Jeffrey R. Holland (1940-2025)

I have known Jeffrey R. Holland for over two-thirds of my life, and just over half of his. It is hard to express what a good friend he has been to me. A few years ago, he sent me a very kind note, out of the blue, just before a very difficult time. Before another very difficult time, he personally gave me some reassurance that helped with what, unbeknownst to him, would happen.

I first met President Holland (and he will always be that to me) because my mother, looking through the course offerings at BYU said that if Jeffrey Holland was teaching a class, I should enroll in it, even if I did care for the subject.

President Holland was a fantastic teacher. When I first entered his literature class, I hated the subject. That I did not at the end is a testament to his teaching ability. We even asked if he would make up the classes that he had to miss. He was sincere when he said that he hoped to retire from being a university president to become a college professor. The Lord, however, had other things in mind.

I remember that President Holland took time out of his busy schedule as president of a large university to let a student tell him about his mission call. While on my mission, there were many General Authorities called who were then serving as mission presidents. There were two vacancies in the Quorum of the Twelve at the time, and speculation was rampant among the missionaries in my mission that our mission president would be called as one of the next apostles. No question my mission president was a great man, but I had had a class from President Holland, and I said that although I did not think our mission president would become an apostle, I think I had met someone who would one day be one. It is the only time I have ever been right about such things.

President Holland was always extremely busy and anxiously engaged. I remember once when he met with my wife and me, he said that it was the first bit of free time that he had had that month. It was the last day of the month. From that I drew an important lesson. Apostles are special ambassadors of the Lord Jesus Christ in all the world. Do not waste their time! I hope I did not.

I lost a number of my professors last year, but I miss President Holland already the most. 

 

 

Kenneth A. Kitchen (1932-2025)

I note with sadness the passing of Kenneth Kitchen, an extraordinary Egyptologist and individual. Kitchen was phenomenally prolific, an into almost every facet of the ancient Near East. His Ramesside Inscriptions alone would have secured the reputation for an Egyptological career, but Kitchen also produced hefty monographs on South Arabian Inscriptions, a collection of all the treaties and law collections of the ancient Near East (Treaty, Law, and Covenant), sorting out the Third Intermediate Period, and numerous other works.

As a scholar Kitchen was known not only for his meticulous scholarship, but for having strong opinions strongly, bluntly, and vividly expressed. These opinions were not always appreciated but Kitchen had paid the price to have them.

I had the privilege of meeting Kitchen at the Third Intermediate Period conference in Leiden. He was kind and patient with me and let me hang around him through the conference. It was worth sitting a few seats away from him so as to catch his running commentary throughout the proceedings. He would audibly interject comments like "Utter rubbish!" in the middle of presentations. He gave the keynote address of the conference. An hour and a half summary of the chronological basis of the entire Third Intermediate Period with reference to all the primary sources, given from memory without notes. At the end of the conference, he gave a summary of all the presentations extemporaneously, again without notes, with comments about what he could agree with and what he could not.

That was Kitchen as a scholar. As a person, he showed sides that did not always show up in his scholarship. One of his students told me that Kitchen was always a good Christian gentlemen. One day, one of the female students provocatively showed up to class in a diaphanous top, so Kitchen paced the class giving his lecture staring at the floor. I heard another story firsthand from a colleague who found out that Kitchen had been praying for him, unbeknownst to him at the time.

 

Marcel Sigrist (1940-2024)

I sadly just learned about the death of the notable Sumerologist, Marcel Sigrist. Sigrist was one of my professors in graduate school. Sigrist was already legendary at that time, having produced a substantial output of useful works. Sigrist always encouraged me to get more involved in Sumerian studies. He took me around the first Rencontre Assyriologique that I attended. I loved working with him.

I remember one time, sitting in the study room adjacent to the Babylonian collection in Sterling Library at Yale halfway through the semester when he was a visiting scholar. Sigrist came in to me all apologetic, saying: "I'm so sorry. I thought Jean-Guy was your first name."

 I will miss him.

 

Bezalel Porten (1931-2025)

I was saddened to hear today of the passing of Bezalel (Buzzy) Porten.

