Terence Mitchell

Terence Croft Mitchell (17 June 1929 – 21 April 2019) was a British archaeologist, scholar and curator. He was Keeper of Western Asiatic Antiquities at the British Museum from 1985 to 1989. He specialised in West Semitic languages, Near Eastern archaeology, and also took an interest in Biblical matters from an evangelical Christian position.

Early life and education Mitchell was born on 17 June 1929 to Arthur Croft Mitchell (1872-1956), a landscape artist, and his wife Evelyn Violet Mitchell (née Ware). He was educated at Holderness School, New Hampshire, United States (where he was an evacuee during the Second World War), and at Bradfield College in England Between school and university, he undertook his military service as a craftsman in the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers, British Army from 1947 to 1949. he undertook study at Tyndale House, an evangelical biblical studies library in Cambridge, between 1956 and 1958.

In 1959, Mitchell joined the British Museum as a curator in its Department of Western Asiatic Antiquities: he would remain at the museum until retirement. He edited and prepared for publication the final three reports from Sir Leonard Woolley's excavations at Ur (published in 1962, 1965 and 1972). He had served as lay chair of the Church of England's Chelsea Deanery Synod from 1981 to 1984.

Selected works