Kristoff Skenfelt, Ph.D.

Kristoff Skenfelt has dedicated his life to the pursuit of truth and beauty. This passion has led him to becoming a leading expert on the art and culture of the Assyrian Empire (9th-7th c BCE). Author, explorer, television host, lecturer, & available for consulation on art collections.

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The Quest for Lost Knowledge

Since his first dig at Tell Shamshāra under the direction of Jørgen Læssøe, Kristoff's career has been shaped by love of beauty, thirst for knowledge, hard work, and belief in the progressive. Kristoff studied at the University of Copenhagen, Berkeley and Yale; served as consultant on movies and museum shows; managed the Danish Anti-Fascism Museum; published 4 books on the Assyrian Kings. His most recent book is the NYT best-selling, "Worshipping the Queen: Ishtar and the Celebration of Female Desire." This work has spurred a movement of "the cult of Ishtar" that focuses on techniques for enhancing pleasure based on ancient Assyrian royal practices.

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WHAT I OFFER

Discover more about my wide range of professional consulting services. My clients receive the most-expert assessments delivered with discretion; while my expertise is in Ancient Assyrian objects, training and experience have given me a wide-ranging expertise in the art and artifacts of the entire Egyption and Mesopotamian cultures from Before the Common Era. I can also draw upon a wide range of experts in other fields as needed, including the use of chemical and other scientific analytical tools as needed. All who have used my services have expressed profound satisfaction.

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Education

B.A. Art History, University of Copenhagen, 1985

M.A. Archeology, University of California, Berkeley, 1987

Ph.D. Near Eastern Language & Civilizations, Yale University, 1995

Menkyo, Shindo Muso ryu, a Japanese weapons kobudo

Author

The Lion Hunts of an Assyrian King: Extracting Order from Chaos in the Palatial Library holdings of Ashurbanipal, 7th Century (BCE). Yale University Press, 1998.

Murder of the Goddess Ishtar: Assyrian King Lion Hunts and the Taming of Female Desire. Oxford University Press, 2006.

King Ashurbanipal and the Fall of Assyria. Oxford University Press, 2015.

Worshiping the Queen: Ishtar and the Celebration of Female Desire. Olympia Press, 2022.

Numerous peer reviewed articles. List available upon request.

Research

My primary pursuit has been creating a method to reconstruct the cunneiform tablets recovered from the personal library of King Ashurbanipal. Three of my books have been built on material that I had been able to reassemble--this is material that other scholars believed to have been so mismanaged as to be lost to history. My most recent book reimagines the place of female desire in ancient Assyrian society based on discovering a guide to female sexual gratification written by King Ashurbanipal himself.

Ongoing Project

Yields Given Foundation has just green-lighted a $40 millilon project to carry out Kristoff's proposal to use chemical spectrography of cunneiform tablets as well as dedicated data servers to carry out a Large Language Learning Model (LLLM) to reconstruct King Ashurbanipal's personal libary holdings in their entirety. Kristoff will serve as director of this multi-year project which should be underway by Spring, 2025.

Next
Challenge

Will be taking a leave of absence from the Danish National Museum to serve as the first director of a new private museum in the U.S.A. whose collection represents almost 80 years of combined archeological excavations by two famous American archeologists. More information will be available when this is formally announced. The collection includes jewelry from Egyption Pharoah Berenice the IV, cuneiform letters from Queen Libbāli-Šarrat and an undocumented version of the famous "Garden Party" Assyrian relief, and an entire room moved from a Roman villa found on the Island of Capri.