Miguel Civil (Miquel Civil i Desveus; May 7, 1926 – January 13, 2019) was an American Assyriologist and expert on Sumer and Ancient Mesopotamian studies at the University of Chicago Oriental Institute. According to his colleague, Christopher Woods, at the time of his death, Civil knew the Sumerian language better than anyone since it was last spoken 4000 years ago.

Early life

Civil was born in 1926 in Sabadell, Barcelona, Spain. He studied Sumerology in Paris and was associate researcher at the University of Pennsylvania from 1958 to 1963. From 1964 until 2001, he was Professor of Sumerology at the Oriental Institute in the University of Chicago. He was also associate director of studies of the École Pratique des Hautes Études in Paris, epigraphist of the Nippur Expedition to Iraq, a member of the editorial board of the Chicago Assyrian Dictionary, and main editor of the series Materials for the Sumerian Lexicon (in which he published several volumes). He is widely considered the world expert in the use of the cuneiform script to write down the Sumerian language (i.e., the writing interface of Sumerian); Rykle Borger called him der beste Kenner der sumerischen Schrift (the best expert in Sumerian writing). He devoted his scholarship to achieve a better understanding of the Sumerian language and its textual corpus, publishing extensively on Sumerian literary and lexical texts, as well as many contributions that illuminate diverse aspects of the Sumerian writing system, language, literature, and culture, from phonology to agriculture. Civil also published several contributions on the texts from Ebla. His main monographs include: The Farmer's Instructions: A Sumerian Agricultural Manual (Sabadell, 1994); The Early Dynastic Practical Vocabulary A (Archaic HAR-ra A) (Rome, 2008); and The Lexical texts in the Schøyen Collection (Bethesda, Md., 2010).

Death

Civil died in Chicago, Illinois at the age of 92.

Selected publications