Nimet Özgüç

Career

Immediately upon her graduation, Dinçer, who was encouraged by Afet İnan, began working as an assistant teacher of history at Ankara University, while she continued with her graduate studies. Around 1941, she began working on excavations in the Samsun Province including sites at Dündartepe, Kale Doruğu Höyüğü near Kavak and Tekkeköy. Studying with Hans Gustav Güterbock, she completed her thesis, Anadolu Damga Mühürleri (Anatolian Stamp Seals) in 1943, earning her doctorate in 1944, and that same year, married a fellow archaeologist, Tahsin Özgüç. Along with her husband, she began working on numerous excavations, including the survey of Elbistan in 1947 for the Turkish Historical Society. In a mound known as Karahöyük they discovered an inscription in Hieroglyphic Luwian on a stele describing the fall of the Hittite Empire. The following year, the couple were again sent by the Historical Society to excavate Kültepe near Kayseri. The site was one of the most important archaeological sites in Turkey, yielding tablets and artifacts which documented its place as a major trading city during the period from 2000-1700BC for the Anatolian plateau.

In 1949, Özgüç became associate professor at Ankara University and she became a full professor in 1958. She continued her work with her husband at Kültepe, and on such excavations as Frakdin (1954) and Altintepe (1959), until 1962, when she began her own project examining the Hittite center at Acemhöyük near Niğde. In 1962, she proved that an ivory artifacts presented to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1930, had originated in Acemhöyük.

In 1972, Özgüç began working at Tepebagları Höyük and worked on rescue of the site until 1975. She found evidence that the site had been occupied from the Iron Age to the Byzantine Era. Özgüç began work on the project at Samsat Höyük in the Adıyaman Province in 1978, during the Lower Euphrates Rescue project during the construction of the Karakaya and Atatürk Dams. She discovered significant evidence that the site was one of the two main towns in the region and an important cultural center in the Early Bronze Age, through the transition to the Middle Bronze Age. She was honored with the Guillaume Bude Medal of the Collège de France in 1980.

Özgüç retired from Ankara University in 1984, but continued her scientific work and publishing. She was granted an honorary membership to the Turkish Academy of Sciences in 1996 and was a co-awardee with Halet Çambel of the Grand Prize of the Ministry of Culture and Tourism of 2010 for her contributions to archaeology in the country. The award was presented by President Abdullah Gül on 9 February 2011. That same year, a book, Cumhuriyetin Çocukları—Arkeolojinin Büyükleri: Nimet Özgüç – Tahsin Özgüç (The Children of the Republic—The Elders of Archaeology: Nimet Özgüç – Tahsin Özgüç) was published by Nursel Duruel. The book paid homage to the importance of the Özgüçs in establishing the field of archaeology in the country.

Death and legacy

Özgüç died on 23 December 2015 in Ankara and her funeral was held at Kocatepe Mosque on 25 December.