Terence Mitchell

Mitchell was born on 17 June 1929 to Arthur Croft Mitchell (1872-1956), a landscape artist, and his wife Evelyn Violet Mitchell (née Ware).[1][2] 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[1][3] 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.[1] He went on to study archaeology and anthropology at St Catharine's College, Cambridge.[1][3] Among his university tutors was Margaret Munn-Rankin, who inspired him to specialise in the ancient Near East.[3]

From 1954 to 1956, he was an assistant master (teacher) at St Catherine's School, a boarding school in Almondsbury, Gloucestershire.[1] A devout Christian,[4] he undertook study at Tyndale House, an evangelical biblical studies library in Cambridge, between 1956 and 1958.[1] He then worked as the "European representative" for the Australian Institute of Archaeology, a biblical archaeology organisation, from 1958 to 1959.[3][5]

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.[1][6] He edited and prepared for publication the final three reports from Sir Leonard Woolley's excavations at Ur (published in 1962, 1965 and 1972).[1][3] He joined the committee of the Palestine Exploration Fund in 1968, and served as its Honorary Librarian from 1972 to 1985.[4] At the British Museum, he was promoted to deputy keeper of his department in 1974, and was acting keeper from 1983 to 1985.[3] He was appointed Keeper of Western Asiatic Antiquities in 1985, in succession to Edmond Sollberger.[1] In addition to leading the department, he researched and published The Bible in the British Museum (1988).[3] He retired in 1989.[6]

Mitchell never married nor had any children.[1]

An evangelical Christian,[3] he was a member of Westminster Chapel in the last three decades of his life.[7] He had served as lay chair of the Church of England's Chelsea Deanery Synod from 1981 to 1984.[1] He was chair of Faith and Thought, a Christian creationist society, from 1986 to 2009.[1]

Mitchel died on 21 April 2019, aged 89.[4] A Festschrift had been prepared to celebrate his 90th birthday, but he died before it was published.[8]

• Woolley, Leonard (1962). Mitchell, T. C. (ed.). Ur Excavations, IX: The Neo-Babylonian and Persian Periods. London: The British Museum.
• Woolley, Leonard (1965). Mitchell, T. C. (ed.). Ur Excavations, VIII: The Kassite Period and the Period of the Assyrian Kings. London: The British Museum.
• Mitchell, T. C. (1969). Sumerian art: illustrated by objects from Ur and Al-'Ubaid. London: The British Museum Press.
• Woolley, Leonard; Mallowan, Max (1976). Mitchell, T. C. (ed.). Ur excavations, VII: The Old Babylonian period. London: British Museum Publications.
• Mitchell, T. C. (1988). Biblical archaeology: documents from the British Museum. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0521363235.
• Mitchell, T. C. (1988). The Bible in the British Museum: interpreting the evidence. London: The British Museum Press.
• T. C. Mitchell (1992). "29: Israel and Judah from the coming of Assyrian domination until the fall of Samaria, and the struggle for independence in Judah (c. 750–700 B.C.)". In John Boardman; I. E. S. Edwards; E. Sollberger; N. G. L. Hammond (eds.). The Cambridge Ancient History, Volume 3, Part 2: The Assyrian and Babylonian Empires and Other States of the Near East, from the Eighth to the Sixth Centuries BC. Cambridge University Press. pp. 322–370. ISBN 978-0521227179.
• T. C. Mitchell (1992). "30: Judah until the fall of Jerusalem (c. 700–586 B.C.)". In John Boardman; I. E. S. Edwards; E. Sollberger; N. G. L. Hammond (eds.). The Cambridge Ancient History, Volume 3, Part 2: The Assyrian and Babylonian Empires and Other States of the Near East, from the Eighth to the Sixth Centuries BC. Cambridge University Press. pp. 371–409. ISBN 978-0521227179.
• T. C. Mitchell (1992). "31: The Babylonian Exile and the restoration of the Jews in Palestine (586–c. 500 B.C.)". In John Boardman; I. E. S. Edwards; E. Sollberger; N. G. L. Hammond (eds.). The Cambridge Ancient History, Volume 3, Part 2: The Assyrian and Babylonian Empires and Other States of the Near East, from the Eighth to the Sixth Centuries BC. Cambridge University Press. pp. 410–460. ISBN 978-0521227179.
• Mitchell, T. C.; Searight, Ann (2008). Catalogue of the Western Asiatic seals in the British Museum: Stamp seals III: impressions of stamp seals on cuneiform tablets, clay bullae, and jar handles. Leiden: Brill. ISBN 978-9004156159.