The IHAC was the first Chinese institute to establish chairs and academic research positions for Assyriology, Hittitology, Egyptology, and Classics in a broad sense (Greek and Roman philology, ancient history, classical archaeology).
The Institute for the History of Ancient Civilizations was founded in 1984, after the Chinese professors Zhou Gucheng (Fudan University), Wu Yujin (Wuhan University), and Lin Zhichun (Northeast Normal University) jointly appealed to the Ministry of Education to establish such an institution, successfully arguing that to understand Western nations, it was necessary to study their ancient as well as their modern history.
Since 1986, the IHAC has annually published the Journal of Ancient Civilizations Archived 2017-12-29 at the Wayback Machine(JAC).
The JAC aims to publish the work of Chinese and international scholars dealing with history, art, archaeology, philology, and linguistics of the ancient Near Eastern and Mediterranean region.
But annually, three special research and teaching positions are explicitly reserved for foreign visiting professors.