Nicholas Postgate (academic)

Postgate was born on 5 November 1945. He is a member of the Postgate family. He was educated at Winchester College, a boys public school in Winchester, Hampshire, between 1959 and 1963.{{cite web|title=Ad Portas|url=http://aero-comlab.stanford.edu/jameson/AD_Portas.pdf|publisher=Winchester College|accessdate=14 February 2014|date=14 May 2011}} He was a Collegeman, meaning he was a recipient of a scholarship. He studied at Trinity College, Cambridge, and graduated from the University of Cambridge with a Bachelor of Arts (BA) degree.

Postgate began his academic career as an assistant lecturer in Akkadian at the SOAS, University of London from 1967 to 1971.{{cite web|title=POSTGATE, Professor Nicholas|url=http://www.britac.ac.uk/fellowship/directory/ord.cfm?member=2885|work=British Academy Fellows|publisher=The British Academy|accessdate=14 February 2014|url-status=dead|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20140222070440/http://www.britac.ac.uk/fellowship/directory/ord.cfm?member=2885|archivedate=22 February 2014}} He then returned to the University of Cambridge, his alma mater, as a fellow of Trinity College from 1970 to 1974. From 1972 to 1975, he was also deputy-director of the British School of Archaeology in Iraq. He was promoted in 1975, and served in the full-time role of Director from 1975 to 1981.

In 1982, he returned to the University of Cambridge and once more became a fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge.{{cite web|title=Trinity Annual Record 2013|url=http://issuu.com/trinityalumni/docs/trinity_record_2012-13_web/136|format=pdf|publisher=Trinity College, Cambridge|accessdate=14 February 2014}} From 1982 to 1985, he was a university lecturer in the history and archaeology of the Ancient Near East. He was promoted to Reader in Mesopotamian studies in 1985. He was promoted to Professor of Assyriology in 1994.

He undertook excavations at Abu Salabikh, a Sumerian city in Iraq, from 1975 to 1989. Postgate and Bahija Khalil, director of the Iraq Museum, published "Texts in the Iraq Museum: Texts from Niniveh" in 1994.{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=kXAHAQAAIAAJ|title=Texts in the Iraq Museum: Texts from Niniveh, by Nicolaus Postgate, Bahija Khalil Ismail|last1=Zaybāri|first1=Akram|last2=Dijk|first2=J. J. A. van|year=1964|publisher=Directorate General of Antiquities|language=en}} From 1994 to 2013, he was the director of excavations at Kilise Tepe, a Bronze and Iron Age site in Turkey.{{cite web|title=Teaching & Research Staff|url=http://www.arch.cam.ac.uk/about-us/mesopotamia/mesopotamia-people/mesopotamia-teaching|work=Division of Archaeology|publisher=University of Cambridge|accessdate=26 February 2014}}

Postgate retired from full-time academia in 2013.

Postgate married Carolyn Prater in 1968, with whom he had two children. Their marriage was dissolved in 1999. He remarried to Sarah Blakeney in 1999. They had three children.

Postgate was elected Fellow of the British Academy (FBA) in 1993.

• {{cite book|title=Neo-Assyrian Royal Grants and Decrees.|series=Studia Pohl, Series Maior 1.|date=1969|location=Rome| publisher=Pontifical Biblical Institute}}
• {{cite book|title=The Governor’s Palace Archive.|series=Cuneiform Texts from Nimrud II.|date=1973|location=London| publisher=British School of Archaeology in Iraq}}
• {{cite book|title=Taxation and Conscription in the Assyrian Empire.|series=Studia Pohl, Series Maior 3.|date=1974|location=Rome| publisher=Pontifical Biblical Institute}}
• {{cite book|title= Fifty Neo-Assyrian Legal Documents|date=1976|location=Warminster| publisher=Aris & Phillips}}
• {{cite book|title= The Archive of Urad-Serua and His Family: A Middle Assyrian Household in Government Service|date=1988|location=Rome| publisher=Herder}}
• {{cite book|title= Early Mesopotamia: Society and Economy at the Dawn of History|date=1992|location=London-New York| publisher=Routledge}}
• {{cite book|title=The Land Assur and the Yoke of Assur: Studies on Assyria 1971–2005|date=2007|location=Cambridge| publisher=Cambridge University Press}}
• {{cite book|title=The Languages of Iraq: Ancient and Modern|date=2007|location=London| publisher=British School of Archaeology in Iraq}}
• {{cite book|title=Bronze Age Bureaucracy: Writing and the Practice of Government in Assyria|date=2013|location=Oxford| publisher=Oxbow}}

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Category:Living people

Category:English Assyriologists

Category:Fellows of Trinity College, Cambridge

Category:Academics of the University of Cambridge

Category:1945 births

Category:Fellows of the British Academy

Category:People educated at Winchester College

Nicholas