Laïla Nehmé (born 1966) is a Lebanese-French archaeologist. A specialist in the

archaeology Archaeology or archeology is the study of human activity through the recovery and analysis of material culture. The archaeological record consists of Artifact (archaeology), artifacts, architecture, biofact (archaeology), biofacts or ecofacts, ...

and

epigraphy Epigraphy () is the study of inscriptions, or epigraphs, as writing; it is the science of identifying graphemes, clarifying their meanings, classifying their uses according to dates and cultural contexts, and drawing conclusions about the wr ...

of the

ancient Near East The ancient Near East was home to many cradles of civilization, spanning Mesopotamia, Egypt, Iran (or Persia), Anatolia and the Armenian highlands, the Levant, and the Arabian Peninsula. As such, the fields of ancient Near East studies and Nea ...

, she is known for her research on Nabataean writings, the evolution of the

Nabataean script The Nabataean script is an abjad (consonantal alphabet) that was used to write Nabataean Aramaic and Nabataean Arabic from the second century BC onwards.Petra Petra (; "Rock"), originally known to its inhabitants as Raqmu (Nabataean Aramaic, Nabataean: or , *''Raqēmō''), is an ancient city and archaeological site in southern Jordan. Famous for its rock-cut architecture and water conduit systems, P ...

and

Mada'in Saleh HEGRA, which stands for High-Energy-Gamma-Ray Astronomy, was an atmospheric Cherenkov telescope for Gamma-ray astronomy. With its various types of detectors, HEGRA took data between 1987 and 2002, at which point it was dismantled in order to bu ...

Early life

Laïla Nehmé was born in

Beirut Beirut ( ; ) is the Capital city, capital and largest city of Lebanon. , Greater Beirut has a population of 2.5 million, just under half of Lebanon's population, which makes it the List of largest cities in the Levant region by populatio ...

Lebanon Lebanon, officially the Republic of Lebanon, is a country in the Levant region of West Asia. Situated at the crossroads of the Mediterranean Basin and the Arabian Peninsula, it is bordered by Syria to the north and east, Israel to the south ...

, where she attended high school. A meeting with a restorer of ceramics from a dig in northern Lebanon prompted her to seek higher studies in archaeology. Nehmé attended the Pantheon-Sorbonne University, where Jean-Marie Dentzer guided her research between 1991 and 1994. She wrote her doctoral thesis on Petra in 1994. She began to conduct excavations in Syria and Jordan, and to specialise in the epigraphy of northern Arabic.

Career

Nehmé has been directing excavations at Mada'in Saleh, an ancient Nabataean centre. Her team has discovered several tomb sites, a walled city, comprising mud-brick structures, as well as oases where the granaries and wells supported the local agriculture. She has studied the transition of scripts from the

Nabataean Aramaic Nabataean Aramaic is the extinct Aramaic variety used in inscriptions by the Nabataeans of the Transjordan_(region), East Bank of the Jordan River, the Negev, and the Sinai Peninsula. Compared with other varieties of Aramaic, it is notable for ...

to the

Nabataean Arabic Nabataean Arabic was the dialect of Arabic spoken by the Nabataeans in antiquity. In the first century AD, the Nabataeans wrote their inscriptions, such as the legal texts carved on the façades of the monumental tombs at Mada'in Salih, ancient ...

form that was in use between the third and fifth centuries AD. Nehmé has been credited with categorizing and coining the name of this transitional script.

Awards

* 2010 – Chevalier of the

National Order of Merit (France) National Order of Merit may refer to: * National Order of Merit (Algeria) * National Order of Merit (Bhutan) * National Order of Merit (Brazil) * National Order of Merit (Ecuador) * Ordre national du Mérite (France) * National Order of Merit ...

* 2007 – Prix Clio for Archaeological Research.

Selected works

Articles

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Books

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References

Additional sources

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Nehme, Laila 1966 births French archaeologists Lebanese emigrants to France Living people French women archaeologists