I first encountered Porten's work in a very early article that he wrote using Aramaic documents from Elephantine to sketch out the layout of a neighborhood in Elephantine. It was a brilliant piece of work, one that later enabled the archaeologists to identify some of the very structures that he had mapped out.

Later, when finishing my dissertation at Yale, Porten came to be a visiting scholar teaching the Elephantine texts and let me sit in on his class. When I had finished work on my dissertation and was waiting for its approval, Porten invited me to co-author an article on Aramaic funerary texts from Egypt because he wanted an Egyptologist to help. Porten was a meticulous and exacting co-author who was very particular about what he wanted. I learned much about Aramaic speakers in Egypt and how Egyptian religious formulas were translated into Aramaic. For me, however, our most exciting discovery was that the author of the Aramaic dedication on an altar from the Serapeum at Memphis was not a native Aramaic speaker, though his father, to whom he dedicated the inscription, was. We know this because some of the letters were backwards (typical of those who are new to and unfamiliar with an alphabet) and because he used the wrong tense in Aramaic to translate an Egyptian religious expression. We never would have noticed those details had Buzzy not insisted that we look at the original (or at least a hand copy) and had been a stickler for Aramaic grammar.

I had many other encounters with Buzzy over the years. Once about a proposed joint project on Idumean ostraca that never materialized but which Buzzy brought to fruition by himself (with his longtime collaborator, Ada Yardeni). Most of the time, we met at the national meetings of the Society of Biblical Literature. Buzzy was always excited to see me. He was also willing to discuss problems in the field with me, such as what the Idumean ostraca were and what social situation produced him. When I did not see him last year in San Diego, I missed him.

Though Buzzy moved easily in the scholarly world, he was a religious man. He had memorized the Tanakh and would quote it from memory and comment on it when necessary. He also used to belong to a group that read the Targums together. I remember that he assumed that all Jews were good Jews, even anciently. If someone with an Aramaic name, gave their child a name with a pagan deity as part of the name, they must not have been Jewish. Only when the evidence was incontrovertible would he consider the other alternative, which, to his credit, he did.

When Buzzy reached the other side, there were probably a crowd of people, whose story he brought to light, there to welcome him. Buzzy, if he cares about that any more, can now find out from the scribes of the Idumean ostraca, what exactly they were doing.

Rest in peace, my friend. May his memory be a blessing.

 

Jan Assmann (1938-2024)

 I was saddened to learn that Jan Assmann passed away yesterday. Three short memories:

(1) After I presented a paper at the International Congress of Egyptologists in 2000, Professor Assmann pulled me aside and we had a long talk about what I had presented. I was flattered when he cited the unpublished version in his book, Tod und Jeneseits im Alten Ägypten.

(2) Professor Assmann was one of the outside reviewers for my rank advancement. I was told that he wrote a nice letter for me although I do not know the details.

(3) The last time I saw Professor Assmann was during the International Congress of Egyptologists at Rhodes in 2008. We shared a taxi back to the hotel from one of the venues. As ever, he was very gracious.

Professor Assmann will be known for his prodigious and thought-provoking output and his amazing erudition. Because fewer will know him personally, he will be less and less known for his gracious manner. He probably will not be known for his role as a father. He was tremendously proud of his daughters and their diplomatic efforts to bring peace to Iran.

David C. Mongomery

David Montgomery passed away this past month. I took three classes from him as an undergraduate: two on the history of the Middle East, and a senior seminar in history. 

I learned a number of things from him. One of the things I learned from him is that one cannot properly do a history of a movement (political, religious, whatever) without knowing something about the actual people involved. This can present a number of difficulties when dealing with ancient history, but is also a problem in modern society.

I regret not taking his class on the Turkish language the one time I had a chance, but that may not have been productive at the time. I grew to appreciate his level-headed approach.

Another thing I learned from Professor Montgomery was a comment he made about the abilities of undergraduates. He said that when he first started teaching that students had no problem taking in class essay tests and that they could easily write ten pages in the class hour. He said that sometime in the seventies, they suddenly stopped being able to do that. One of the older professors I had still did that. He expected students to write five one pages essays in an hour. That was our test.

