With sadness, we are writing to share the news that Walter “Wally” E. Aufrecht passed away in Calgary, Canada the morning of Saturday, September 21, 2024.
Wally Aufrecht made numerous contributions to the field of Near Eastern and biblical studies, especially in philology and epigraphy. Born in Illinois, he began his academic career completing an undergraduate degree at Illinois Wesleyan University (1964). His passion for Near Eastern studies and epigraphy truly emerged while completing an S.T.B. (1967) at Harvard Divinity School. There, he was mentored by Frank Moore Cross, a mentorship that evolved into a lifelong friendship. After his time at Harvard, he completed an MA at Boston University (1970) and a PhD at the University of Toronto in 1979, with his thesis “Surrogates for the Divine Names in the Palestinian Targums to Exodus”. He was Dean of Men at Victoria College at the University of Toronto from 1976-1981, where he got to know Northrop Frye and gained an appreciation for the importance of mentoring students. In 1981, he moved to Alberta, where he took up a position at the University of Lethbridge, which he held until his retirement in 2008.
Wally was perhaps best known for his pioneering work on the Ammonite language, encapsulated by the second edition of his A Corpus of Ammonite Inscriptions, published by Eisenbrauns in 2019. His chapters on Ammonite religion, texts, and language in MacDonald and Younker’s Ancient Ammon are good summations of his larger body of work on those topics. His contributions were not limited to the Transjordanian languages, however. His earlier works concentrated on Aramaic and he made numerous contributions to Targumic studies, an interest of which he retained throughout his career, especially through his involvement with the Newsletter for Targumic and Cognate Studies. Some of the noteworthy books he edited or co-edited include Studies in the Book of Job (1985), Aspects of Urbanism in Antiquity (1997), and “An Eye For Form: Epigraphic Essays in Honor of Frank Moore Cross (2014).
While epigraphy was his specialization, Wally participated in field archaeology projects in Israel, Turkey, and elsewhere. He had fond memories of working at Tel Dan and at Oylum Höyük. His longest running affiliation was with the Tel Miqne-Ekron excavations led by Seymour Gitin and Trude Dothan. Wally helped set up the data management systems that were used throughout the course of the project. While in Israel, he spent much time at the W.F. Albright Institute of Archaeological Research, an organization he cared about deeply. The courtyard garden was one of his favourite places, where he could hold court and meet the many scholars who traveled through the Albright’s doors.
Teaching was one of Wally’s greatest passions and his dedication to student training was unparalleled. He was committed to making sure that undergraduate students had the best possible learning experiences. He was particularly committed to teaching biblical Hebrew and making sure that ancient language courses were widely available to interested students of all backgrounds. Wally found it especially funny that as a member of the University of Lethbridge Geography Department, he managed to make ancient Hebrew a regular offering, a situation that continues to this day. Those of us who had Wally as a teacher benefited from mentorship that lasted a lifetime, not just while we were at the University of Lethbridge.
Those who knew Wally will remember his truly remarkable sense of humour. He was completely irreverent, and did not suffer fools gladly. His wit was razor sharp, often biting, usually shocking, and generally provocative. When Wally wasn’t excitedly ranting about the horrors of university administrators or conservative politicians, he was usually doubled over with laughter, seeing the comedy in almost everything. Wally was a cinephile with an almost encyclopedic knowledge of movies, especially Hollywood ones. He was an avid traveler, an expert chef, and a voracious reader of everything from archaeological theory to pulp horror fiction. However, his greatest love was reserved for Bassett Hounds and until his health prevented it, one could expect to find a Basset, slowly, following him around his house.
In January 2020, colleagues and friends of Wally’s gathered in Waterton National Park to celebrate his contributions to the study of ancient Jordan at the inaugural “W.E. Aufrecht Occasional Workshops in Archaeology”. For many of us, it was our last conference before the COVID-19 Pandemic paused such meetings. The workshop offered us an opportunity to reflect on Wally’s contributions in his research, teaching, and service. The next meeting is in its planning phase and through these workshops we hope to continue to celebrate Wally’s legacy.
Wally is survived by the many students who contribute to Near Eastern studies because of his support. We were fortunate enough to have had such a caring mentor who instilled in us a dedication to research, a commitment to creating scholarly tools that would open the field to more people, and the understanding that teaching involved investing in students beyond the classroom. Though we will miss Wally dearly, he will forever be in our hearts as we carry on his legacy with our own research, teaching, and service to scholarly societies. A celebration of his life is expected in 2025.
Kevin McGeough & Shawn Bubel
University of Lethbridge