Lamia Al Gailani Werr

Lamia Al-Gailani Werr was an Iraqi archaeologist who specialised in ancient Mesopotamian antiquities. She was born in Baghdad in 1938 and belonged to a prominent family of religious and political leaders. She studied at the University of Baghdad and then at the University of Cambridge, where she obtained her bachelor's degree. She worked as a curator at the National Museum of Iraq in the 1960s and then pursued her PhD at the Institute of Archaeology in London. Her thesis was a study of Old Babylonian cylinder seals, which was published in 1988 and considered a landmark in the field. She remained in London as a research associate at the UCL Institute of Archaeology and SOAS. She visited Iraq frequently and maintained links between British and Iraqi archaeology under the Saddam Hussein regime. She was involved in many projects and initiatives to preserve and promote Iraq's cultural heritage, especially after the Iraq War and the looting of the National Museum of Iraq. She helped to reconstruct the museum and train its staff, and also contributed to the founding of the Basrah Museum. She wrote several books and articles on various topics related to Mesopotamian archaeology and history. She died in 2019 in Amman, Jordan, from a heart attack. She was awarded the Gertrude Bell Memorial Gold Medal by the British Institute for the Study of Iraq in 2009. She is remembered as one of the most influential Iraqi archaeologists of the 20th century and a pioneer of museum curation in the Arab world.