Itamar Singer

Itamar Singer (; November 26, 1946 – September 19, 2012) was an Israeli author and historian of Jewish-Romanian origin. He is known for his research of the Ancient Near East and as a leading Hittitologist, pioneering the study of this ancient Anatolians culture in Israel and elucidating the tensions which brought about its demise.

Personal background Itamar Singer was born on November 26, 1946, in Dej, in the multiethnic Transylvanian region of Romania. He was the son of Zoltán and Gertrude Singer. The Hungarian-speaking family moved to Cluj (Kolozsvár) when Singer was five years old. They relocated to Israel in 1958, where they settled in the new town of Holon.

Singer married Argentinean-born Egyptologist, Dr. Graciela Noemi Gestoso. His publications numbered over a hundred papers in academic journals, to which he continued to contribute well into retirement. For several years he was a member of the editorial board of the scholarly journal Antiguo Oriente.

In 2010, Itamar Singer was awarded the EMET Prize.

Selected publications Singer, Itamar. The Hittite KI.LAM Festival, 2 Vols, Harrassowitz, 1983, 1984. Singer, Itamar and Izre'el, Shlomo. The General's Letter from Ugarit: A Linguistic and Historical Reevaluation of RS 20.33, Tel Aviv University, 1990. Singer, Itamar. Muwatalli's Prayer, ASOR, 1996. Singer, Itamar. Hittite Prayers, Society of Biblical Literature, 2002. Singer, Itamar. The Hittites and their Culture (in Hebrew), Jerusalem, 2009. Singer, Itamar. The Calm before the Storm: Selected Writings of Itamar Singer on the End of the Late Bronze Age in Anatolia and the Levant, Society of Biblical Literature, 2010. Singer, Itamar. The failed reforms of Akhenaten and Muwatalli, British Museum Studies in Ancient Egypt and Sudan (BMSAES) 6 (2006), pp.37–58