Alexander Steiner
Academic background
- 2015–2019: Bachelor’s Programme Classica et Orientalia at the University of Innsbruck, specialising in Ancient Near Eastern Philology, Near Eastern Archaeology and Historical Linguistics
- winter semester 2018/19: semester abroad at the Rikkyo University (立教大学) in Ikebukuro, Tōkyō (池袋, 東京)
- 2019–2021: Master's Programme in Ancient History and Ancient Near Eastern Studies at the University of Innsbruck, specialising in Ancient Near Eastern Philology, Historical Linguistics with a thesis on the semasiological field of the Akkadian Lexeme dayyālu (German title: Das semasiologische Feld des akkadischen Lexems dayyālu. Eine Studie zu Semantik und Bedeutungswandel)
- Since winter semester 2021/22: Doctoral Programme in Humanities and Cultural Studies
- 2024–2026: DOC-Stipend fellowship by the Austrian Academy of Sciences. Title of the project: Concepts of Absolute Space in Near Eastern and Central Asian Antiquity. A Survey of Sumerian, Akkadian, Iranian, and Tocharian Absolute Direction Terms. (2024–2026)
Research Interests
Ancient Near Eastern History and Philology
- Sumerian, Akkadian, Urartian, and Hittite
Language and Cultural Contact
- Contact phenomena in Mesopotamia and Central Asia
Ancient Perception and Imagination of Space
- Spatial Lexicon and Grammar
Cognitive Linguistics
- Conceptual Metaphor Theory
- Linguistic Frames of Reference
Teaching activity
- winter 2022/23; winter 2023/24; and Summer 2023; Introduction to Old Persian, University of Kassel (Germany)
- winter 2021/22: The Ancient Near East in the 2nd and 1st millennium BC, University of Kassel (Germany)
Fellowships and Awards
- Excellence Scholarship for Doctoral Programmes (DK) for the dissertation as part of the doctoral programme "Entangled Antiquities" (2022-2024)
- Study Sponsorship Award of the ‚Deutscher Freundeskreis der Universitäten in Innsbruck‘ (2021)
- Performance Scholarship of the University of Innsbruck (academic year 2020/2021)
- Performance Scholarship of the University of Innsbruck (academic year 2019/2020)
- Performance Scholarship of the University of Innsbruck (academic year 2015/2016)
Projects
- FSP-Fellowship 2025: Constructed Spaces – Spatial Constructs, funded by the Research Area Cultural Encounters – Cultural Conflicts, University of Innsbruck.
- Der Blick auf alte Welten durch die Linse der Innsbrucker Altertumswissenschaften, funded by the Tyrolean Science Funding 2022, University of Innsbruck.
Selected conferences
as organizer:
- Kazemirashid, Sina / Steiner, Alexander: Third Space and Ancient World Studies, in Innsbruck, 29-31 October 2025.
- Hajnal, Ivo / Steiner, Alexander / Zipser, Katharina: Ancient Languages and Cultures in Contact, Workshop at the 48th Österreichischen Linguistik-Tagung (ÖLT) in Innsbruck, 17 December 2024.
- Posselt, Florian / Steiner, Alexander / Steinwender, Clemens: From Athens to Samarqand. Spatial Perception in Antiquity from the Eastern Mediterranean to the Taklamakan Desert, 20th Melammu Workshop, in Innsbruck, 17-19 January 2024.
as speaker:
- ‘The Mesopotamian Language Area’ at the Workshop “Ancient Languages and Cultures in Contact” at the 48. österreichische Linguistik-Tagung in Innsbruck (AT), 17-19 December 2024.
- ‘Multilingualism Between Empires. The Eastern Silk Road Borderlands as Linguistic Areas’ at the conference “Between and Beyond Empires: From the Seleucids to the Sasanians (2nd c. BC – 7th c. AD)” in Wrocław (PL), 3-6 December 2024.
- ‘Sumerian and Akkadian Conceptual Metaphors and Absolute Direction Terms’ at the conference “Winged Words: Comparative and Historical Approaches to Conceptual Metaphors” in Leiden (NL), 30 September – 1 October 2024.
Publications
- Steiner, Alexander (2023): Der Bedeutungswandel des akkadischen Lexems dajjālu im Kontext altorientalischer Imperiengeschichte (Historische Sprachforschung/Historical Linguistics Bd. 135), S. 264-282, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. [DOI: https://doi.org/10.13109/hisp.2022.135.1.264]
- Madreiter, Irene; and Steiner, Alexander (2024): dayyālu, (um)arzanapāta und usnupāta: Zu den Titeln dreier Amtsträger der teispidisch-achaimenidischen Verwaltung Babyloniens In: Kai Ruffing, Brigitte Truschnegg, Andreas Rudigier, Julian Degen, Sebastian Fink, Kordula Schnegg (Hrsg.), Navigating the Worlds of History. Studies in Honor of Robert Rollinger on the Occasion of his 60th Birthday (3 Vols.), S. 945-960, Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz.
- Steiner, Alexander (2025): Indoeuropäische Textzeugnisse des Achaimenidenreichs In: Julian Degen (ed.) Das achaimenidisch-persische Imperium (Springer Companions Geschichte 1) S. 461–471 Wiesbaden: Springer VS. [DOI https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-47152-1_28]
Doctoral Thesis
Concepts of Absolute Space in Near Eastern and Central Asian Antiquity. A Survey of Sumerian, Akkadian, Iranian, and Tocharian Absolute Direction Terms
supervisors: assoz.-Prof.in Dr.in Irene Madreiter (Innsbruck) / Prof. Dr. Martin Joachim Kümmel (Jena)
This dissertation examines the emergence and development of absolute direction terms in cross-linguistic comparison between Sumerian and Akkadian, as well as Iranian and Tocharian. The implications of these terms’ conceptual backgrounds on both spatial perception and imagination in antiquity[1], as well as the interplay between language and mind, are the focus of this project. Employing the framework of the Conceptual Metaphor Theory (Lakoff/Johnson, 1980: Metaphors We Live By; and its extended version by Kövecses, 2020: Estended Conceptual Metaphor Theory), this study will analyse and interpret these terms in their historical and textual context and investigate the role of language contact in the development of the term’s forms and concepts behind them. To add a broader comparative perspective, the analysis of Sumerian and Akkadian will be juxtaposed with the absolute direction terms and concepts in Iranian and Tocharian. The comparison to Central Asian sources aims to highlight conceptual similarities rooted in the general human perception of space, and dissimilarities due to the imagination of space that are based on cultural and external influences interacting locally on a linguistic level. Since the absolute direction terms, along with their conceptualisation, are often the result of multilingualism in certain areas (e.g. Mesopotamia or the Eastern Silk Roads), linguistic diversity plays a major role in this study.
[1] The late 4th/early 3rd millennium BCE to the 1st c. CE for Sumerian and Akkadian. For the Iranian and Tocharian comparative material, it is the late 3rd c. CE to the 12th c. CE.
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