It is with deep sadness that the MPIWG learns of the passing of a very dear friend and colleague, Robert K. Englund. In the late 1990s, Bob worked with members of Department I to found the Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (CDLI) and we have been collaborating on this project with him ever since.

Emeritus professor of Assyriology at UCLA and director of the CDLI, Bob was the world’s leading specialist of the proto-cuneiform texts, and published and republished more than 2500 Uruk and Jemdat Nasr period texts alone or with colleagues (primarily in ATU and MSVO). He was also a leading specialist of the social and economic history of the Ur III period, and published groundbreaking articles on the bookkeeping system of the period.

As director of the CDLI, Bob spearheaded the digitization and online dissemination of hundreds of thousands of cuneiform tablets from museums and collections across the globe, and initiated the first fully online journal in the field of Assyriology (CDLJ). He was a meticulous and dedicated teacher and supervisor, who was devoted to the success of his students and the postdoctoral scholars he employed through CDLI.

Our thoughts are with Bob's family—Klaudia, his wife, and three children Dirk Robert Englund, Susanne Anne-Catherine Bauroth, and Nicholas Alexander Englund—and all the friends and colleagues he leaves behind. He will be sorely missed.