I remember meeting Professor Montgomery almost twenty years ago. He had just retired. He told me that he was forced to retire because the department chair wanted to hire someone young who would be cheaper. Ironically, after almost twenty years the history department at BYU has still not found a permanent replacement for Professor Montgomery. His presence will be missed.

Robert Kreich Ritner Jr. (1953-2021)

I just learned that Robert Kriech Ritner, Jr. passed away yesterday. Professor Ritner served as my dissertation advisor until Yale University removed him from the position. [This was not at my request.] An official obituary has been posted. This is very sad.

I do not think I ever held Professor Ritner in the contempt or disdain in which he came to hold me. Still, I will share some positive memories of Professor Ritner.

I met Professor Ritner for the first time at my first international conference. It was devoted to magic in the ancient world and was held in August 1992 in Kansas. I had already been accepted to study under him at Yale. 

One of the essentials I learned from Professor Ritner was demotic paleography. When he was a graduate student, Ritner worked on the Chicago Demotic Dictionary. One of his jobs was to take an exacto knife to photographs of papyri and to separate every demotic word. From that, he learned to account for every speck of ink on the papyrus and he taught us to do the same.

I appreciated how he tried to integrate the archaeology, texts, and art of Egypt. Too many disciplines fail to do so, and Egyptology is not as good as it once was in doing so.

Professor Ritner was an engaging lecturer. He knew how to entertain an audience. Professor Ritner was very skilled at turning a phrase. While this mostly came out in his more vituperative passages, he occasionally turned it with felicitous results into his translations. [Some of us have some measure of appreciation for well-crafted vituperation.]

Professor Ritner was very ambitious. Twenty-five to thirty years ago he intended to publish a number of unpublished texts, such as OIC 25389 and another manuscript of the Bentresh Stele, along with the definitive study of tribalism in the Libyan period and a demotic paleography. [I do not know what the publication status is, but one can always be hopeful that the manuscript is waiting at the editors.]

[It was always an informative experience to read a demotic text with Professor Ritner. I had previously had a class in demotic but not from someone who did paleography; there was a huge difference. The readings of the text would be accompanied with an erudite commentary on secondary literature related to the passage in the text. He also generously shared with the class Edgerton's Chicago House copies of the Setna I text, which were generally easier to read than photocopies of the photographs in Spiegelberg's edition.]

My condolences to his family.

[Updates in brackets]

In Memoriam: Rufino Rodriguez

I was saddened to read an obituary of Rufino Rodriguez, who died on 23 January 2021 of the coronavirus just a few months short of retirement. Rufino was a respiratory therapist at Utah Valley Hospital. I only knew him by his first name. He saved my daughter's life more times than I can count. The same is true for my son as well. When one of my younger sons was not breathing when he was born, I knew that he would be fine, because Rufino was there.

I do not know for certain, but I strongly suspect that Rufino caught the disease that took his life from someone that he was trying to save from it. He was certainly a blessing in our lives and I suspect has been a blessing in the lives of many others. We need more heroes like Rufino.

Each life that touches ours for good / Reflects thine own great mercy Lord . . .

 

William J. Hamblin (1954-2019)

I was greatly saddened to wake up this morning to the news that my friend and former colleague William (Bill) J. Hamblin had passed away.

When I was first hired at BYU, Bill was assigned to be the co-principal investigator with me on the Book of Abraham project. Unfortunately, he was unable to continue in that role as the project greatly benefited from his insight and clear thinking.
Bill, better than anyone else I know except my wife, had the gift of being able to see through  to the heart of an issue and be able to explain it clearly and concisely. Unlike many historians I know, he understood methodological issues and logical fallacies and could identify them quickly. He also had little patience with arrant nonsense. He was a gifted writer. He also had a quick wit and a mischievous sense of humor. He would write these parodies of songs and poems that skewered intellectual nonsense and could do so seemingly without effort and very quickly.

Bill was firmly committed to the gospel of Jesus Christ and to his Church. I already miss him.

