Itamar Singer

Itamar Singer was born in 1946 in Dej

Singer was born in 1946 in Dej, Romania, to Zoltán and Gertrude Singer, a Hungarian-speaking family. His parents were Holocaust survivors, and his father led the local Zionist movement and was jailed for it under communist rule. The family moved to Cluj when he was 5 and immigrated to Israel in 1958, settling in Holon.

He studied archaeology and geography at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem from 1965 to 1968. He then earned a master's degree at Tel Aviv University while serving in the army. From 1973 he studied Hittitology with Heinrich Otten at the University of Marburg, completing his doctorate on the KI.LAM festival in 1978.

From 1975 he was on the staff of Tel Aviv University's Department of Archaeology and Near Eastern Cultures, and he also taught at other Israeli universities. He became a full professor in 1996 and was a visiting lecturer in London, Paris, Tokyo, Chicago and elsewhere. His research covered Anatolia and the Levant, Egyptian rule in Canaan, the Philistines and the fall of the Hittite empire.

He retired as professor emeritus in 2008 because of poor health and kept publishing afterward. He received the EMET Prize in 2010. He was married to Egyptologist Graciela Noemi Gestoso and died in 2012.