H. W. F. Saggs

Henry William Frederick Saggs (2 December 1920 – 31 August 2005) was an English classicist and orientalist.

Early life and education Saggs was born in East Anglia on 2 December 1920. He attended Clacton County High School, following which he went to King's College London where he studied theology, graduating in 1942.

Saggs fought in the Second World War with the Fleet Air Arm. He suffered a broken back following an air accident in 1944. His brother, Arthur Roy Saggs, a sergeant in the RAF, died on 4 January 1945 in South Africa on a training flight, aged 20.

In 1946, he married Joan Butterworth. They had four daughters: Susan, Rachel, Deborah and Caroline.

Saggs was awarded his PhD degree in 1953 for his dissertation titled A study of city administration in Assyria and Babylonia in the period 705 to 539 B.C. He joined SOAS as a lecturer in Akkadian. His life's work, encouraged by Max Mallowan, was the publication of 243 letters found at the Nimrud archive of cuneiform tablets. These were released as a series of articles in the journal Iraq and the book The Nimrud Letters 1952 (Cuneiform Texts from Nimrud V).