Markus Hilgert appointed new director of the Museum of the Ancient Near East in Berlin
Press release from 06/18/2013
The Board of Trustees of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation today unanimously appointed Professor Dr Markus Hilgert, born in 1969, as the new Director of the Museum of the Ancient Near East at the National Museums in Berlin - Prussian Cultural Heritage. He succeeds Professor Dr Beate Salje, who is retiring at the end of February 2014.
Markus Hilgert has been Professor of Assyriology specialising in Sumerology at the Ruprecht Karls University of Heidelberg since 2007. He is also the designated director of the "Heidelberg Centre for Cultural Heritage" at the University of Heidelberg, which has an important archaeological collection. He is a corresponding member of the German Archaeological Institute and has been Scientific Director of the Uruk-Warka Collection of the German Archaeological Institute at the University of Heidelberg since 2009. He is also a full member of the European Academy of Sciences and Arts and Chairman of the German Orient Society.
Markus Hilgert studied Ancient Near Eastern Studies, Near Eastern Archaeology, Semitic Studies and Comparative Religious Studies at the Philipps University of Marburg, the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich and the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago from 1990 to 1996. He received his doctorate in 1999 with the thesis "Akkadian in the Ur III Period". He habilitated in 2004 at the Friedrich Schiller University in Jena, where he also worked as an assistant. Hilgert has received numerous prizes, awards and scholarships for his academic work. His academic career has been enriched by several visiting and deputy professorships in Chicago, Leipzig, Moscow and Freiburg. He is excellently networked in the academic world through numerous interdisciplinary research projects.
He played a key role in the conception of the current exhibition "Uruk - 5000 Years of Megacity" (Pergamon Museum, Museum Island Berlin, until 8 September 2013). He also sees the museum as a place for communicating the latest research findings and interdisciplinary collaboration. His focus is on the museum's rich collections, the digital cataloguing and scientific development of which are central tasks of the museum. One challenge of his term of office will be to keep the Museum of the Ancient Near East in the public eye during the corresponding construction phase of the Pergamonmuseum (2019 to 2025 / 26) and to conceptualise the new presentation of the collection. He is also focussing on the inclusion of new media.