 | Benjamin Foster |
Benjamin Foster, the newly appointed William M. Laffan Professor of Assyriology and Babylonian Literature, is a noted specialist on Mesopotamian -- particularly Akkadian -- literature, as well as on the social and economic history of Mesopotamia.
A member of the Yale faculty since 1975, Foster is also interested in the history of Oriental scholarship in the United States. He has been curator of the Yale Babylonian Collection since 2001.
His books on Mesopotamian literature include "Before the Muses," a two-volume anthology of annotated translations from Akkadian literature of all periods, a revised edition of which will be published next year. It was also published in an abridged, paperback version titled "From Distant Days: Myths, Tales, and Poetry of Ancient Mesopotamia." "The Epic of Gilgamesh," his translation of the epic for the Norton Critical Editions series, was published in 2001.
Foster has authored two books on Mesopotamian social and economic history: "Umma in the Sargonic Period" and "Administration and Use of Institutional Land in Sargonic Sumer." He has also been active in the publication of primary source material, including "Sargonic Tablets from Telloh in the Istanbul Archaeological Museum."
In addition, Foster has written four small monographs and translations, more than 70 articles, and numerous book reviews.
After graduating from Princeton University, Foster served in the U.S. Army in Vietnam. He was awarded an Army Commendation Medal and Bronze Star and a Vietnam service ribbon.
He earned M.A. and M.Phil. degrees from Yale in 1974 and a Ph.D. from the University in 1975. He was appointed to the faculty as an assistant professor and became a full professor in 1986. He helped design and implement a Yale College major in Near Eastern languages and has served on several occasions as director of both undergraduate studies and graduate studies in the department. He chaired the department from 1989 to 1998.
As a collaborator on a National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Access to Collections Grant, Foster catalogued all tablets in Yale's Babylonian Collection from the beginnings of writing through the Sargonic period. He was a collaborator on the University of Toronto's Royal Inscriptions of Mesopotamia Project in the 1980s and early 1990s and was the epigrapher for Yale's expedition to Tell Leilan, Syria, in 1979. He has been a visiting professor at Wesleyan University and the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes in Paris.
T H I S
Foster appointed William Laffan Professor
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