Professor Alan Ralph Millard (1937-2024)

We regret to announce that a former Vice Chair of BISI, Professor Alan Ralph Millard, died in Leamington Spa on 6th June, 2024 aged 86. He was predeceased by Margaret (neé Sibley), his wife of nearly 55 years, and survived by their children Clare, Stephen and Jonathan.  He was born in Harrow, Middlesex (1 December 1937). His interest in the past was evident as a schoolboy, excavating The Manor of the More in Rickmansworth and publishing the results as a member of the Merchant Taylors’ School Archaeological Society.

He studied Semitic Languages at Magdalen College Oxford under Sir Godfrey Driver, graduating in 1959.  From 1961-1963 he was Assistant Keeper in the Department of Western Asiatic Antiquities at the British Museum under Richard Barnett (1909-1986, retired 1974).  During this time, Alan did important work publishing Aramaic inscriptions from the British School of Archaeology in Iraq’s excavations at Nimrud (modern Kalhu, Iraq), cataloguing tablets from early excavations at Kuyunjik (Nineveh, Iraq) and, most famously, rediscovering tablets that formed part of the Babylonian Epic of Atrahasis (a creation and flood story), which had remained in a drawer unrecognised for several decades.  He also established a lifelong collaboration with Wilfrid Lambert (1926-2011) on Sumerian literature.

Alan completed an M.Phil at SOAS under Donald Wiseman in 1967. From 1964 to 1970 he was the librarian at Tyndale House in Cambridge, an institution with which he remained deeply involved throughout his career.  He joined the University of Liverpool in 1970 serving as Rankin Lecturer in Hebrew and Semitic Languages (1970-1976), progressing to Senior Lecturer (1976-1985), Reader (1985-1992), and Professor (1992-2003).  Appointed in the Department of Oriental Studies, Alan retired from the School of Archaeology, Classics and Oriental Studies (now Archaeology, Classics and Egyptology) in 2003.

He was elected as a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries in 1971 and as a Fellow of the Institute for Advanced Study, Hebrew University in 1984.  He worked tirelessly for BISI and served as Vice-Chair of the then British School of Archaeology in Iraq, especially on the Research and Grants committee.

Alan had interests and an international reputation in the primary publication of Aramaic and Hebrew inscriptions and in the Akkadian of the Neo-Assyrian Empire.  His monographs, The Eponyms of the Assyrian Empire 910-612 B.C and La statue de Tell Fekherye et son inscription bilingue assyro-araméenne, with Ali Abou-Assaf and Pierre Bordreuil, are fundamental presentations of primary data that continue to be widely cited.  He contributed comments about the fitters’ marks, mostly letters of the Phoenician alphabet, on the Nimrud ivories published in the magisterial volumes of Georgina Herrmann, and he summarized this work in an article he wrote for her Festschrift. Alan also had an intense interest in the history of writing and questions of literacy in the biblical period.  These interests, and his personal commitment to the evangelical expression of Christianity, were represented in his popular and public-oriented work.  His books Discoveries from Bible Times (1997) and Reading and Writing in the Time of Jesus (2000) both reached wide audiences.  He also served as one of the translators of the New International Version of the Bible.

Despite his many academic achievements, Alan’s real impact came as a teacher, mentor and colleague, both in his academic duties and as a member of faith communities on and off the Liverpool University campus.