Max Mallowan

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Max Mallowan and Agatha Christie

Sir Max Edgar Lucien Mallowan CBE (born May 6, 1904 in London , † August 19, 1978 in Wallingford , England ) was a British archaeologist from the Near East , first married to the writer Agatha Christie . It is thanks to his excavations that essential knowledge about the prehistory and early history of the Middle East is due.

life and work

Mallowan was born the son of an Austrian immigrant, his mother was a French artist. He received his education at the prestigious private school Lancing College and then studied Classical Philology at New College , Oxford . After graduating in 1925, he participated as an assistant in Leonard Woolley's excavation campaign in Ur , which lasted until 1931. It was there in 1930 that he met Agatha Christie , 14 years his senior , who was staying with the Woolleys for the second time. They married in Edinburgh on September 11th of the same year , but both gave the wrong ages to hide the age difference between them.

After six years at Woolley, Mallowan moved to Nineveh to Reginald Campbell Thompson in the fall of 1931 , where he stayed for a year. Then he started his own digs, supported by the British Museum . He first dug in Tell Arpachiyah in Iraq, but then decided to move to Syria after the political situation in Iraq had worsened. Until the beginning of the Second World War he carried out excavations in Chagar Bazar and Tell Brak . In 1939 he returned to England.

Mallowan volunteered for the army, but was turned down because of his age and Austrian descent. It was only in 1941 that he got the opportunity to go to Cairo for the Royal Air Force . After the war Mallowan got the chair of Near Eastern Archeology at the University of London. From 1949 to 1963 he carried out excavations in Nimrud . In 1954 he was elected a member ( Fellow ) of the British Academy . In 1960 he was appointed Commander of the British Empire , and in 1968 he was made a Knight Bachelor .

Agatha Christie died in 1976. A year later, Mallowan married Barbara Parker, an archaeologist who worked for many years on his excavations. In August 1978 he died of a heart attack.

Fonts (selection)

  • Twenty-five years of Mesopotamian discovery (1932-1956). London 1956.
  • Early Mesopotamia and Iran. London 1965.
  • Nimrud and Its Remains. London 1966.
  • Ivories from Nimrud. London 1967.
  • Mallowan's Memoirs. Dodd, Mead and Company, New York, Collins, London 1977, ISBN 0-00-216506-6 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Deceased Fellows. British Academy, accessed July 3, 2020 .
personal data
SURNAME Mallowan, Max
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Mallowan, Max Edgar Lucien (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British archaeologist
DATE OF BIRTH May 6, 1904
PLACE OF BIRTH London
DATE OF DEATH 19th August 1978
Place of death Wallingford , England