Hanan Eshel

Hanan Eshel was born in 1958 in Rehovot

Hanan Eshel was born in Rehovot on July 25, 1958. His mother Shulamit came from the Rivlin family of Jerusalem, and his father was Professor Yaakov Eshel. He studied at the Or Etzion yeshiva high school.

He served in the Nahal from 1977 to 1980, where he met his wife Esther Eshel, an epigraphist. After the army the couple were among the founders of Ofra. He worked as a guide at the Ofra field school until 1988.

He studied at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, earning a B.A. in 1984 and a Ph.D. in 1993 on the Samaritans. In 1990 he began teaching at Bar-Ilan University, where he became associate professor in 1999 and headed his department from 2002 to 2004.

He excavated refuge caves in the Judaean Desert, finding documents from the Bar Kokhba period, and dug at Qumran with Magen Broshi. In 2005 he bought a Leviticus fragment with Bar-Ilan funds and later gave it to the Israel Antiquities Authority. The Authority said he broke the antiquities law, but the affair ended without an indictment.

He died of cancer in Jerusalem on April 8, 2010, and was buried at Kibbutz Ma'ale HaHamisha.