Yehuda D. Nevo

Yehuda D. Nevo was born in 1932 in Haifa

Nevo was born in Haifa in 1932 to a Jewish family. His father died when he was a baby, and his mother chose not to raise him. He lived with several foster families and grew up in the Nachshonim youth company of Kibbutz Beit Alfa.

In the army he became an officer without finishing an officer course. In 1951 he and two other soldiers were captured by Syrian forces, and he came home in a prisoner exchange at the end of that year. In 1953 he was among the first fighters of Unit 101 and took part in the Kibbia raid, after which he left the unit.

After his discharge he worked as a shepherd at Beit Alfa and as a publisher in Jerusalem. He then turned to archaeology and carried out surveys in the Hula Valley and around Kibbutz Metzer. He changed his surname from Dayan to Nevo to stop questions about a link to Moshe Dayan.

Nevo lived at Sde Boker and worked in the Negev Archaeological Project of the Hebrew University. In 1981 his group found rock inscriptions in early Arabic script near Sde Boker, at a site called The Lost City. With Judith Koren of the University of Haifa, he then reexamined the origins of Islam.

Nevo became ill and took his own life on February 12, 1992. He was buried at Kibbutz Sde Boker, near The Lost City. His last article on the subject appeared in 1994.