Arnold Walther

Arnold Friedrich Walther (born May 31, 1880 in Hamburg , † May 18, 1938 in Chicago ) was a German theologian , Semitist and ancient orientalist .

Arnold Walther grew up as the son of a teacher in the Hanseatic City of Hamburg , where he attended the Johanneum School of Academics and graduated from high school. He then studied theology and Semitic studies from 1899 to 1903 at the universities of Rostock , Halle and Marburg , which he completed with the ecclesiastical examination. After working as an assistant preacher in and around Hamburg, he began studying ancient oriental studies with Heinrich Zimmer at the University of Leipzig , which he completed with a doctorate on the ancient Babylonian judiciary in 1914.

During the First World War he was employed in the German Orient Army in the Ottoman Empire as a translator and employee in the intelligence service. In the course of demobilization he was able to return to Germany in 1918 and from then on lived in Berlin, where he was employed as a research assistant in the Near Eastern Department of the Berlin museums . There he edited and published together with Emil Forrer , Ernst Friedrich Weidner and Hans Ehelolf under the direction of curator Otto Weber , mainly the texts from Hattuša . In 1930 he moved to the Oriental Institute of Chicago , where he worked as an editorial assistant at the Chicago Assyrian Dictionary . After just one year there, he was appointed Associate Professor of Hittite .

In 1934 Arnold Walther was involved in a serious traffic accident from the injuries of which he never recovered. Despite this, he resumed his professional activity and taught Akkadian and Coptic until he died of heart failure four years later, shortly before his 58th birthday .

literature

• Obituary. In: Archive for Orient Research 13, 1939, p. 311 Online

Individual evidence

1. ^ Registration of Arnold Walther in the Rostock matriculation portal