Muazzez İlmiye Çığ (née İtil; 20 June 1914 – 17 November 2024) was a Turkish librarian, writer, and supercentenarian who specialised in the study of Hittites and Sumerian civilization.

Among her teachers were two of the period's most eminent scholars of Hittite culture and history, Hans Gustav Güterbock and Benno Landsberger, both Hitler-era German-Jewish refugees, who spent World War II as professors in Turkey.

In the intervening years, due to her efforts in the deciphering and publication of the tablets, the Museum became a Middle Eastern languages learning center attended by ancient history researchers from every part of the world.

She has gained renown in her profession for the diligent and systematic investigation evident in her books, scholarly papers and general interest articles published in magazines and newspapers such as Belleten and Bilim ve Ütopya.

Together with his colleagues Hatice Kızılyay and Fritz Rudolf Kraus, she cleaned, classified and numbered thousands of tablets written in Sumerian, Akkadian and Hittite languages in the museum's warehouse.

[4] In the intervening years, thanks to her efforts in deciphering and publishing the tablets, the museum has become a center for the study of Middle Eastern languages, a place of reference for ancient history researchers from all over the world.

[8] Muazzez İlmiye Çığ's brother, Turan İtil was a psychiatrist worked at the University of Missouri, on LSD, a psychedelic drug.

[10][11] In 1984, Nokta magazine claimed that Turan İtil tortured the prisoners by using experimental drugs who were convicted due to their participation in the 1970s political violence.

[13] In 1990, the headquarters of the HZİ Foundation was attacked by Dev Sol, the predecessor of the Revolutionary People's Liberation Party/Front because of cruel experimentation on human test subjects.