William Kelly Simpson

My Doktorvater William Kelly Simpson recently passed away. (You can find his obituary in the New York Times.) I remember a number of his kindnesses to me during my time at Yale. He first became professor of Egyptology at Yale in 1958 and served as my committee chair forty years later at an age when most professors have already retired. He let me take the Late Egyptian Stories class rather than forcing me to retake the beginning hieroglyphs class. He let the students have keys to his office and access to his library, which was mostly better stocked than the University's, on the understanding that we were not allowed to remove books. He had standing orders on almost all major series though he thought that many of them were overpriced. He very kindly gave me credit for a new reading on one of the Illahun papyri in a review that he published. He also gave me a copy of his Festschrift as a wedding gift, and a complete set of the Yale Egyptological Studies published up to that point.

One story: We were reading in class the account of Wenamun (a longish Late Egyptian account of the misfortunes of an Egyptian official who is reporting on the problems he had while on a foreign assignment). Wenamun was waxing eloquent about the greatness of Amon-Re and Professor Simpson remarked that "He sounds just like a Mormon missionary." I replied, "No wonder I like him so much." He took it in good humor.

Bruce Porter (1952-2016)

I just received news that Elder Bruce Porter died. This is very sad. I only met him once when we had lunch in the Skyroom at his request before he became a General Authority. I was impressed at his grasp of the intellectual issues in a subject outside his area of expertise. I am very sad about his passing. He was an intelligent and articulate advocate of faith.

Jacob Neusner (1932-2016)

I was sad to hear that Jacob Neusner passed away last week. He was a remarkable man, and an extremely prolific scholar.

My parents once spent an enjoyable evening at the opera with Professor Neusner and his family.

Neusner's amazing output was the subject of a joke I first heard about thirty-five years ago:

A man called Jacob Neusner's office. The secretary answered the phone and told the man, "I''m sorry. Professor Neusner is writing a book and cannot be disturbed." To which the man replied, "That's okay, just put me on hold."

About twenty-five years ago, Neusner weighed in on an argument going on in Mormon Studies. At the time David Wright and others were arguing that the Book of Mormon was not historical but merely inspired fiction, but that that somehow made it "true" in some sense. Wright and others also redefined the term "prophet" so that a prophet was some sort of inspired leader of a community, but not that he actually spoke with God or received revelation that had any sort of actual specific content. Others were publicly espousing these views but it was to Wright that Neusner responded in a nice little piece called "Is Wright Wrong?" The BYU Administration of the time wisely decided that Wright should not be paid with tithing funds to spread his ideas.

I am grateful for Professor Neusner weighing in on the side of the Church in this controversy. He was a decent man.

Jürgen von Beckerath (1920-2016)

This came in from Angelika Lohnwasser:

Prof. em. Dr. Jürgen von Beckerath, 1920-2016

Am 26.6.2016 verstarb in seinem Haus in Schlehdorf/Bayern der frühere Direktor des Instituts für Ägyptologie und Koptologie der Westfälischen Wilhelms-Universität Münster, Prof. Dr. Jürgen von Beckerath im Alter von 96 Jahren. Er war der zweite Vertreter der Ägyptologie in Münster und amtierte von 1970 bis 1985. Seine Karriere verlief nach früher „klassischem“ Muster: Promotion in München 1948, 1952 Reisestipendium nach Ägypten (als erster deutscher Wissenschaftler nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg), 1955 Stipendium der Deutschen Forschungsgemeinschaft, später Assistent am Ägyptischen Museum in München, 1958 Lehrauftrag für Ägyptologie in München, Habilitation ebendort 1963, 1966/67 Associate Professor an der Columbia University in New York, 1970 Ruf nach Münster als Nachfolger von Walther Wolf. Chronologie und Geschichte des Alten Ägypten waren seine hauptsächlichen Forschungsschwerpunkte. Neben zahlreichen einschlägigen Artikeln (der letzte aus dem Jahre 2003) gehören drei Bücher zu seinen wichtigsten Veröffentlichungen: Untersuchungen zur politischen Geschichte der Zweiten Zwischenzeit in Ägypten (Habilitationsschrift), 1965; die beiden folgenden sind Handbücher geworden: Chronologie des pharaonischen Ägypten. Die Zeitbestimmung der ägyptischen Geschichte von der Vorzeit bis 332 v. Chr., 1997; Handbuch der ägyptischen Königsnamen, 1984, 1999.

