BIBLE HISTORY DAILY

Milestones: Alan Millard (1937–2024)

Renowned textual scholar and expert on the biblical world

Alan Millard passed away in Leamington Spa, England, on June 6, 2024. He was 86 years old. Millard was Rankin Professor Emeritus of Hebrew and Ancient Semitic Languages and Honorary Senior Fellow at the University of Liverpool in England.

Millard was born in Harrow, Middlesex. His experiences as a youth investigating Roman ruins in Britain begot a life-long interest in archaeology. Already as a schoolboy, he was involved in the excavation of the “Manor of the More in Rickmansworth,” a 16th-century palace where Catherine of Aragon lived after the annulment of her marriage to Henry VIII.

Alan first studied Semitic languages at the University of Oxford’s Magdalen College under Sir Godfrey Driver, graduating in 1959. He then earned his M.Phil. from the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London under Assyriologist D.J. Wiseman in 1967. During his studies in London, Millard also served as the Assistant Keeper in the Department of Western Asiatic Antiquities at the British Museum (1961–1963), where he was involved in the excavations of Nimrud (ancient Kalhu), one of the early capitals of the Assyrian Empire. He published that site’s important alphabetic ivory inscriptions, and also rediscovered the Babylonian Epic of Atrahasis (a creation and flood story), which had remained in a drawer at the British Museum unrecognized for several decades (published with W.G. Lambert and Miguel Civil in 1969). From 1964 to 1970, he served as the librarian at Tyndale House in Cambridge, where he continued to engage with research and fellows throughout the rest of his career.

In 1970, he received his appointment at the University of Liverpool. In 1971, he was elected as a fellow of the Society of Antiquaries. He was a fellow at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem’s Institute of Advanced Studies in 1984, studying with a team led by Yigael Yadin. From 2001 to 2005, he served as Vice-Chair of the British School of Archaeology in Iraq (now the British Institute for the Study of Iraq). For many years, he was on the editorial board of the Palestine Exploration Quarterly and an active member of the Society for Old Testament Study. His interests in archaeology continued with involvements in British archaeological expeditions in Syria, including at Tell Nebi Mend (ancient Qadesh) and Tell Rifat (ancient Arpad).

Millard’s greatest interest was in ancient Semitic epigraphy and in editing Akkadian cuneiform tablets and Aramaic inscriptions. He, along with Ali Abou-Assaf and Pierre Bordreuil, published the very important Assyrian–Aramaic bilingual inscription discovered at Tell Fekheriye (Editions Recherche sur les civilizations, 1982). This inscription has played an important role in understanding many aspects of the earliest stage of the Aramaic language. His monograph The Eponyms of the Assyrian Empire 910–612 BC (Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project, 1994) is a primary text, foundational to any study of Neo-Assyrian chronology and history.

The practices of ancient Near Eastern scribes was a subject that was a continual interest to Millard, as this bore on his evangelical Christian belief in the essential historicity of the Bible. Questions of literacy, orthography, and scribalism during the biblical period were subjects of numerous articles and essays. This culminated in his book Reading and Writing in the Time of Jesus (New York Univ. Press, 2000).

Millard also had a deep interest in presenting biblical scholarship to a popular audience. He wrote popular books such as Treasures from Bible Times (Chariot Victor, 1985) and Discoveries from Bible Times (Lion Publishing, 1997), as well as more than a dozen articles, essays, and book reviews in Biblical Archaeology Review and Bible Review. His interest in the Bible spawned many contributions to biblical dictionaries, encyclopedias, and edited collections, including two volumes in which he served as co-editor: The Future of Biblical Archaeology (Eerdmans, 2004, with James Hoffmeier) and “Did I Not Bring Israel Out of Egypt?” (Eisenbrauns, 2016, with James Hoffmeier and Gary Rendsburg). Moreover, he served as one of the translators of the New International Version of the Bible (NIV).

The appreciation of his scholarship and friendship was manifested in two festschrifts by his former students and colleagues (2005 and 2020). From the preface of the first, Writing and Ancient Near Eastern Society (T&T Clark, 2005), co-editor Piotr Bienkowski honored Alan, stating, “As a scholar, teacher, colleague and friend he has always been careful, considered, objective, wide-ranging, generous—and an inspiration.”

Alan Millard was a true gentleman and scholar, and a mentor and friend to many. He will be greatly missed. He was predeceased by Margaret, his wife of nearly 55 years, and is survived by their children, Clare, Stephen, and Jonathan.

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K. Lawson Younger is Professor Emeritus of Old Testament, Semitic Languages, and Ancient Near Eastern History at Trinity International University, Divinity School. He is author or editor of various ancient Near Eastern and biblical publications, including A Political History of the Arameans: From Their Origins to the End of Their Polities (2016), winner of BAR’s Best Scholarly Book on Archaeology Award, 2017.

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