Raymond Westbrook

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Raymond Westbrook (* 1946 in Southend-on-Sea ; † July 23, 2009 in London ) was a British ancient orientalist , legal historian and professor of Semitic languages at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore .

Life

Westbrook grew up in Southend-on-Sea and attended Magdalen College , Oxford to study law . Because of his interest in the beginnings of law in the ancient Near East, he moved to the Hebrew University in Jerusalem , where he studied ancient legal history with Reuven Yaron and ancient oriental studies with Haim Tadmor and Aaron Shaffer . A subsequent doctorate at Yale University was interrupted by the death of his doctoral supervisor J. J. Finkelstein . From 1976 he worked as a lawyer in Wales and England and taught at the Inns of Court School of Law in London. This was followed by a job as a translator at the European Court of Auditors in Luxembourg , while he was working on his dissertation in Munich with the support of Claus Wilcke . In 1982 he received his doctorate from Yale University with a thesis on Old Babylonian marriage law. Until 1987 he taught in the Faculties of Law and Biblical Studies at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.

In 1987 he moved to Johns Hopkins University, where he taught Akkadian , Sumerian and Hittite and especially offered seminars on legal texts and diplomatic correspondence. But he also worked on ancient Greek and Roman law.

In July 2009 he passed away from cancer .

Fonts (selection)

  • Old Babylonian Marriage Law. Berger, Horn 1988. ( Archive for Orient Research 23) (= dissertation)
  • Studies in biblical and cuneiform law. Gabalda, Paris 1988, ISBN 2-85021-034-X .
  • with Raymond Cohen (Ed.): Amarna diplomacy. The beginnings of international relations. Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore 2000, ISBN 0-8018-6199-3 .
  • with Richard Jasnow (Ed.): Security for debt in ancient Near Eastern law. Brill, Leiden 2001, ISBN 90-04-12124-2 .
  • (Ed.): A history of ancient Near Eastern law. 2 vols. Brill Leiden 2003, ISBN 90-04-12995-2 .
  • Law from the Tigris to the Tiber. The Writings of Raymond Westbrook, ed. by Bruce Wells and F. Rachel Magdalene. Eisenbrauns, Winona Lake 2009, ISBN 978-1-57506-177-1 (2 volumes, collected small writings, table of contents )

Web links
personal data
SURNAME Westbrook, Raymond
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British legal historian, ancient orientalist and university professor
DATE OF BIRTH 1946
PLACE OF BIRTH Southend-on-Sea
DATE OF DEATH July 23, 2009
Place of death London