Anson F. Rainey, Th.M., Ph.D., is emeritus professor of Ancient Near Eastern Cultures and Semitic Linguistics at Tel Aviv University, where his teaching responsibilities have included Ancient Near Eastern languages such as Ugaritic, Akkadian, Ancient Hebrew, Phoenician and Egyptian. In addition, he has taught Historical Geography of the Land of the Bible. He is also adjunct professor of Historical Geography at Bar Ilan University and at the American Institute for Holy Land Studies. He received his Th.M. in Old Testament studies from the California Baptist Theological Seminary and his Ph.D. in Mediterranean Studies from Brandeis University.
Prof. Rainey is the only living scholar who has personally collated all the Amarna correspondence from Cairo, London, Berlin, Paris, Brussels, New York, Chicago, Istanbul and Moscow. His four-volume work on the hybrid language of the Amarna Letters from Canaan is the only work of its kind and has become a standard reference for all scholars of cuneiform and Northwest Semitic who study and teach those unique epistles. His next major project is the publication of his transcriptions and translations of all the Amarna Letters.
