Archeology and Civilizations of the Ancient Near East
Subject: The Divine Sign: of Meaning and Nature in Babylonia of the first millennium BCE
Supervisor: Prof. Uri Gabbay
Abstract: My dissertation is focused on intellectual history and meaning construction within the Babylonian thought, in view of the ecological system that surrounded the Babylonian scholar-priests in the first millennium BCE. In my research I explore intertextuality, languages, literature, states of consciousness and sign reading in the ancient civilization of Babylon. My research is part of the “Ancient Mesopotamian Priestly Scholasticism in the First Millennium BCE” ERC project (PI: Prof. Uri Gabbay).
Bio: Ph.D. candidate in Assyriology. She is interested in religion, cult, languages, meaning creation, and literature. She holds a B.A in Linguistics and Assyriology and an M.A in Assyriology from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (with honors). Her M.A thesis focused on the lunar eclipse cultic text from Hellenistic Uruk. Yael is a member of the ERC-funded group "Ancient Mesopotamian Priestly Scholasticism in the First Millennium BCE" (PI: Uri Gabbay). Along with her academic studies, Yael writes prose and poetry. Her works were published in various Hebrew magazines, and she was awarded the Harry Hershon Prize for Fine Literature (2023).
Publications:
Naphtali S. Meshel, Adiv Hadar, Yedidya Jesselsohn, Yael Leokumovich, Hananel Shapira, Omri Shareth, Doren G. Snoek, Julia Tuliakov, and Daniel Zohar, “Cross-Reference and “Borgesian” Slippage in Leviticus 1–5,” in The Pentateuch and Its Readers: Essays in Honor of Baruch J. Schwartz (ed. Jeffrey Stackert and Joel S. Baden; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2023.
President Scholarship 2022/23