National Museum of Iraq
Selma Al-Radi was born in Baghdad, Iraq, but her childhood was spent in Iran and later in India, where her father Muhammed Selim Al-Radi was the Iraqi Ambassador. She obtained her BA at the University of Cambridge in Akkadian, Hebrew and Persian. Her tutor was Joan Oates, a noted Mesopotamian archaeologist. After graduation, she returned to Baghdad, where she began working in the National Museum of Iraq.