Award for Ancient Near Eastern Scholar Walther Sallaberger

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With the Margot Becke Lecture in the Humanities, this year’s honoree is the distinguished Ancient Near Eastern scholar Walther Sallaberger. The Professor of Assyriology at LMU Munich will deliver the keynote lecture, entitled “The Wonders of This World: The Earliest Religion in Mesopotamia.” The event is jointly hosted by the Department of Languages and Cultures of the Near East at Heidelberg University and the Margot and Friedrich Becke Foundation.

Sallaberger is widely regarded as one of the world’s leading scholars in the field of Ancient Near Eastern Studies. After studying the languages and cultures of the Ancient Near East as well as Classical Archaeology in Innsbruck and Munich, he earned his doctorate from LMU Munich in 1992 and completed his habilitation at the University of Leipzig in 1998. Since 1999, he has served as Professor of Assyriology in Munich, where he conducts both research and teaching. His work on the religious, intellectual, and social history of the Ancient Near East, as well as his research on the Sumerian language and the early civilizations of Mesopotamia, has received international recognition. Since 2012, he has been a member of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities.

Through the Margot Becke Lecture, the Foundation honors outstanding scholars and researchers. The newly established humanities series expands the lecture program launched in 2017 in memory of Margot Becke-Goehring, the Heidelberg chemist and former university rector whose scientific legacy continues to inspire the initiative.