Giulia Francesca Grassi
DIUM
Le bon historien (…) ressemble à l’ogre de la légende. Là où il flaire la chair humaine, il sait que là est son gibier.
Il bravo storico (…) somiglia all’orco della fiaba. Là dove annusa della carne umana, là sa che è la sua preda.
Marc Bloch
Giulia Francesca Grassi
Semitistica – Lingue e letterature dell’Etiopia (L-OR/07)
- Researcher
- Email: giulia.grassi@uniud.it
- Office: Palazzo Caiselli, ground floor, room LT - 08
- Teachings: Introduzione alla lingua accadica attraverso i suoi testi medici; Culture e società nell’antica Mesopotamia; Lingue e culture semitiche nel mondo greco-romano
Giulia Francesca Grassi
Semitistica – Lingue e letterature dell’Etiopia (L-OR/07)
- Researcher
- Email: giulia.grassi@uniud.it
- Office: Palazzo Caiselli, ground floor, room LT - 08
- Teachings: Introduzione alla lingua accadica attraverso i suoi testi medici; Culture e società nell’antica Mesopotamia; Lingue e culture semitiche nel mondo greco-romano
Le bon historien (…) ressemble à l’ogre de la légende. Là où il flaire la chair humaine, il sait que là est son gibier.
Il bravo storico (…) somiglia all’orco della fiaba. Là dove annusa della carne umana, là sa che è la sua preda.
Marc Bloch
I graduated in Udine in Conservation of Cultural Heritage/Archaeology, with a thesis on the Romance of Ahiqar in its Aramaic version (5th century BC) and obtained a PhD in Sciences of Antiquity at the same university with a thesis dealing with the proper names of the Greek and Latin inscriptions of Dura Europos, in Roman Syria (Semitic Onomastics from Dura Europos. The Names in Greek Script and from Latin Epigraphs, Padova 2012 [ISBN: 978-88-95672-23-6]).
I worked for many years in Germany, first at the Philipps-Universität in Marburg, then at the Georg-August Universität in Göttingen. In Marburg I worked in the department of Semitic Studies and studied mainly the syntax of first millennium BC Aramaic (I am co-author with F.M. Fales of L’aramaico antico, Udine 2016 [ISBN: 978-88-8420891-0]). In Göttingen I was involved in the project "Elephantine in its Context", mainly studying the interactions between the Judaean community residing in Elephantine during the Achaemenid era and the local Egyptian population. Then, I obtained funding from the Deutsche Forschung Gemeindschaft for a research project on the Semitic proper names in the Greek and Latin inscriptions of Syria and Lebanon in the Graeco-Roman-Byzantine period. A monograph is being prepared for each of these projects.
In Göttingen I also collaborated with the Academy of Sciences, working on the philological dictionary of Qumran texts. My interest in vocabulary has expanded in recent years to the lexicon of nature and I am an external collaborator in the project "Dictionary of Nature Imagery in the Bible" of Tel Aviv University.
Since December 2022, I am a fixed-term researcher at the University of Udine, where I deal with the lexicon of plants known from Assyrian-Babylonian texts dedicated to pharmacopoeia, using a multidisciplinary method: the University of Udine hosts RIMA, the Interdepartmental Center on Ancient Medicine.
My research focuses on ancient Semitic languages, with a particular interest in non-literary texts, from which emerge the habits, beliefs and real-life problems of those who drafted them: from medical prescriptions to marriage contracts, from records of sheep-shearing to the narration of a dream. My interest in the language is combined with constant attention to the archaeological, historical and cultural context of the texts.
I attended several seminars at the Centre for University Education in Göttingen and dedicated myself passionately to teaching. I have given courses at the universities of Udine, Marburg, Göttingen and Berlin (Freie-Universität), as well as seminars at private institutions recognized by the Italian Ministry of Education, ranging from Ancient Semitic Languages to Comparative Semitics and the History and Cultures of the Ancient Near East.
Publications
Bemerkungen zu Ostrakon Clermont-Ganneau J8 (175+185) aus Elephantine
Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft 129 (2017) 84-97
Rencontre de civilisations sur l’Euphrate : un bilan des sources écrites de Doura-Europos
Dialogues d’histoire ancienne 41/1 (2015) 73-116
L’aramaico antico
Udine 2016 (con F.M. Fales)
«Do we know the Arameans?» (SAA 17, 176). The Use of Ethnonyms in the Aramaic Documents from Egypt
in: R.G. Kratz, B.U. Schipper (curr.), Elephantine in Context, Tübingen 2022, 3-34
Uccellacci e uccellini. La liste des oiseaux de Deir Alla et le lexique des animaux en araméen ancien
Altorientalische Forschungen 46/1 (2019) 88-113