Jon Beltz wins 2025 best article award

Jon Beltz, a graduate of Yale-NELC’s PhD program in Assyriology, has won the 2025 prize for the best Assyriological article written after the PhD from the International Association for Assyriology. Jon received the award, the only such prize in the field, at this year’s Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale in Prague. His article, entitled “Everyday Magic? Four Sumerian zi…pa₃ Incantations on Amulets” and published in the 2025 issue of the Journal of Cuneiform Studies, analyzes four inscribed amulets from c. 2000 BCE housed in the Yale Babylonian Collection. Jon earned his PhD in NELC in 2023 with a dissertation on “Namtar: Deity, Demon, Agent of Fate” supervised by Professor Eckart Frahm.

Two of the three keynote speakers of this year’s Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale are likewise graduates of Yale-NELC’s PhD program in Assyriology: Marc Van de Mieroop (MA 1980, PhD 1983) is now a Professor of History at Columbia University, while Shana Zaia (PhD 2017) serves as Assistant Professor of Ancient History in the Department of Art & Culture, History, and Antiquity at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam.