Emmanuel Anati

Emmanuel Anati (Florence, 14 May 1930) is an Italian archaeologist.

Anati Emmanuel was born in Florence in 1930 to Ugo and Elsa Castelnuovo, a family of Jewish origin.

In 1948 got the scientific maturity in the "Righi" institute of Rome. He then moved to Jerusalem, where he graduated in archaeology from the local Hebrew University in 1952. In 1959 Anati specialized in anthropology and social sciences at Harvard University. In 1960 he obtained a Ph.D. in Literature at the Sorbonne in Paris.

Anati has performed excavations and archaeological research in Israel (especially in the Negev desert), Spain, France and other European countries. Based on the results of his discoveries in the Sinai Peninsula Anati has become a supporter of the thesis that the Biblical Mount Sinai is not to be identified in the Gebel Katherina, but in Har Karkom instead. This identification has been challenged by James K. Hoffmeier and Israel Finkelstein.

In the fifties Anati explored Val Camonica, whose rock carvings are one of the largest sites for rock art in Europe. In 1964 he founded the Centro Camuno di Studi Preistorici (CCSP) in Capo di Ponte, in order to study the prehistoric and tribal art and contribute to the enhancement of this cultural heritage.

In 1962 he married Ariela Fradkin.

• Palestine Before the Hebrews: A History, From the Earliest Arrival of Man to the Conquest of Canaan, 1963
• Mountain of God, 1986
• Camonica Valley: A Depiction of Village in the Alps From Neolithic Times to the Birth of Christ as Revealed by Thousands of Newly found Rock Carvings, 1961
• Camonica Valley, 1961
• Evolution and style in Camunian rock art: An inquiry into the formation of European civilization, 1976
• Les mystères du mont Sinaï, 2000