Nadia Aït Saïd-Ghanem

Nadia Aït Saïd-Ghanem is a provenance researcher and cuneiformist.

She is a graduate of SOAS, with a BA in Arabic (with Akkadian and Sumerian) and a PhD in the languages of the Near and Middle East (Akkadian, Sumerian, Arabic). Her MA was obtained at the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes in Paris, where she studied Akkadian, Arabic, Ge’ez, and comparative linguistics.

Between 2019 and 2023, she was a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow at SOAS. Her primary research interests are cuneiform, Arabic grammatical theory, and the provenance history of cuneiform tablets purchased on the antiquities market by European and American museums between 1884 and 1940.

Since her fellowship, she has been investigating the correspondence of Iraqi antiquities dealers preserved in museum archives to study the smuggling of cuneiform tablets they operated in the late 19th and early 20th century.

Recent publications

• Who Owns the Octagonal Prism of Sennacherib BM 103000? A Dealers’ Dispute in France’s Law Courts in 1910, Iraq vol. 85, pp.1-18
• Ibrahim Elias Gejou: Putting A Name to a Face, Journal Asiatique 311, vol 1, 2023, pp.145-152
• Ibrahim Gejou (1868-1942), un personnage local dans l’Histoire mondiale, Cahier n°28, Association des Amis du musée et du Patrimoine, Cosne-Cours-sur-Loire (septembre 2023)
• The Excavation of Building B50, in Preliminary Report on the XVITH and XVIITH  Campaigns at Larsa, Iraq, co-authored with Régis Vallet and Matisse Vobaure, in Larsa-‘Uwaili Annual Report 2021
• Elias Gejou, Father of the antiquities Dealer Ibrahim Elias Gejou, Sumer vol 68, pp.11-18
• Smuggling Cuneiform Tablets in Aniseed Bags: Profile of a Sale Made by Elias Gejou to the British Museum in 1896, Bulletin of the History of Archaeology, 32(1):2 (2022), pp.1-12 (Open Access Article)
• Women Antiquities Dealers in 19th century Baghdad, The Ancient Near East Today, Vol. XI, November 2022.
• Henri Svoboda in the Yale Babylonian Collection, Provenance Research Promotion on the YBC Official Instagram account, April 2022,  https://www.instagram.com/p/CcA4-Q1OV8M/
• When Things Go Wrong: Smuggling Artefacts from Baghdad to London in the late 19th Century, SOAS History Blog, 4 February 2022
• Joseph Svoboda: Selling Clay Tablets in Nineteenth-Century Baghdad, SOAS History Blog, 2 July 2021
• Ibrahim Elias Gejou and Old Babylonian Omens, SOAS History Blog, 6 May 2021
• BM 87655 a fragment of Old Babylonian oil omens, NABU 2020, vol. 4/112, pp.230-233
• SM 36013 – an account of goods (aklum) on a tirānu model in the Slemani  Museum, NABU 2020, vol 3/87, pp.182-183
• BM 87642: an Old Babylonian oil omen fragment about marriage, NABU 2020,  vol 2/62, pp. 130-132
• The Accusative-Initial Sentence in YOS 10 Omens, Revue d'assyriologie et d'archéologie orientale, vol 113, pp.139-150
• Reassessing the Casus Pendens: a case study of Old Babylonian omens, Revue d'assyriologie et d'archéologie orientale, vol 112, pp.91-101

Cuneiform; archaeology of Iraq; provenance research; 19th century antiquities dealers; illicit trade of Iraq’s tangible cultural heritage; Arabic grammatical theory