death_date birth_place nationality birth_date article_title name occupation
2004 richmond , new hampshire american june 28 , 1934 nicholas millet
 dr. nicholas byram millet egyptologist
nicholas millet

dr. nicholas byram millet -lrb- june 28 , 1934 -- 2004 -rrb- was an egyptologist affiliated with the royal ontario museum and the university of toronto .
an archaeologist , art historian , linguist , museum curator , administrator , and celebrated teacher , millet was able to make great strides in the daunting task of translating the lost language of the ancient sudan , meroitic .
his careful study of the unusual script led to the decipherment of a number of meroitic words , phrases , and verb formations , and helped shed some light on the social and political constructs of this mysterious civilization .
no one else has approached his level of contribution to knowledge of this important ancient african empire .
millet 's final word on the meroitic language was published posthumously in `` the meroitic inscriptions from gebel adda '' , the journal of the society for the study of egyptian antiquities in 2005 .
millet also excavated in nubia during the aswan dam salvage campaign of the 1960s , where he served as director of the gebel adda expedition for the american research center in egypt .
in egypt he worked at a number of sites , including , in the 1990s , illahun , which is in the fayoum district of egypt -- a site first excavated by sir william flinders petrie in the late 19th century .
millet spearheaded a mummy autopsy in 1977 .
in 1978 , working with dr. peter lewin at the hospital for sick children in toronto , he carried out the world 's first computed tomographic -lrb- ct -rrb- scan of a mummy , one that had been in the rom 's collection since 1910 .
-lrb- millet had previously published a discussion of the decorative scheme on the casing of the mummy that was scanned : `` an old mortality '' , rotunda , vol .
5 , no. 2 , spring 1972 , which was later reprinted , with annotation by r. shaw and g. gibson in rotunda .
vol .
38 , no. 2 , winter 2004/2005 , p. 14-21 . -rrb-
since then such studies have exploded , remaining a topic of great interest to both professional researchers and the general public .
millet 's research and publications were also impressive and included work on the rediscovery of one of the punt reliefs of the temple of hatshepsut at deir el-bahri , the authoritative entry on scarabs in the 1968 edition of the `` encyclopædia britannica , '' a series of excavation reports and a great number of studies on a wide array of egyptological topics .
born june 28 , 1934 at richmond , new hampshire , he received most of his early education abroad , as his father served in the american diplomatic corps .
after completing his b.a. and his master 's at the oriental institute of the university of chicago in 1959 , he spent three years as director of the american research center in egypt -lrb- arce -rrb- , in cairo .
he returned to the united states to complete his ph.d. at yale university .
in 1968 he became assistant professor of egyptology at harvard .
he then moved to canada to the royal ontario museum , toronto , in 1970 where he was appointed associate curator and later full curator in the egyptian department , as well as associate professor of egyptology in the department of near eastern studies of the university of toronto .
millet bequeathed his egyptological library to emory university 's robert w. woodruff library .
