Theodore Kwasman
Theodore Kwasman is an American Assyriologist and professor for Jewish studies. He is best known for his discovery of the first lines of the Epic of Gilgamesh. Life. Theodore Kwasman was born in New York and began his studies at the University of California, Los Angeles, where he read Northwest Semitic languages with Stanislav Segert and Ethiopic languages with Wolf Leslau. He continued his university education at Heidelberg University, where he passed his doctorate under the Assyriologist Karlheinz Deller. He started his academic career at the Center for Jewish Studies Heidelberg, after which he became Professor for Jewish  Studies at the University of Duisburg-Essen. A few years later he moved to the Martin-Buber-Institut für Judaistik at the University of Cologne from where he retired in 2015. In 1998, he discovered among the cuneiform tablets of the Kouyunjik Collection in the British Museum the first lines of the Epic of Gilgamesh.