Mattanyah Zohar

Mattanyah Zohar was born in Berlin in 1938 and immigrated to Istanbul as a child. In his youth he lived with a seminomadic tribe in eastern Anatolia for several years. The tribe, forced to flee from the Iranian government in 1959, left Zohar in the position of having to find a new home. He ended up in India, where he studied Sanskrit and classical Indian music. His odyssey continued with sailing trips across the Pacific and Indian oceans and a return to Europe. Finally, in 1972, he settled in Israel and completed a Ph.D. in archaeology at Hebrew University. He has also directed digs in the Golan.