until war raged there too, and then for twelve years in Kurdish northern Iraq. And now Assur again. “Unfortunately, the country has changed completely as a result of the years of embargo and the war,” says Radner. Unlike in the past, when Iraq maintained many international contacts, attracted investors to the country and promoted education, including for girls, today it is isolated and ruined. “It’s horrible to see,” says Radner. In rural areas, women are no longer allowed to leave the house for fear that something could happen to them, and hardly anyone there speaks English anymore. Only the hospitality remained.

The excavation of the new city of Assyria is in the desert. Radner flips through the photos on her laptop. Not a tree, not a bush far and wide. Before the scientists could start their work, the house in which they all live together had to be restored: the team from Munich, one from the University of Münster, Kurdish and Iraqi employees. German researchers had erected the building more than 100 years ago. Islamic State terrorist groups severely damaged it a few years ago.

“These are experiences that we can’t even imagine.”

There is a cook, a driver, a caretaker and in the evening we eat together. “You get to know each other privately, of course. And every now and then you’re invited home,” says Radner. There she heard the stories that robbed her of sleep. About IS attacks, violence against women, injuries and years of imprisonment. “These are experiences that we can’t even imagine with our sheltered European biographies,” she says.

Not only the infrastructure and many cultural assets were destroyed by the war. The souls of the people were also badly wounded. When she talks about it, you can feel how close her experiences are to her.

Open detailed view

Electricity is only available about four hours a day. “You think twice before switching on the kettle,” she says. Diesel generators rattle for hours to keep the computers running. “I’ve now ordered solar panels,” says Radner. The historian also takes care of such things. In any case, it is only possible to work in the desert in winter. “In the summer, there are temperatures of 50 degrees. We might be able to stand it, but our computers couldn’t.” And something else has changed: “When I was there a good 20 years ago, the Tigris was a mighty river. Now it no longer carries any water after Assur.” The climate change. “People have to leave their homes because they can no longer live there.” She met farmers who had to slaughter their cattle, their most valuable commodity, because they had no more pasture.

Once in motion, her flow of words can hardly be stopped

Radner is a spirited woman, once in motion, her flow of words can hardly be stopped. But why is Assur so important in the first place? The new town was created during the heyday of the then huge empire, and it was an extremely efficient state that lasted 300 years. “With an Assyrian official or scholar around 700 BC, we could certainly have a high-level conversation about the problems of our time, from the financial crisis, multicultural society and migration to climate change,” she says.

The Reich was organized almost like an international corporation. With governors and branches, different languages, customs, religions. With an expedited mail service. “Several messengers were needed to transport letters more quickly over long distances. To prevent infidelity, the clay tablets were sealed. With a clay shell on which the sender and address were engraved,” explains the historian, pulling out her mobile phone. to explain: the mobile phone is the clay tablet, the case is the envelope. Only the recipient could open it. “We still don’t know exactly how it technically worked to connect the two layers of clay in this way.”

The clay tablets have survived for thousands of years, they tell of the life of that time. Of marriage contracts, surrogacy and eunuchs. Officials in remote regions were castrated to keep them from mingling with the local population. “People probably didn’t believe in the compatibility of work and family,” says Radner. Punishments for dissenters were as brutal as in medieval Europe, including impaling and flaying. On the other hand, the arts and cultural diversity were promoted. “And every house in the city had a bathroom and its own oven, which was by no means a given elsewhere.”

Scientists also collect human and animal bones, teeth, plants, building materials, and everyday objects. Unlike the Orient researchers of earlier times, who simply took everything they thought was valuable and put it in European museums, Radner and her team are only allowed to borrow the objects. They are examined in Munich, Tübingen and Leipzig using the latest technology such as DNA analyses. “This will help us to develop a much more accurate picture of the living conditions of the people in Ashur from the 9th to the late 7th century BC than has been possible up to now,” says the Assyrologist happily.

Even as a child she was interested in excavations

Karen Radner grew up in Hallein near Salzburg, where one of the most famous Iron Age settlements was excavated. “That fascinated me even as a child,” she says with her soft Austrian accent. As a teenager, she went to Syria with her parents. They would never have taken a classic vacation, “it was always about getting to know other cultures”. She then studied in Vienna and Berlin, habilitated at the LMU and then spent ten years doing research at University College in London. She returned to Munich with her husband, a Dutchman and also a cuneiform researcher, when the Humboldt Professorship came up. She says he gave up his career for her benefit. Their son is 13. “I couldn’t do what I do without the support of my family. But working from the computer alone would be unimaginable for me.”

She is now so excited that the sweet pastry is barely touched, the teacup is still half full. The next time she stands in front of the ruins under the scorching sun in Iraq and is happy to finally be back, her husband and son will be waiting at home. And in her research team, the professor employs mostly women. Both are unimaginable in Iraq. She can get really upset about the fact that the country has become so conservative that girls and women in rural areas are hardly ever allowed onto the streets. “I’m not just a scientist, I’m also a human being.”