Jeremy Black (assyriologist)

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Jeremy Black
Born(1951-09-01)1 September 1951
Died28 April 2004(2004-04-28) (aged 52)
Oxfordshire
Alma materUniversity of Oxford
Known forElectronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature
SpouseEllen McAdam (divorced)
Scientific career
Doctoral advisorEdmond Sollberger, Oliver Gurney
Jeremy Black as Director of BAEI visiting the early Islamic hunting lodge of Khan 'Atshan in the Iraqi western desert Photo A.Petersen 1988

Jeremy Allen Black (1 September 1951 –

Sumerologist, founder of the online Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature.[1]

Black was born in

polio
, then, at age five, his mother died.

After his attendance at

Cuneiform Studies
.

For postgraduate studies, partly supervised by

DPhil dissertation on "Ancient Babylonian Grammatical Theory", submitted in 1980 and later published under the title Sumerian Grammar in Babylonian Theory, Rome 1984, 2nd edition 1991. A.R. George
has described it as "the only book-length examination of the linguistic thinking that underpinned the Babylonians' understanding of Sumerian".

While completing his DPhil dissertation, Black took a position with St Catherine's Foundation,

Project (see acknowledgement of his contribution on the title pages of volumes 17/Š [1989–1992] and 14/R [1999]).

In 1982 Black took up the post of assistant director of the British Archaeological Expedition to Iraq, the

, who had been elevated to the directorship. Following the resignation of Roaf in late 1985, Black was appointed Director, which post he held until early 1988.

In

archaeological expeditions, and in Baghdad carried out research in the Iraq Museum, where he worked especially on the tablets (cuneiform documents) discovered in the earlier major British excavations at Ur and Nimrud; the latter were published in J.A. Black and D. J. Wiseman
, Cuneiform Tablets from Nimrud, 4: Literary Texts from the Temple of Nabû, London 1996. Black also collaborated on Assyriological works with Iraqi scholars, notably with Farouk Al-Rawi, and with other colleagues from the days in Baghdad: the book Gods, Demons and Symbols of Ancient Mesopotamia: An Illustrated Dictionary (co-authored with Anthony Green, illustrated by Tessa Rickards, London and Austin 1992, 2nd edition 1998) grew out of such an association. Also in Iraq, Black met and married the British archaeologist Ellen McAdam (later divorced).

Benefitting from the recommendations of the 1986 Parker Report into Asian and African Studies in Universities in the UK, in 1988 Oxford University was able to re-establish a full-time lectureship in Assyriology (absent since the retirement of Gurney in 1978). The new post, known as University Lecturer in Akkadian, was awarded to Black, who was also elected a Fellow of Wolfson College.

Back in Oxford – apart from periods devoted to full administrative duties, first as Senior

imagery". Black also collaborated with Andrew R. George and J. Nicholas Postgate on A Concise Dictionary of Akkadian, 1999 (reprinted 2000). He actively participated in other scholarly projects, such as those of the international "Sumerian Grammar Group" and the Gröningen
-based "Mesopotamian Literature Group".

From 1997, with initial funding from the

Arts and Humanities Research Board
, Black founded and administered what may well come to be considered his greatest legacy, the Internet-based "Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature". Work by the project team continued after Black's death, although active funding was ended in mid-2006.

Towards the end of his life Black had the pleasurable discovery of, and contact with, his half-brother, Peter Mitchell (the son of Dudley by his first wife), living in the British Virgin Islands. He was also an enthusiastic amateur musician who sang bass with the Cathedral Singers of Christ Church, Oxford, and with the Northamptonshire-based period music ensemble Fiori Musicali.

Black died in 2004 at Oxford. The Jeremy Allen Black Trust for Assyriology, a fund to support young Assyriologists, was established by the Faculty of Oriental Studies at Oxford University in his memory. At Upton Court Grammar School, a memorial prize for Languages and Classics is given each year in his memory.

Sources

  • Obituary by Andrew R. George in Iraq (Journal of the British School of Archaeology in Iraq) 66 (2004), pp. vii–ix.
  • Obituary by Irving Finkel and Stephen Roe in College Record (Wolfson College Oxford) 2003–2004, pp. 23–25 (republished from The Independent).
  • Personal reflections by Jay Lewis in College Record (Wolfson College Oxford) 2003–2004, pp. 21–23.
  1. ^ "Jeremy Black (obituary)". The Independent Newspaper. 25 May 2004. Retrieved 16 October 2011.[dead link]

External links