University of California: In Memoriam, May 1977

P. P. Delougaz, Near Eastern and African Languages: Los Angeles

	1901-1975
	Professor, Near Eastern Languages
	Director, Museum of Cultural History

1901-1975

“The season is practically over. The usual pressure for closing camp and the myriad of other imperative tasks that always face us at the close of every season are yet to come. Somehow, as usual, we hope to finish and round off things in time to be with you, as scheduled, inshallah. In the meantime we send all of you our best wishes in the mood of the New Year happiness and hopefulness that prevails here at this holiday season.” These were the closing words of Pierre's letter written on March 26, during the Iranian New Year, three days before he passed away, leaving his promise to shortly be back with us sadly unfulfilled. The optimism and the bright expectation reflected in his letter are a cherished memory, which will remain associated in our minds with his figure and personality--particularly since these attitudes were with him until the last moment.

On the morning of March 29 the workers had found an Elamite vessel made of a soft black stone, with a carved handle in the shape of a rampant wild goat--one of the most beautiful objects, perhaps, to come from Chogha Mish. Since the find had taken place where he was supervising, he asked Professor Kantor and Miss Vindenas to come over to see it in situ. They came after lunch, and he made a remark as to how hard the mound was working for them and yielding generously until the end. As they left, he took the car to visit a group of workers in a trench at the end of the mound and then to rejoin Professor Kantor in her area. He drove away in one direction, by himself. After a while, as he did not come, Helene Kantor walked over toward the car, which was standing in its tracks. He was reclining on the seat, as if sleeping--which he might do occasionally after lunch. He had instead passed away, as a result of a heart attack, which had obviously caught him suddenly as he was making the round of excavations with the mound in front of him.

We all know what field work meant to him, how passionately he went back to it year after year. And that was because he was at his best in the midst of a field project, no matter how vast and complex.

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He will remain justly famous for his unique contribution to the Diyala project--the first and so far the only large-scale archaeological operation in Mesopotamia undertaken to investigate a whole area at once, with contemporaneous excavations at many different sites and the ambitious purpose of deriving from the ground an entire regional history. Pierre was in charge of much of the actual field work there throughout the thirties, an epic decade, archaeologically speaking, which has radically transformed the field of Mesopotamian archaeology. At Khorsabad, in northern Iraq, he worked in the monumental palaces of the Assyrian kings and went through some major engineering feats in safely removing the colossal sculptures from the site. His major excavation after the Second World War was at Khirbet Kerak in Israel, famous for its Early Bronze material; there he excavated with equal thoroughness and interest the prehistoric levels and an important medieval structure, a Byzantine church. Chogha Mish, in Iran, was to occupy the last ten years of his life: reaching back to the crucial moment when urban civilization becomes crystallized in its historical form--a moment in world history that has come to be known after the term protoliterate, which Pierre had introduced--he brought to light one of the major settlements we know to date for that period.

The publications that derive from his field work are a true mirror of his personality. Mrs. Frankfort once remarked that it seemed characteristic of Pierre's style to bring forth monumental scholarly achievements when people hardly knew he was working on them. He would quietly analyze his data, go without fanfare through a prodigious amount of information, produce a marvelously cogent and clear argumentation--and not even his friends might know just what he was working on until it was all done. His works would emerge as did Athena, jumping from her father's head fully grown--a miracle, except that the miracle was only in the amount of labor that went unassumingly in making the result possible. His site reports are a model of their kind: exhaustive, precise, clear, well documented. His interpretive work has left a clear mark in the discipline, from cultural reconstruction--as evidenced, for instance, by his having introduced the notion and term of protoliterate--to the impressive system of pottery typology which he developed in connection with the Diyala finds. He was not given to overgeneralizations--quite the opposite--so he had a certain mistrust for theoretical elaboration. But even to theory, he contributed greatly with the substance of his thinking, which had a definite bent for a well-structured and systematized articulation.

The pragmatic trait in him was equally in evidence. When called upon to organize activities and institutions, he would once again go at it in his own quiet and determined way, with a strong sense of purpose and a deeply rooted commitment to his task. The master plan for the

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Institute of Archaeology at UCLA was drawn up by him, and in this way too, he has contributed immeasurably to the consolidation of archaeological activities on campus.

That he has left a great deal unfinished while working unabatedly until the end is a clear sign of the momentum that lay behind his professional and personal life. The impetus we all derived from him, personally and professionally, is still with us and will continue to inspire us for a long time to come.

About this text
Courtesy of University Archives, The Bancroft Library, University of California at Berkeley, Berkeley, CA 94720-6000; http://bancroft.berkeley.edu/info
http://content.cdlib.org/view?docId=hb1199n68c&brand=calisphere
Title: 1977, University of California: In Memoriam
By:  University of California (System) Academic Senate, Author
Date: May 1977
Contributing Institution:  University Archives, The Bancroft Library, University of California at Berkeley, Berkeley, CA 94720-6000; http://bancroft.berkeley.edu/info
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