Research of the history and culture of Ancient Near East in Croatia

The history of Ancient Near East has been studied in the region of Southeast Europe since the end of the 19th century, but the number of such publications has been small. In some countries it seems that the history of the Ancient Near East was not scholarly researched for various reasons, but mainly because of the undeveloped scholarly capabilities and institutions, insufficient funds for archaeological research in the Near East, and the lack of cooperation with scholars from other countries. Since 1950's, we can trace the increased production of various scholarly papers in which researchers from Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Macedonia, Romania, Bulgaria, researched the Oriental cults during the Hellenistic period and the Roman Empire, and the various aspects of the religion and literature of Ancient Sumer, Babylonia, and Israel. Their research, however, was mostly unknown to the scholars outside this region. In this future series of publications we will try to give a review of the history of the research done in this region of the Ancient Near East and Egypt, and present some of the latest research of our scholars.