 I have found von Beckerath's Handbuch der ägyptischen Königsnamen extremely useful (I was using it just yesterday).

I would like to highlight an article of von Beckerath's which I have found extremely helpful. Jürgen von Beckerath, "Die Lesung von "Regierungsjahr": ein neuer Vorschlag," Zeitschrift für ägyptische Sprache und Altertumskunde 95/2 (1969): 88-91. In this article von Beckerath establishes that the reading of the regnal year group is ḥsbt, not ḥ3t-zp or rnpt-zp. This reading was confirmed in Kaul-Theodor Zauzich, "Das topographische Onomastikon im P. Kairo 31169," Göttinger Miszellen 99 (1987): 83-91.

It was also von Beckerath who pointed out that we really have no evidence that the Egyptians knew about the Sothic cycle before the Ptolemaic period.

It has been at least a decade since von Beckerath was active in the field, but he made some important contributions.

Herbert Donner (1930-2016)

This bit of sad news comes via Jack Sasson who got it from Wolfgang Zwickel, the authors are listed at the bottom:


Prof. Dr. Dr. Dr. h.c. Herbert Donner (1930-2016)

Am 28. April 2016 verstarb Prof. Dr. theol. Dr. phil. Dr. h.c. Herbert Donner im Alter von 86 Jahren in Kiel. Mit ihm verliert die Theologische Fakultät der Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel einen ihrer profiliertesten Vertreter und einen international renommierten Wissenschaftler. Von 1980 bis zu seiner Emeritierung war er hier ordentlicher Professor für Altes Testament und Biblische Archäologie und amtierte zwischen 1985 und 1987 auch als Dekan der Fakultät. Zuvor hatte er seit 1963 als Professor für Altes Testament und Palästinakunde in Göttingen und seit 1968 in Tübingen gelehrt und geforscht.

Donner hatte in Leipzig eine umfassende theologische und altorientalistische Ausbildung erhalten und war dort mit einer Arbeit über die Verfassungs- und Verwaltungsgeschichte der eisenzeitlichen Kleinstaaten Israel und Juda zuerst zum Dr. theol., dann mit einer Arbeit über die keilschriftlichen Wirtschafts- und Verwaltungsurkunden des nordsyrischen Stadtstaates Alalah (Tell Açana) zum Dr. phil. promoviert worden. 1958 verließ er die Deutsche Demokratische Republik und habilitierte sich in Göttingen mit einer Arbeit über die Stellung der klassischen Propheten des 8. Jahrhunderts v.Chr. zur Außenpolitik der Könige von Israel und Juda. 1965 organisierte er die Finanzierung der Restaurierung der byzantinischen Mosaik-Landkarte in Madeba / Jordanien und wurde dafür - zusammen mit den beiden Restauratoren - vom griechisch-orthodoxen Patriarchen von Jerusalem zum "Ritter des Ordens der orthodoxen Kreuzträger vom Heiligen Grabe" ernannt.

