Queen Of Sumerology "MUAZZEZ İLMİYE ÇIĞ"

Muazzez İlmiye Çığ was born on 20 June in 1914 in Bursa. She lived in İzmir till she is 5. But because of

occupation of İzmir, they had to move to Çorum in 1919.

She started primary school in Çorum. She took France and violin classes there. In 1926 she took an exam and gone to "Bursa Kız Öğretmen Okulu." She graduated from there and transferred to Eskişehir in 1931.

She worked as a teacher in Eskişehir for four

and a half years. And then, on February 15 she started in the Department of Hittitology at Ankara University, Faculty of Language, History and Geography at the request of Atatürk. She graduated from Ankara University in 1940 and transferred to İstanbul Archeology Museum.

During the 31 years of her working; she cleaned, classified and numbered tens of thousands of tablets written in Akkadian, Summerian and Hittite languages in the warehouse of the museum with her colleagues Hatice Kızılay and Dr. F. R. Kraus. Then she created an archive that contains 74000 tablets about cuneiform document, made copies of 3000 tablets and publicated them. She retired in 1972. After that she moved abroad and lived there for a while. She joined an Asurology congress in Philadelphia in 1988.

A Sumerian Cuneiform

She translated "History Begins at Sumer" to Turkish.Then in 1993 she wrote 13 books for children that introduces Sumerian and Hititte cultures, incuding "Journey to Sumerians Through the Time Tunnel."

Now she is living in Mersin.

WRITER: NAZLI EVRAN

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