Yohanan Aharoni

Yohanan Aharoni was born in 1919 in Frankfurt (Oder)

Aharoni was born Yohanan Aronheim on 7 June 1919 in Frankfurt (Oder), Germany. His father Heinrich was a lawyer and his mother was Eugenia Simon. He immigrated to the Land of Israel in 1933, after the Nazis came to power.

He studied at the Hebrew Reali School in Haifa and at the Mikve Yisrael agricultural school. He married Miriam Gross and was among the founders of kibbutz Alonim, where he lived until 1947. He then studied archaeology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem under Benjamin Mazar and earned his doctorate in 1957.

He began teaching at the Hebrew University in 1954 and became an associate professor in 1966. In 1968 he moved to Tel Aviv University, where he headed the Department of Near East Studies and set up the Institute of Archaeology. He led excavations at Ramat Rachel, Tel Arad, Tel Be'er Sheva, Tel Hazor and Lachish, and took part in finding the Bar Kokhba caves.

His surveys led him to support the peaceful settlement model of the Israelite tribes, against the rapid conquest view held by Yigael Yadin. He died of cancer on 9 February 1976. A street in Be'er Sheva is named after him.