Abstract
Blahoslav Hruška was born on 5 May 1945 in Český Brod.He was born into a well-off medical family.In the years 1959-1962 he attended a grammar school in Prague 8, Libeň.In 1962 Blahoslav passed his final high school examination with distinction. He decided to go to the Faculty of Arts of Charles University.He decided to study Cuneiform Studies and Archaeology .Hruška was a gifted and diligent student.
He started publishing very early on. At the age of twenty he began to publish little newspaper and magazine articles.Already those first works show Hruška's enormous gift for storytelling, his exquisite language and above all his capability to lucidly and entertainingly explain scholarly issues to the general public.In the autumn of 1967 he became a research fellow in the Department of Asian and African Studies of the Faculty of Arts and specialized in Sumerology.In the years 1968-1971 he was a lecturer in the Department of Asian and African Studies of the Faculty of Arts.Already on 1 October 1970 he took up a position at the Oriental Institute of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences.
In the years 1971-1973 he worked there as a research associate and later as a senior research associate. From 1973 to 1989 he acted as the executive editor of the scholarly journal Archiv orientální published by the Institute.From October to December 1981 Blahoslav stayed in Iraq on an archaeological field survey around Mosul and Haditha.In the years 1993-2008 he taught part-time at the Department of Religious Studies of the Hussite Theological Faculty of Charles University in Prague.
In 1995 he was appointed as Associate Professor of Religious Studies and Theory of Religion at the Hussite Theological Faculty.On 25 April 2005 the President of the Czech Republic appointed Blahoslav as a University Professor of History effective from 1 May 2005.Blahoslav Hruška died in the night of 26 June 2008 during his stay at a conference organized by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation in Slovakia.