Igor M. Diakonoff

Igor Mikhailovich Diakonov
Born	January 12, 1915 Petrograd, Russian Empire
Died	May 2, 1999 St Petersburg, Russia
Residence	Russia
Nationality	Russian
Fields	Ancient Near East and its languages
Institutions	Oriental Institute, St Petersburg Branch
Alma mater	St Petersburg University
Known for	contributions to the study of the Ancient Near East and its languages

Igor Mikhailovich Diakonoff (Russian: И́горь Миха́йлович Дья́конов; 1915–1999) was a Russian historian, linguist, and translator and a renowned expert on the Ancient Near East and its languages. His last name is occasionally spelled Diakonov. His brothers were also distinguished historians.

Diakonoff was brought up in Norway. He graduated from Leningrad University in 1938. In the same year he joined the staff of the Hermitage Museum in Leningrad (now St. Petersburg). In 1949 he published a comprehensive study of Assyria, followed in 1956 by a monograph on Media. Later on, he teamed up with the linguist Sergei Starostin to produce authoritative studies of the Caucasian, Afro-Asiatic, and Hurro-Urartian language families.

Diakonoff was honored in 2003 with a volume published in his memory, edited by Lionel Bender, Gábor Takács, and David Appleyard. In addition to articles on Afro-Asiatic languages, it contains a five-page list of his publications compiled by Takács.

Selected works by Igor M. Diakonoff

• 1965. Semito-Hamitic Languages. Moscow: Nauka.
• 1984. Co-authored with V.P. Neroznak. Phrygian. Delmar, New York: Caravan Books.
• 1985. "On the original home of the speakers of Indo-European." Journal of Indo-European Studies 13, pp. 92–174.
• 1986. Co-authored with Sergei A. Starostin. Hurro-Urartian as an Eastern Caucasian Language. Munich: R. Kitzinger.
• 1988. Afrasian Languages. Moscow: Nauka.
• 1992. Co-authored with Olga Stolbova and Alexander Militarev. Proto-Afrasian and Old Akkadian: A Study in Historical Phonetics. Princeton: Institute of Semitic Studies.
• 1995. Archaic Myths of the Orient and the Occident. Acta universitatis gothoburgensis.
• 1999. The Paths of History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Works in honor of Igor M. Diakonoff

• Dandamayev, M.A., Mogens T. Larsen, and J. Nicholas Postgate (editors). 1982. Societies and Languages of the Ancient Near East: Studies in Honour of I.M. Diakonoff. Warminster: Aris and Philipps.

• Bender, M. Lionel and Gábor Takács (editors). 2003. Selected Comparative-Historical Afrasian Linguistic Studies in Memory of Igor M. Diakonoff. Munich: Lincom Europa.

External links

• Article on Diakonoff from Encyclopædia Iranica
• Diakonoff as a translator (in Russian)
• Indo-European Origins in Southeast Europe at the Wayback Machine (archived August 8, 2007)