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Selma Al-Radi

Selma Al-Radi

Selma Al-Radi (July 23, 1939 – October 7, 2010) was an Iraqi archaeologist who began and led the over twenty-year restoration of the Amiriya Madrasa, which is under consideration as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Selma Al-Radi was born in Baghdad, Iraq, but her childhood was spent in Iran and later in India, where her father Muhammed Selim Al-Radi was the Iraqi Ambassador. She obtained her BA at the University of Cambridge in Akkadian, Hebrew and Persian. Her tutor was Joan Oates, a noted Mesopotamian archaeologist. After graduation, she returned to Baghdad, where she began working in the National Museum of Iraq.

Along with her cousin Lamya Gailani, they were the first women in Iraq to go on archaeological excavations as representatives of the archaeological service. One of her first assignments was to accompany the team led by David Oates (the husband of her tutor), which discovered a large cache of the celebrated Nimrud Ivories, many of which were restored by Selma, giving her a first taste of restoration. She then obtained her master's degree in Art History and Archeology at Columbia University in New York in 1967 under the tutelage of Edith Porada. On her return, she continued to work in the Department of Antiquities and the Museum. The family left Iraq to settle in Beirut, where Selma began teaching at the American University of Beirut (1969–1974). She enrolled in the University of Amsterdam for her PhD degree. Her supervisors were Maurits van Loon from Amsterdam and Edith Porada from Columbia University. The University of Amsterdam did not require students to be resident for their graduate degrees after all their courses were completed. Her PhD research was performed on a Bronze Age site in Cyprus, Phlamoudhi Vounari, and her thesis was published in 1983.


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