top of page
Dr. Netanel Anor
Post Doctoral Fellow (2016-2017)

Netanel Anor Completed his B.A in General History at the Hebrew University in 2007.  His training continued at the department of Ancient Near East of the Leiden University and at Institute of Archaeology and Civilizations of the Ancient Near East at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. In 2010 he received his M.A after having competed a thesis titled: “Reading the Oil Omens: a Study of Practice and Record of Mesopotamian Lecanomancy” under the supervision of Prof. Nathan Wasserman. He then joined the Excellence Cluster “Topoi” at Freie Universität Berlin where he was a doctoral fellow under the supervision of Prof. Markham J. Geller. He defended his thesis titled: “The Babylonian Extispicy Rituals: Theory and Practice” in 2016 (magna cum laude). He also contributed to several academic enterprises such as the GIF project SEAL Sources of Early Akkadian Literature and the ISF project Corpus of the Mesopotamian Lamentation-Priest where he acted as a research assistant and to the historical review Hayo Haya where he acted as a co-editor. His current fields of interest are the different branches of Mesopotamian scholarship, especially those relate to divination. He is also involved in research about the history and historiography of the oriental disciplines.

Since 2016 he is a joint post-doctoral fellow at Sonia and Marco Nadler Institute of Archaeology of Tel Aviv University and at the Track in Archaeomaterial Sciences and Conservation at the Ben Gurion University of the Negev, where he is conducting a research project titled: The Transmission of Omen Literature to the Syro-Anatolian districts of the Late Bronze Age. This study acts as an integral part of Yoram Cohen and Yuval Goren’s ISF funded study The Production and Dissemination of Scholarly and School Textual Materials during the Late Bronze Age: An Integrated Research Project. The main objective of Netanel’s project is to evaluate how were the late second millennium divination texts, found in the scribal centers of Hattuša Ugarit and Emar, produced and how were they disseminated. It includes a survey of the relevant textual corpus which aims at establishing the nature of its transmission or, as is often the case, of its transmutation. The perspective results of the study will contribute to the discussion about the broader matters of canonisations and standardisation, also referred to as the stream of tradition, issues that have been subjected to discussion by specialist of the last two generations.

Recent Publications

“Secret of Extispicy Revealed”, Max Planck Institute for the History of Science Preprint 454, 2014. p. 7-19.

“Foreseeing the Future, Classifying the Present: On the Concepts of Law and Order in the Omen Literature”, Law and (Dis)Order in the Ancient Near East: Compte Rendu de la 58e Rencontre Assyrilogique International (Eisenbrauns), forthcoming.

“The Seer and his Client in the Ritual of Extispicy”, in: Johnson J. C., Patients and patronage: At the intersection of the Mesopotamian Technical Disciplines and their Clients, (De Gruyter) forthcoming.

“Is the Liver a Reflection of the Sky?”, Aram, forthcoming.

“Joseph Halévy and the “Sumerian Problem”: A Case of Essentialist Approach”, Philological Encounters, forthcoming.

“Mesopotamian Divinatory Inquiry: a Private or a State Matter?”, Private and State: Compte Rendu de la 58e Rencontre Assyrilogique International (Eisenbrauns), forthcoming.

“A New Old-Babylonian Oil Omen Tablet”, Magic and Medicine in Mesopotamia (Brill), forthcoming.

​

bottom of page