Fs. Itamar Singer

A hosszú némaságért most egy hosszabb bejegyzésssel kárpótlom olvasóinkat. Rendhagyó módon ugyanis most nem csak a frissen megjelent kötet tartalomjegyzékét mutatom be, hanem az előszóból is fogok idézni, hosszasan. Hogy miért, az kiderül magából a szövegből. Érdemes végigolvasni, mert a válaszon kívül az is megtudható, hogy bizony egy fecske is csinálhat nyarat (ezt azon hallgatóknak mondom bátorításul, akik itthon még ismeretlen területre tévednének), másfelől már héberül is van kézikönyv a hettitákról, csak még magyarul nem.

Pax Hethitica

Studies on the Hittites and their Neighbours in Honour of Itamar Singer

Edited by Yoram Cohen, Amir Gilan, and Jared L. Miller

StBoT 51. Wiesbaden, Harrassowitz, 2010

Tartalomjegyzék

Bibliography of Itamar Singer

How Many Treaty Traditions Existed in the Ancient Near East? (A. Altman)

When Did the Hittites Begin to Write in Hittite? (A. Archi)

The Hittite Deal with the Hiyawa-Men (T. Bryce)

Hittite Religion and the West (B. J. Collins)

‘Servant of the king, son of Ugarit, and servant of the servant of the king’: RS 17.238 and the Hittites (L. d'Alfonso)

Symbols of Power in the Late Hittite Kingdom (St. de Martino)

Ein neues hethitisches Hieroglyphensiegel aus Westanatolien in der Perk-Sammlung (A. & B. Dinçol)

A Levantine Tradition: The Kizzuwatnean Blood Rite and the Biblical Sin Offering (Y. Feder)

An Attempt at Reconstructing the Branches of the Hittite Royal Family of the Early Kingdom Period (M. Forlanini)

Kingship in Hatti during the 13th Century: Forms of Rule and Struggles for Power before the Fall of the Empire (M. Giorgieri & Cl. Mora)

Scriptoria in Late Empire Period Hattusa: The Case of the É GIŠ.KIN.TI (Sh. Gordin )

Ein jatro-magisches Ritual gegen einen Fluchzwang (V. Haas)

A Unique Hieroglyphic Luwian Document (J. D. Hawkins)

Zur Datierungsgeschichte des „Tawagalawa-Briefes“ und zur problematischen Rolle des Fragments KBo 16.35 als Datierungshilfe (S. Heinhold-Krahmer)

The Institutional ‘Poverty’ of Hurrian Diviners and entanni-Women (H. A. Hoffner)

Hittite talliye/a- ‘to draw, allure’ (H. C. Melchert)

Seevölker und Etrusker (N. Oettinger)

‘Amore, more, ore, re…’: Sexual Terminology and Hittite Law (I. Peled)

Connections between KI.LAM and the Tetešhapi Festival: The Expressions halukan tarnanzi and heun tarnanzi (F. Pecchioli Daddi)

Nuovi sigilli in luvio geroglifico VII (Per il valore di á in alcune occorrenze) (M. Poetto)

The God Bunene (A. M. Polvani)

Hethiter und Ahhijawa: Feinde? (M. Popko)

Pə-Ḫurru, Commissioner of Ôpa (Including a New Edition of EA 131) (A. F. Rainey)

Das Zeichen ‹tá› im Hieroglyphen-Luwischen (E. Rieken)

Empowering the Patient: The Opening Section of the Ritual Maqlû (D. Schwemer)

Philological Contributions to Hattian–Hittite Religion (II): 3. On the Origin and the Name of the hazkarai-women (O. Soysal)

Local Cults in the Zuliya Basin (P. Taracha)

Some Remarks on a Passage of the Apology of Hattusili III (I. Tatišvili)

A ‘New’ Prayer from the ‘House on the Slope’ (G. Torri)

A Note on Hittite Envelopes and HKM 86 (Th. van den Hout & C. Karasu)

Patahuli – Die Tochter des Priesters? (G. Wilhelm)

The West Semitic God El in Anatolian Hieroglyphic Transmission (I. Yakubovich)

On Birds and Dragons: A Note on the Sea Peoples and Mycenaean Ships (A. Yasur-Landau)

Anatolians in Neo-Assyrian Documents (R. Zadok)

Részletek a bevezetésből:

"Itamar Singer was born on the 26th of November 1946 in Dej, Rumania. His parents, both Holocaust survivors, met in Rumania after the War. His mother Gertrude came from a German speaking family from Tchernovitz, Bukowina, his father Zoltán from a Hungarian-speaking family from Dej, Transylvania. Itamar’s upbringing in this multilingual Austro-Hungarian milieu (studying in a Rumanian school but speaking Hungarian at home) surely played a role in his knack for acquiring new languages, both ancient and modern. His penchant for history he inherited from his father, who had written a scholarly work on the history of the Jewish community of Dej and its district. When Itamar was five the family moved to Cluj/Kolozsvár, the capital of Transylvania. His father, a community leader, was repeatedly imprisoned by the communist regime for his Zionist activities, until emigration visas, after years of denial, were finally granted in 1958.

