Robartus Johannes (Bert) van der Spek (born 18 September 1949 in

Zoetermeer Zoetermeer () is a city in the Western Netherlands, in the province of South Holland. The municipality covers an area of of which is water. A small village until the late 1960s, it had 6,392 inhabitants in 1950. By 2023 this had grown to 126.998 ...

) is a

Dutch Dutch or Nederlands commonly refers to: * Something of, from, or related to the Netherlands ** Dutch people as an ethnic group () ** Dutch nationality law, history and regulations of Dutch citizenship () ** Dutch language () * In specific terms, i ...

ancient historian Historiography is the study of the methods used by historians in developing history as an academic discipline. By extension, the term "historiography" is any body of historical work on a particular subject. The historiography of a specific to ...

, specializing in the

Seleucid Empire The Seleucid Empire ( ) was a Greek state in West Asia during the Hellenistic period. It was founded in 312 BC by the Macedonian general Seleucus I Nicator, following the division of the Macedonian Empire founded by Alexander the Great ...

. He was a full professor in Ancient Studies at

VU University Amsterdam The (abbreviated as ''VU Amsterdam'' or simply ''VU'' when in context) is a public research university in Amsterdam, Netherlands, founded in 1880. The VU Amsterdam is one of two large, publicly funded research universities in the city, the othe ...

from 1993 to his retirement in 2014, and is currently working on the

Babylonian Chronicles The Babylonian Chronicles are a loosely-defined series of about 45 clay tablet, tablets recording major events in Babylonian history. They represent one of the first steps in the development of ancient historiography. The Babylonian Chronicles a ...

of the

Hellenistic In classical antiquity, the Hellenistic period covers the time in Greek history after Classical Greece, between the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC and the death of Cleopatra VII in 30 BC, which was followed by the ascendancy of the R ...

Age (a collection of

cuneiform Cuneiform is a Logogram, logo-Syllabary, syllabic writing system that was used to write several languages of the Ancient Near East. The script was in active use from the early Bronze Age until the beginning of the Common Era. Cuneiform script ...

tablets in the

British Museum The British Museum is a Museum, public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is the largest in the world. It documents the story of human cu ...

). He is also the author of the best-selling first-year book for ancient history: '' An introduction to the Ancient World''. Van der Spek studied History beginning in 1967 at

Leiden University Leiden University (abbreviated as ''LEI''; ) is a Public university, public research university in Leiden, Netherlands. Established in 1575 by William the Silent, William, Prince of Orange as a Protestantism, Protestant institution, it holds the d ...

Publications

* L. de Blois & R. J. van der Spek, ''An Introduction to the Ancient World'' (1997 Routledge; London, New York) * I. Finkel & R. J. van der Spek, ''Babylonian Chronicles of the Hellenistic World'' (forthcoming)

External links

Babylonian chronicles

Cuneiform sources for the history of Hellenistic Babylonia.Edition and Analysis
information about the BCHP Project in the scientific portal NARCIS (KNAW)

(in Dutch)
Personal page
contains overview of all publications {{DEFAULTSORT:Spek, Bert Van Der 1949 births Living people Dutch classical scholars 20th-century Dutch historians Historians of antiquity Leiden University alumni People from Zoetermeer Academic staff of Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam 21st-century Dutch historians