Archibald Henry Sayce

Archibald Henry Sayce (born September 25, 1846 in Shirehampton near Bristol, † February 4, 1933 in Bath ) was a British ancient orientalist and archaeologist . In 1891 he became the first professor of Assyriology at Oxford and remained in this position until 1919. He belongs to the ancestry of great British archeologists.

AH Sayce 1846-1933

Life

Sayce was the son of Mary and Henry Samuel Sayce, a pastor. As a child he suffered from tuberculosis and was homeschooled. He was a gifted child and studied Virgil and Xenophon at the age of 10 ; He started learning Hebrew when he was 14 years old. As a high school student, Sayce read the publications of the cuneiform decipherers Georg Friedrich Grotefend , Henry Creswicke Rawlinson , Edward Hincks , William Henry Fox Talbot and Jules Oppert, and as a young student he had already acquired the tools for the cuneiform subjects. In 1865 he began his studies at Queen's College , Oxford, which he graduated with a BA in 1869 . In the same year he became a Fellow of Queen's. A year later he became a tutor in the college. In 1870 he was ordained a priest in the Church of England . From 1891 to 1915 Sayce was Professor of Assyriology at Oxford. He established the Assyriology as well as the Hittitology in Great Britain.

He published his first work on cuneiform scripts in 1870 under the title An Accadian Seal in the Journal of Philology . His early works also include: Assyrian Grammar (1872) and Elementary Grammar with Reading-Book of the Assyrian Languages ​​” (1875) and Lectures upon the Assyrian Language and Syllabar (1877). Sayce had already made a name for himself as an authority on the subject by lecturing at the Society of Biblical Archeology, founded in 1870, and weekly contributions to The Times and New York Independent . The Society's members included Edwin Norris , Hormuzd Rassam , William Henry Fox Talbot and George Smith , who also worked on cuneiform texts. For the University of Oxford he was from 1874 for a decade a representative in the Old Testament Revision Company .

In 1876 Sayce became Deputy Professor of Philology and published the two-volume work Introduction to the science of language .

During this time he took frequent research vacations and traveled extensively through Europe and Asia, the Far East, North Africa and North and South America.

In 1929 he was elected an honorary member of the British Academy .

The inscriptions from Van

Archibald Henry Sayce published a sensational article in the "Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society " in 1882 , in which he comprehensively treated and deciphered the Urartian cuneiform inscriptions by Van . In that article he also introduced a new geographical and temporal definition of manna that had previously been located at Van.

Following the release Sayce among others congratulated Stanislas Guyard from Paris, DH Müller from Vienna and Kerope Patkanov from St. Petersburg and sent him suggestions for improvements and additions for grammar and vocabulary of the Urartian or Vannischen ( Vannic ). Sayce processed this in a contribution that he published in 1888.

William Wright had discovered hieroglyphic inscriptions at Boğazköy in 1884 , which were written in a previously unknown script and resembled those of Hamath in Syria. Sayce and William Wright identified the ruins of Boğazköy with Hattušsa , the capital of the Hittite Empire, which stretched from the Aegean Sea to the banks of the Euphrates after Wright .

The Royal Asiatic Society in London as a collection point for inscriptions

After Sayce's publication, the Royal Asiatic Society in London received news of all new writings. Finally, a bilingual text (Uraratean and Assyrian) was discovered in Kelischin (the Kelashin stele ) (today Oschnavieh in the province of West Azerbaijan , southwest of Lake Urmi in today's Iran) and in Topzawa . The text confirmed the deciphering of the Urartian language by von Sayce with minor changes, important vocabulary could be added. The inscription reports the victories of the ruler Išpuini after his accession to the throne in 828 BC. BC and mentions titles and names of Assyrian rulers .

The expedition of the Imperial Archaeological Society of Moscow was able to add a large number of inscriptions to the list published by Nikolay Mikhailovich Nikolsky (1877-1959) and Vladimir S. Golenischeff . The largest collection of new texts was contributed by Waldemar Belck , who discovered the Rusa stele in 1891 and undertook excavations in Toprakkale , the castle rock of Van, in 1898/99 with Carl Ferdinand Friedrich Lehmann-Haupt .

See also: Research History of Urartu

In Egypt

During his stays in Egypt during the excavation period in the European winter, Sayce always rented a well-equipped boat on the Nile in which he housed his library and invited guests for a cup of tea.

A farmer's wife had found clay tablets with cuneiform texts in Tell el-Amarna , which the museum in Cairo bought via a few detours in 1887. Amarna was Akhenaten's newly built capital Akhet-Aton, where Flinders Petrie was supposed to start the first scientific excavation on the Armana site for the Egypt Exploration Fund and to find more clay tablets in the fall of 1892 . Sayce had nothing more urgent to do than to study the " Amarna letters " deposited in the Boulaq Museum in Cairo (now the Egyptian Museum in Cairo ) . As it turned out, the court of pharaohs corresponded with their Near Eastern allies on these cuneiform tablets. These included two letters from a "Kingdom of Cheta", the Hatti country with Akkadian texts. Sayce published a report on his studies in the Society of Biblical Archeology in 1888/89.

