British archaeologist and semitist (born 1937)
Alan Ralph Millard FSA (born 1 December 1937) is Rankin Professor Emeritus of Hebrew and Ancient Semitic languages, and Honorary Senior Fellow (Ancient Near East), at the School of Archaeology, Classics and Egyptology (SACE) in the University of Liverpool.[1][2]
Millard worked on excavations at Tell Nebi Mend (ancient Qadesh-on-the-Orontes) and Tell Rif'at (ancient Arpad) in Syria, at Petra in Jordan, and at the Assyrian capital Nimrud (ancient Kalḫu) in Iraq. While working at the British Museum 1961–1964, he rediscovered the Epic of Atrahasis, which had lain unrecognised in a drawer for some decades. From 1964 to 1970 he was Librarian at Tyndale Library, Cambridge, and taught Akkadian for a year at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in the University of London. In 1970 he was appointed Rankin Lecturer in Hebrew and Ancient Semitic Languages at Liverpool. He was a Fellow at the Institute of Advanced Studies (IAS) in the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 1984, studying in a team led by Yigael Yadin. His main interest lies in Semitic epigraphy, and in editing Akkadian cuneiform tablets and Aramaic inscriptions. Scribal practices in the ancient Near East remain a dominant concern for him; the importance he ascribes to this topic stems largely from his belief as an Evangelical Christian in the essential historicity of the Bible – a point of view he shares with his colleague at Liverpool, the Egyptologist Kenneth Kitchen.
Millard is a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London, a member of the Society for Old Testament Studies – and was also, until recently, Vice-Chairman of the British School of Archaeology in Iraq.
