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Max Freiherr von Oppenheim (July 15, 1860, Köln - November 17, 1946, Landshut) was a German ancient historian, and archaeologist, "the last of the great amateur archaeological explorers of the Near East."[1].
He was a son of Albert Freiherr von Oppenheim. Abandoning his career in diplomacy, he financed his own excavations at Tell Halaf in 1911-13 and 1929. During World War I, Oppenheim le the Intelligence Bureau for the East and was closely associated with German plans to intiate and support a rebellion in India and in Egypt. From his works in archaeology, he personally owned a large portion of the finds as custom then was, and he hoped that the Staatliche Museen, Berlin, would acquire the material which included some of the most important Neo-Hittite sculptural reliefs. Disappointed in his negotiations, he opened his own museum in an abandoned factory in Berlin in 1930.; consequently, when measures were taken to protect the national collections during World War II, his Halafian material was not included: it was obliterated in a bombing raid in November 1943. Some fragments preserved in East German museum basements were reassembled after the reunification of Germany.
- ^ Gary Beckman, reviewing Nadia Cholidis and Lutz Martin, Der Tell Halaf und sein Ausgräber Max Freiherr von Oppenheim: Kopf hoch! Mut hoch! und Humor hoch! (Mainz) 2002, in Journal of the American Oriental Society 123.1 (January 2003), p. 253.
[edit] Publications
- Vom Mittelmeer zum persischen Golf durch den Haurän, die syrsche Wüste und Mesopotamien, 2 vols., 1899
- Rabeh und Tschadseegebiet, 1902
- Max von Oppenheim: Der Tell Halaf und die verschleierte Göttin. Leipzig: Hinrichs 1908.
- Max von Oppenheim: Die Revolutionierung der islamischen Gebiete unserer Feinde. 1914.
- Max von Oppenheim: Der Tell Halaf: Eine neue Kultur im ältesten Mesopotamien. F.A. Brockhaus, Leipzig 1931.
- Tell Halaf I, 1943 (with Hubert Schmidt)
- Tell Halaf II, 1950 (with R. Naumann)
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