In Kiel leitete er seit 1983 auch über seine Emeritierung hinaus bis ins Jahr 2010 die von der Deutschen Forschungsgemeinschaft finanzierte Gesenius-Forschungsstelle, deren Ziel es war, das "Hebräische und aramäische Handwörterbuch über das Alte Testament von Wilhelm Gesenius" vollständig neu zu bearbeiten. Das Wörterbuch erschien zwischen 1987 und 2012 in sieben Lieferungen. 2013 konnte der Herausgeber zu seiner Freude das Erscheinen der einbändigen Studienausgabe erleben. Mit dem Wörterbuch leistete er einen grundlegenden Beitrag zur hebräischen Lexikographie. Seine zweibändige "Geschichte des Volkes Israel und seiner Nachbarn in Grundzügen", inzwischen in der 4. Auflage erschienen, gehört für die meisten Studierenden zur Pflichtlektüre, und vielen ist auch die Übersetzung der griechischen und lateinischen Pilgerberichte aus dem 4.-7. Jahrhundert ins Deutsche eine willkommene Arbeitsgrundlage. In seiner Eigenschaft als Vorsitzender des 1877 gegründeten Deutschen Vereins zur Erforschung Palästinas förderte er zwischen 1974 und 1992 entsprechende Untersuchungen und Publikationen. Die allgemeine Wertschätzung seiner Person kam auch darin zum Ausdruck, dass er nicht nur ordentliches Mitglied der Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaften, korrespondierendes Mitglied der Wissenschaftlichen Gesellschaft der J.-W. Goethe-Universität Frankfurt und des Deutschen Archäologischen Instituts war, sondern im Jahr 2000 mit dem Dr. theol. h.c. der Theologischen Fakultät der Universität Leipzig ausgezeichnet und zum Ehrenmitglied des Deutschen Vereins zur Erforschung Palästinas ernannt wurde. Seine Veröffentlichungen zeichnen sich durch umfassende Kenntnisse, nüchterne Urteile und einen unprätentiösen und klaren Stil aus. Seine ungewöhnlich vielfältige und ertragreiche wissenschaftliche Arbeit zur Geschichte und Kultur des antiken Palästinas ist mit ihm nun ans Ende gekommen.

Die Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel und ihre Theologische Fakultät werden sein Andenken in Ehren halten.

Ulrich Hübner,
Direktor des Instituts für Alttestamentliche Wissenschaft und Biblische Archäologie,
Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel
Markus Saur,
Dekan der Theologischen Fakultät der Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel


The last conference paper I presented relied heavily on one of the standard reference compendiums that  Prof. Dr. Dr. Dr. h.c. Donner produced, Kanaanäische und aramäische Inschriften. I would like to thank him for his good work. I am sorry that I was never able to do so in person.

Robert Bennett

Senator Bennett passed away today. That is sad.

I chanced to meet Senator Bennett a few years ago, after he had left office. It was a brief meeting. He was very gracious. I thanked him for his years of service. I told him that I thought he had been rather poorly treated by his party the way he was forced to leave office. He told me that it was one of the best things that could have happened to him. It allowed him to spend more time with his grandchildren. True to his word, he then excused himself to attend to his grandchildren. I admire someone (especially a politician) who can make his deeds match his words.

Randall Jones (1939-2016)

A couple of weeks ago I was looking in the library for a particular sort of book to replace one that I had years ago but had lost. I finally located one on the library shelf and when I checked it out was surprised and pleased to find that Randy Jones was one of the co-authors. He had served as my bishop for a few months, although I did not know him that well since I worked mainly with one of his counselors.

I was sad to discover today that he passed away last week. My condolences to his family. We will miss him.

Edwin C. (Ted) Brock

I just received new that Edwin C. (Ted) Brock passed away yesterday. This comes as something of a shock since I just saw Ted last month in Florence. I have known Ted for a number of years. He was very knowledgeable and very kind. My condolences to his wife, Lyla. I will miss him.

William W. Hallo (1928-2015)

I just learned (a day after the funeral) that William W. Hallo died last Friday.

I took Sumerian and Old Assyrian from Professor Hallo while at Yale. He sat in on my oral exams and was probably the kindest one there. Professor Hallo (his friends called him Bill but I always respected him too much to be on a first name basis with him) was a kind, gracious, and generous teacher. I considered (and still consider) it a great privilege to study under him, and I learned a great deal from him. He had an encyclopedic knowledge and was interested in a wide variety of things. He always encouraged me in Assyriology and it seemed to me that he wished I would have switched to that discipline. I was touched that at the end of my time at Yale, he consulted me on an Egyptological matter even though he could easily have consulted one of the more senior Egyptologists.

One of the things that most impressed me about Professor Hallo was his faith. He never talked about it explicitly but you never had any reason to question it. It was not a blind faith; he knew what the issues were and he tried to deal with them. He published a thoughtful and important article on the topic called "The Limits of Skepticism."

I feel blessed to have studied with Professor Hallo Z''L.