The family then embarked on their exodus to Israel with a train journey from Bucharest to Napoli. While awaiting a ship to take them to their new home, Itamar’s mother took him to see the ruins of Pompeii, a visit which left an indelible impression upon him. Upon their arrival in Israel, the family settled down in Holon, a city recently founded upon sand dunes not far from Tel Aviv in order to accommodate the influx of immigrants. There Itamar attended primary and secondary school, and this is where he has made his home ever since. During one summer vacation from high school Itamar participated as a volunteer in the Arad excavations conducted by Yohanan Aharoni, his first exciting experience in field archaeology. From 1965 to 1968 Itamar studied at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, obtaining his B.A. in the departments of Archaeology and Geography. During these and the following years he participated in excavations at Megiddo, Beersheva, Tel Malhata, Tel Masos and Hanita. From 1969 to 1973 he fulfilled his military duty as an officer in the Air Force, serving as an aerial photograph interpreter. Simultaneously, he completed his M.A. studies at Tel Aviv University in the Department of Archaeology and Ancient Near Eastern Cultures. His M.A. thesis ‘Geographical Aspects of the Proto-Hattian Problem’ (1973), written under the supervision of Aharon Kempinski, anticipated his future research into the ties between history, geography and theology.

From 1973 to 1975 Itamar continued his Hittite studies with Heinrich Otten in Marburg, supported by a Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst stipend. His initial goal was to conduct a historical and geographical study of the distribution system of the Hittite ‘cult administrators’ (AGRIG). However, it soon became evident that such an endeavour required an in-depth study of the ‘Gate-house (KI.LAM) Festival’, which contains most of the relevant passages. His resulting dissertation, ‘The KI.LAM Festival’, completed in 1978, was published in the same series in which the present volume has appeared, Studien zu den Boğazköy-Texten (1983–1984). It was the first complete edition of a major Hittite festival, and it quickly became a highly influential study of Hittite religion. Upon returning to Israel, Itamar joined the staff of the Department of Archaeology and Ancient Near Eastern Cultures, where he became a full professor in 1996 and where he continued teaching until his early retirement in 2006. Between 1984 and 1995 he also taught in the Department of Jewish History, and periodically also at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, Bar Ilan University in Ramat-Gan, Haifa University and Ben-Gurion University in Beersheva. Teaching concurrently at several university departments and other educational institutions enabled him to pursue parallel research paths, Hittitology, in the broadest sense of the word, on the one hand and the history and cultures of Canaan and the Sea Peoples on the other.

Itamar’s primary interests in the historical domain lay in the international affairs of the 13th century BC, the Golden Age of what he has termed the pax hethitica. Many of his studies dealt with the diplomatic relations between Hatti and the other great powers as well as with the Hittite domination of Syria, and especially the kingdoms of Amurru and Ugarit. At the same time, his continued interest in Anatolian religions led to an edition and in-depth study of Muwattalli’s Prayer (1996). His ground-breaking conclusion concerning the theological reasons for Muwatalli’s transfer of the Hittite capital from Hattusa to Tarhuntassa induced further investigations of the political schism in the Hittite Empire, which played a major role in its decline and final disintegration. His interest in the prayer genre culminated in his English translations of the best preserved Hittite Prayers in the Writings from the Ancient World series (2002). His latest book to date, Ha-hittim ve tarbutam (The Hittites and their Culture; Jerusalem 2009), is the first full-length treatment of Hittite history and culture to appear in Hebrew. Its publication was the realization of a long-standing desire to present Hebrew readers with a more accessible route to a distant culture from long ago, one that nonetheless maintains much relevance for those interested in the history of Israel and the whole region in antiquity.

During his long tenure at Tel Aviv Itamar carried almost single-handedly the banner of Hittite studies in Israel, and his classes and seminars on Hittite language and culture were regularly attended by students from numerous universities. Though specializing in Hittite studies, he insisted on offering students the broadest possible initiation into the study of the Ancient Near East, assuring that their curriculum included courses on the history of writing and on ancient Near Eastern and Mediterranean religions and mythologies. In so doing he was able to convey his conviction that the archaeology and history of the Ancient Near East, and with it that of ancient Israel, should be contextualized and appreciated along the widest possible spectrum. Itamar’s commitment to his research and teaching was certainly contagious, and despite the relative obscurity and humble resources of the field, he supervised over the yearsa large number of MA and PhD theses. His belief in and personal concern for his students led him to involve many graduate and undergraduate students in his research projects. Itamar travelled and contributed to many conferences and lectured during sabbatical leaves at various academic institutions in Germany, England, Italy, France, Turkey, the United States, Japan, Australia and Argentina.

During one of these trips he met Graciela Noemi Gestoso, an Argentine Egyptologist, who he later married. They now live in Holon, together with their dog Shuppi and countless cats. Alongside his academic duties and interests, Itamar has been involved in various philanthropic and political activities, notably the Israeli Peace Movement. In 2008 Itamar was forced into retirement by poor health. He very reluctantly gave up teaching and active supervision of students after more than 30 years at Tel Aviv University. Nonetheless, in recent years he has carried on with his research and, as his bibliography provided in this volume testifies, his output continues to grow with each passing year."