Seton Lloyd

Seton Lloyd trained as an architect before turning to archaeology. He dug in Egypt and Iraq in the 1930s and during and after the Second World War served as adviser to Iraq's Directorate General of Antiquities, working closely with Iraqi colleagues such as Fuad Safar and Taha Baqir.

With Safar he excavated Eridu from 1946 to 1949, revealing eighteen superimposed temple levels from about 5400 BCE to the Ur III period. He later directed the British Institute of Archaeology at Ankara and excavated Beycesultan in Turkey. His books include The Archaeology of Mesopotamia and Foundations in the Dust, a history of Mesopotamian exploration. He died in Faringdon, England, in 1996.

The Eridu results were important because the Sumerian King List says kingship first came down from heaven to Eridu. The excavations did not prove the legend, but they showed that the site held one of the longest continuous sequences of temples anywhere, which fits the Sumerians' own view of it as their oldest holy city.