Julius Euting

Julius Euting (1839–1913) was one of the foremost Semitic epigraphists of his generation. A colorful character with an adventurous streak, he set out from Damascus in 1883 with the French-Alsatian explorer, Charles Huber, on a dangerous expedition into the deserts of northern Arabia in quest of ancient inscriptions and graffiti. Along the way, Euting kept a meticulous record of his many discoveries in notebooks and sketchbooks, in which he put his artistic talent to prolific use. This graphic and personal record, never before published in English, includes the story of how the famous Tayma Stele was discovered and how the first thorough record of the Nabataean inscriptions at Madā’in Sālih was made. It is a travel account that entitles Euting to a prominent place among 19th-century explorers of Arabia.

Christopher Metcalf is of Anglo-German parentage, and came to Britain in 2003 to study classical and ancient Near Eastern languages, graduating with a DPhil from the University of Oxford. His research interests lie in the literatures and religions of early Greece and the ancient Near East; in these areas he has published The Gods Rich in Praise: Early Greek and Mesopotamian Religious Poetry (2015), and Sumerian Literary Texts in the Schøyen Collection Volume I: Literary Sources on Old Babylonian Religion (2019). He is now working on a book entitled: Servant, Lover, Fool: Three Myths of Ancient Kingship. He has been a Fellow of The Queen’s College, Oxford, since 2016.