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Samuel M. Paley, professor of classics for more than three decades and founder of the UB Program in Judaic Studies, died of brain cancer on March 31 in his New York City home. He was 68.
Paley’s family describes him as “unwavering in the search for excellence and knowledge,” and those who worked with him and were taught by him remember him as an entertaining speaker and gifted teacher who mentored hundreds of students and was deeply respected by scholars around the world.
Paley conducted archaeological expeditions in Cyprus, Israel and Turkey for more than four decades and earned an international reputation as an archaeologist and scholar of the ancient Middle East, especially of the relationship between Assyria and the regions surrounding the ancient Assyrian capitals of Ashur, Nineveh and Nimrud.
He published three books about the Northwest Palace at Nimrud of the brutal 7th-cenury BCE Assyrian warrior King Ashur-Nasir-Pal II, in which he documented the ruins of the palace with meticulous descriptive detail and architectural renderings that demonstrated the king’s psychological manipulation of visitors.
Later, in collaboration with architects and virtual reality specialists, he produced a virtual museum based on this work.
Click here to visit one version of the museum. Another version was established on site at UB in the Center for Computational Research, which permitted visitors to “enter” a virtual version of the palace, accompanied by an avatar who guided them through several rooms. As exact as it was mysterious and emotionally evocative, the palace was one of the first such creations in the field.
During the second Iraq War, Paley assessed the palaces of Nimrud and Nineveh for conservation projects and recently served as a consultant for UNESCO World Heritage sites. He also helped uncover a Hellenistic sanctuary and late Bronze Age remains on the Phlamoudhi plain in Cyprus.
He participated in several digs in Israel—at Tel Nagilah, Tel Arad and Tel Dan—and later became co-director of research on early, middle and late Bronze Age settlements in west-central Israel, and was part of two projects that explored 6,000 years of civilization in central Turkey.
UB students frequently accompanied Paley on his archaeological excavations abroad. He led his most recent excavation last summer, after which his illness was diagnosed and he was forced to take a medical leave from the university.
Paley was born in Manchester, N.H., and raised in Boston. He graduated from New York University and received an MA in art history and archaeology, and an MPhil and PhD in Middle Eastern languages and literatures, all from Columbia University. He joined the UB classics department 33 years ago and founded the Judaic Studies program in 1992.
John Peradotto, SUNY Distinguished Teaching Professor Emeritus, former Andrew V.V. Raymond Chair and Paley’s longtime colleague in the Department of Classics, recalled him as a gifted colleague and friend.
"Back in the ’70s, when as chair of Classics I had the responsibility of hiring a director of Judaic Studies,” Peradotto says, “I considered it a major stroke of luck to find in Sam such a wide range of scholarly skills. Despite the differences in our areas of specialization, I remember with pleasure our conversations together, whether it was on the etymology of ‘Nephilim’ (i.e., the biblical ‘fallen ones’—arguably) or the pedagogic potential of the Internet. He will be sorely missed."
Another colleague, Stephen Dyson, professor and former department chair, noted that as a scholar, Paley blended “the learned world of the great rabbis with the rigorous, scientific scholarship in the study of the ancient Near East that developed in Germany in the late 19th century.”
“He knew his languages, his archaeology and his history,” Dyson said. “I dabbled a bit in that area when I was younger, and have always been somewhat awed by those who mastered it. Sam's passing is a great loss for his friends and for those who appreciate the importance of a tradition of rigorous humanistic scholarship at UB.”
Paley was religious director of Temple Emanu-El in Batavia, and a member of the Board of Directors of the American Archaeological Research Institute in Iraq. Over the years, he received dozens of grants and awards in support and recognition of his work, including the SUNY Chancellor’s Award for Internationalization.
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