Pioneering Turkish Sumerologist dies aged 110

MERSIN

Muazzez İlmiye Çığ, an internationally acclaimed Turkish scholar on ancient Sumeria, died on Nov. 17 at the age of 110.

Çiğ, born in 1914, passed away in intensive care at a hospital in the southern province of Mersin's Mezitli district.

Çiğ was known for her research in Sumerology, the study of the history, language and culture of the Sumerians, the earliest known human civilization, and her contributions to the field of ancient Near Eastern studies.

Culture and Tourism Minister Mehmet Nuri Ersoy stated that Çığ made unique contributions to Turkish culture and history, and shared the message: "Our valuable scientist, who devoted her life to shedding light on the oldest traces of human history, will be remembered for generations with her research and works."

Çığ was born in the northern province of Bursa a few weeks before the outbreak of World War I. When İzmir was occupied by the Greek army in 1919, just as she was celebrating her fifth birthday, her father, who was a teacher, moved to Çorum to ensure the safety of his family, and Çığ completed her primary education there.

In 1936, she enrolled in the Hittitology Department of the Faculty of Language, History and Geography at Ankara University.

After receiving her diploma in 1940, she began her 10-year career at the Museum of the Ancient Orient, one of the three institutions that make up the Istanbul Archaeological Museums, as an expert on the thousands of cuneiform tablets that were stored in the institution's archives without being translated or classified.

Together with her colleagues Hatice Kızılyay and F.R. Kraus, she cleaned, classified and numbered thousands of tablets in the museum's storage area, written in Sumerian, Akkadian and Hittite languages.

Çığ created an archive of cuneiform documents consisting of 74,000 tablets and made copies of 3,000 tablets and published them in a catalogue. She retired in 1972. Çığ, who lived abroad for a while after retirement, attended the Assyriology Congress in Philadelphia in 1988.

She has 13 books introducing Sumerian and Hittite cultures and received an honorary doctorate from Istanbul University in 2000 with the title of First Cuneiform and Sumerology Specialist.

Çığ's private archive is in the Women's Works Library and Information Center Foundation. Çığ, who wrote 16 books, was also deemed worthy of many awards throughout her life.

Çığ is expected to be buried in Mersin.