Nicholas Millet

Dr. Nicholas Byram Millet (June 28, 1934 – 2004) was an Egyptologist affiliated with the Royal Ontario Museum and the University of Toronto. An archaeologist, art historian, linguist, museum curator, administrator, and celebrated teacher, Millet was able to make great strides in the daunting task of translating the lost language of the ancient Sudan, Meroitic. His careful study of the unusual script led to the decipherment of a number of Meroitic words, phrases, and verb formations, and helped shed some light on the social and political constructs of this mysterious civilization. No one else has approached his level of contribution to knowledge of this important ancient African empire. Millet's final word on the Meroitic language was published posthumously in "The Meroitic Inscriptions from Gebel Adda", The Journal of the Society for the Study of Egyptian Antiquities in 2005.

Millet also excavated in Nubia during the Aswan Dam salvage campaign of the 1960s, where he served as director of the Gebel Adda Expedition for the American Research Center in Egypt. In Egypt he worked at a number of sites, including, in the 1990s, Illahun, which is in the Fayoum district of Egypt — a site first excavated by Sir William Flinders Petrie in the late 19th century.