Benjamin Foster

Benjamin R. Foster’s research interests focus on cuneiform literature and the social and economic history of Mesopotamia. In the field of literature, he is author of Before the Muses (1993, 1996, 2005), an anthology of annotated translations from Akkadian poetry and prose of all periods. An abridged version of this work appeared as From Distant Days (1995). He translated the Sumerian and Akkadian Gilgamesh epics for the Norton Critical Editions series, The Epic of Gilgamesh (2001, 2018), and is author of Akkadian Literature of the Late Period (2007), as well as studies of different aspects of cuneiform literature and Mesopotamian intellectual endeavor. In the area of general history, he is author of The Age of Agade: Inventing Empire in Ancient Mesopotamia (2015) and, with Karen Polinger Foster, of the award-winning Civilizations of Ancient Iraq (2010). His studies of society and economy include Umma in the Sargonic Period (1982) and Administration and Use of Institutional Land in Sargonic Sumer (1982), as well as numerous individual essays and articles.

In the area of Akkadian literature, he is author of Before the Muses (1993, 1996), a two-volume anthology of annotated translations from Akkadian literature of all periods (revised edition 2004). An abridged, paperback version of this work appeared as From Distant Days (1995, 1998). He translated the Sumerian and Akkadian Epics of Gilgamesh for the Norton Critical Editions series, The Epic of Gilgamesh (2001,2019), and is author of Akkadian Literature of the Late Period (2007), as well as twenty or more articles on various aspects of Akkadian literature and Mesopotamian intellectual endeavor, and, jointly with Karen Foster, A Mesopotamian Miscellany (2020).

In the area of history, especially social and economic history, he is author of two books, Umma in the Sargonic Period (1982) and Administration and Use of Institutional Land in Sargonic Sumer (1982), as well as about forty articles, most of them dealing with the third millennium B.C.E. He is also active in the publication of primary source material, including four books, Sargonic Tablets from Telloh in the Istanbul Archaeological Museum (1982, 2018), Sargonic Tablets from Umma in the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago (2019), Sargonic and Pre-Sargonic Cuneiform Texts in the Yale Babylonian Collection (2020), and about twenty articles of text publications. He also produced a general study of the Akkadian period, The Age of Agade: Inventing Empire in Ancient Mesopotamia (2016).

He is co-author, with Karen Foster and Patty Gerstenblith, of Iraq Beyond the Headlines: History, Archaeology, and War (2005), a history of Iraq from earliest times to the present. This was replaced by Civilizations of Ancient Iraq, with Karen Foster (2009), given the Felicia A. Horton Book Award by the Archaeological Institute of America. In the area of the history of Oriental studies, his From New Haven to Nineveh and Beyond: Three Centuries of Near Eastern Learning at Yale (2023) explores Yale’s engagement with the Near East from the foundation of the College until about 2015.

In addition, he is author of several monographs and translations, various brief philological notes, and over one hundred book reviews. He has edited and translated two volumes in the series Writings from the Ancient World, including J.-J. Glassner’s Mesopotamian Chronicles (2004), and produced the first modern study of the Arab traveler Elias ibn Hanna, Un Arabe en el Nuevo Mundo (1668-1683) (1989). His teaching experience includes all periods and text types of Sumerian and Akkadian and all periods of Mesopotamian history from the fourth millennium B.C.E. to the Muslim conquest.