Edward Chiera

Who was Edward Chiera?

Edward Chiera was an Italian-American archaeologist, Assyriologist, and scholar of religions and linguistics.

Born in Rome, Italy, in 1885, Chiera trained as a theologian at the Crozer Theological Seminary. He completed his doctorate at the University of Pennsylvania. He was faculty of the University of Pennsylvania until 1927, at which time he joined the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago.

Chiera was Annual Professor of the American Schools of Oriental Research at Baghdad in 1924 – 1925. At that time he conducted archaeological excavations in ancient Nuzi, near Kirkuk, Iraq, at the invitation of Gertrude Bell and sponsored by the Iraq Museum. His discovery and deciphering of the Nuzi Tablets was an important archaeological result.

A pre-eminent scholar of ancient cuneiform languages, Chiera became Editor of the Chicago Assyrian Dictionary Project, a monumental work which had been started in 1921, and eventually took 85 years to complete. He was a close associate of the director and founder of the Oriental Institute, James Henry Breasted.