Michael Roaf is Emeritus Professor of Near Eastern Archaeology in Munich University in Germany. Previously he was the Director of the British School of Archaeology in Iraq. His interests cover the archaeology and art history of the ancient Near East, particularly of Mesopotamia and Iran from the Neolithic to the Islamic period. Subjects of special study include Assyrian and Iranian relief sculpture, ancient architecture, historical geography, chronology, and metrology. He has carried out extensive archaeological fieldwork throughout the Near East, in Bahrain, Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Turkey. He wrote his doctoral thesis on the “Sculptures and Sculptors at Persepolis,” a study leading to new conclusions regarding the organization of the sculptural work and the stylistic development of the art of Persepolis. His Cultural Atlas of Mesopotamia and the Ancient Near East, although published more than 25 years ago, is still widely used as an introductory textbook for ancient Near Eastern studies and has been translated into German, French, Italian, Japanese, Spanish, Turkish, Czech, Hungarian, and Polish.
Affiliation as of June 2025: Professor emeritus for Near Eastern Archaeology in the Institute of Near Eastern Archaeology, Ludwig-Maximilians University, Munich.
Email: michael.roaf@lrz.uni-muenchen.de
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