George Heath-Whyte

Biography

George is an Assyriologist whose research focuses on the social and religious history of ancient Assyria and Babylonia, and of the ancient Near East more broadly. He is currently a Junior Research Fellow at Christ Church, Oxford, where he is researching Babylonian poetry and poetic structures. For his PhD, he investigated the ways the Assyrians and Babylonians conceptualised one of their gods – Marduk – the patron deity of the city of Babylon. He has also conducted research into the naming practices of Judean exiles living in Babylonia in the sixth and early fifth centuries BC, and into Babylonian patterns of life in the so-called ‘long sixth century BC’.

From May 2022–September 2024 George was a member of the Tyndale House Old Testament project team, working on the personal names found in the Akkadian cuneiform tablets from the ancient city of Ugarit, on the Syrian coast, from around 1400-1200 BC. These names will be included in a large database of names from various sites whose histories and locations overlap with the periods and regions described in the Hebrew Bible, enabling us to reach a much deeper understanding of Biblical naming practices, and of wider ancient Near Eastern naming practices, than has previously been possible.