Sayce knew the British archaeologists who worked in Egypt, such as: B. Flinders Petrie, Somers Clarke , Joseph John Tylor, and Frederick W. Green (1869-1949). The latter two had excavated in El-Kab in 1895–1897 . El-Kab is located on the right bank of the Nile, approx. 15 km north of Edfu . Through a massive mud brick city wall, which measures approx. 520 m × 590 m, it is widely visible in the landscape. 1901-1902 Sayce took part in the excavations of Green and Somers Clarke. In the rock walls around there is a large burial place ( necropolis ) with over 300 rock graves and mastabas (for the rich) from the time of Amenhotep III. , the powerful ruler of the 18th dynasty. With the Egyptologist James Edward Quibell he uncovered mastabas and rock tombs in El-Kab.

Sayce also played an important role in the excavations of Meroë , the ancient capital of Ethiopia . 1909 to 1914 John Garstang (1876-1956) from the University of Liverpool exposed the city of Meroë extensively, while in 1912 he discovered what he called the Royal Baths. Meroë was the capital of the Kingdom of Kush . It is located in what is now Sudan , about 220 kilometers north of the modern metropolis of Khartoum . About this excavation was a book with an introduction and a chapter on the deciphering of the inscriptions by Sayce and a chapter on the inscriptions of Meroe by Francis Llewellyn Griffith (1862-1934) and photographs by Horst Schliephack.

Sayce was unmarried and died in Bath on February 4, 1933.

Publications (selection)

His numerous publications deal with the different peoples of the ancient Orient: Hittites , Hebrews, Assyrians , Babylonians and Egyptians.

As an author

• Assyrian Grammar for Comparative Purposes . Trübner, London 1872.
• Principles of Comparative Philology . Truebner, London 1874.
• Babylonian Literature. Lectures . Bagster, London 1877.
  • German: Babylonian literature. Lectures . Otto Schulze Publishing House, Leipzig 1878.
• Introduction to the Science of Language . 1879.
• Monuments of the Hittites . 1881.
• Introduction to the books of Ezra , Nehemiah and Esther . Religious Tractat Society, London 1885.
• Assyria. Ita princes, priests and people (By-paths of bible knowledge; 7). Religious Tractat Society, London 1885.
• Lectures on the origin and growth of religion as illustrated by the religion of the ancient Babylonians . William & Norgat, London 1887.
• The Hittites. The story of an forgotten empire (By-paths of bible knowledge; 12). Religious Tractat Society, London 1889.
• Races of the Old Testament (By-paths of bible knowledge; 16). Religious Tractat Society, London 1894.
• Higher Criticism and the Verdict of the Monuments . Society for Promoting Christian knowledge, London 1908.
• Patriarchal Palestine . Society for Promoting Christian knowledge, London 1895.
• The Egypt of the Hebrews and Herodotus . Rivingtons, London 1902 (EA London 1895)
• Early History of the Hebrews . Rivingtons, London 1897.
• Israel and the surrounding Nations . Service & Puton, London 1898.
• Babylonians and Assyrians. Life and customs (Handbooks in Semitics; 6). Scribners, New York 1900.
• Egyptian and Babylonian Religion. The religion of ancient Egypt and Babylonia . T. & T. Clarke, Edinburgh 1903.
• Archeology of the Cuneiform Inscriptions . Society of Promoting Christian knowledge, London 1907.
• Reminiscences . Macmillan, London 1923 ( autobiography )

As editor

• Herodotus I-III. The ancient empires of the east (Macmillan's classical library). Macmillan, London 1883.

Web links

• Archibald Sayce in Project Gutenberg (engl.)
• AH Sayce in open library (Engl.)

Individual evidence

1. ^ Deceased Fellows. British Academy, accessed July 28, 2020 . 
2. ^ The Cuneiform inscriptions of Van . In: Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society / NS , Vol. 14 (1882), pp. 571-623
3. ↑ Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society , Vol. 20 (1888).
4. ↑ AH Sayce: The Kingdom of Van (Urartu) . In: The Cambridge Ancient History , Vol. 20 , Chapter VIII, pp. 169-186, Cambridge 1925.
5. ^ William Wright : The empire of the Hittites . London 1886.
6. ^ AH Sayce: The Cuneiform Tablets of El-Amarna, now preseved in the Boulaq Museum . In: Proceedings of the Society of Biblical Archeology , Vol. 11 (1888/89).
7. ↑ John Garstang : Meroë. The City of the Ethiopians. Being an Account of a First Season's Excavations on the Site, 1909-1910 . Clarendon Press, Oxford 1911.
8. ↑ Named after Robert Hibbert (1769–1849).