#11 Irene Sibbing-Plantholt: Letters from the Past

Irene Sibbing-Plantholt is passionate about micro-history: the
multiple, often relatable stories of everyday life in a past era.
As an Assyriologist and research associate at the
Einstein Center Chronoi, Sibbing-Plantholt examines textual and
archeological findings from Ancient Mesopotamia, mostly letters
inscribed on clay tablets, some of them around 5000 years old.
When she went to Syria for an excavation in 2004, she got
inspired by the timelessness of the desert and decided to do
further research on ancient concepts of lifetime and death.