Behnam Abu Alsoof

Behnam Nasser Nuaman Abu Alsoof (Arabic: بهنام ناصر نعمان أبو الصوف Behnam Abu alsouf) (born 1931 in Mosul, Iraq, died September 19, 2012)[1] was an Iraqi Assyriologist, anthropologist, historian and writer.

He was born in Mosul to a Christian Syriac family. He completed his elementary and junior high in the city of Mosul. He earned a BA in Archaeology and Civilization from the University of Baghdad in 1955. He completed graduate studies at the University of Cambridge, England[2] and received his doctorate degree in Archaeology and the nucleus of civilization and anthropology in the autumn of 1966. He worked on scientific rescue excavations on a wide basin in the Hamrin Dam (in Diyala Governorate), and Mosul Dam on the Tigris River in the late 1970s to mid-1980s. He revealed several archaeological sites in Iraq, including Tell es-Sawwan in Samarra in Saladin Governorate, which was from the Stone Age.[3] He also led his work at the site of Qainj Agha near Erbil Castle to detect a wide range of archaeological evidence from the Uruk period.[4] He lectured for many years at the roots of material civilization, archeology, and history in a number of Iraq's universities and the Institute of Arab history for Graduate Studies.

He wrote several books, including Pottery of Uruk Period: Origins and Spread (English language),[5] The Shadow of the Ancient Valley (Arabic language), and Iraq: The Unity of the Earth, Civilization and Human (Arabic language).

He died on September 19, 2012, in Amman, Jordan at the age of eighty due to a heart attack.[6]

Behnam Abu Alsoof opposed the idea of Assyrian identity and that Syriac Christians are not descendants of ancient Assyrians, instead promoting the idea they are Aramaic Nestorians.[7]