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- Professor Sir Max Edgar Lucien Mallowan
- Also known as
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Professor Sir Max Edgar Lucien Mallowan
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primary name: Mallowan, Max Edgar Lucien
- Details
- individual; archaeologist; British; Male
- Life dates
- 1904-1978
- Biography
- Archaeologist; Trustee. Born 6/5/1904. After gaining his BA in Classics at Oxford, he joined Leonard Woolley (q.v.) as general field assistant at Ur (1925-30) and where he met his first wife, Agatha Christie (1890-1976) and to whom he was married on 11/9/30. In 1931 he joined R. Campbell-Thompson's (q.v.) excavations at Nineveh. Mallowan's supervision of a deep excavation here provided the foundations for understanding the prehistory of north Mesopotamia. In 1933 he conducted his first independent dig at a Halaf period site, Arpachiyah. Following a survey of the Khabur headwaters (1934), Mallowan also directed excavations at Chagar Bazar (1934-37) and Tell Brak (1937-39) in the Khabur basin. During the Second World War Mallowan worked in Air Force intelligence. He was Professor of Western Asiatic Archaeology in London University (1947-61), and directed excavations at Nimrud (1949-58). Mallowan then took up a research fellowship at Oxford (1962-71); appointed CBE (1960); knighted (1968). He married a fellow archaeologist, Barbara Parker in 1977.
- Bibliography
- Obituary by A. Parrot, 'Syria', 56 (1979), pp. 214-15.
'Who's Who', 1964; D. Stronach, "Sir Max Mallowan", 'Iran' 17, pp. v-vii; D. Oates, "Max Edgar Lucien Mallowan 1904-1978", 'Proceedings of the British Academy', 76, pp. 499-511; "Memories of Ur", 'Iraq' 22 (1969), pp. 1-19; 'Mallowan's Memoirs: The Autobiography of Max Mallowan' (London: Collins, 1977); Henrietta McCall, 'The Life of Max Mallowan: Archaeology and Agatha Christie' (London: The British Museum Press, 2001).
