Bedřich Hrozný
Bedřich Hrozný , also Friedrich Hrozny (born May 6, 1879 in Lissa on the Elbe , † December 12, 1952 in Prague ), was a Czech linguist and ancient orientalist . He deciphered Hittite , the written language of the Hittites, and laid the foundations for research into their language and history.
Life
Hrozný, son of a Protestant pastor, attended the Academic Gymnasium in Prague from 1889 to 1896 and after the death of his father switched to the Realgymnasium in Kolín for the final year of school . Especially in Prague, but also in Kolín, he acquired his basic knowledge of the Hebrew and Arabic languages . He then studied at the Evangelical Theological and Philosophical Faculties in Vienna , but at a very early age he dealt exclusively with oriental languages (especially Assyrian , Aramaic , Ethiopian , Sanskrit and Sumerian ). His main focus was on research into cuneiform writing , which was written between the third and first millennium BC. In the area of Mesopotamia , Asia Minor and the Persian Empire . In 1901 he received his doctorate with a thesis on South Arabic Graffiti on Sabaean consecration inscriptions . He then went to Berlin for a year to perfect his self-taught knowledge of Assyriology with Friedrich Delitzsch .
In 1904 Hrozný visited Turkey , Syria and Egypt and made copies of cuneiform texts there. After his return to Vienna he worked in the university library. In 1909 he married.
1906-07 a large archive of tablets with cuneiform writing in an unknown language was discovered in Hattuša . Hrozný was one of those people who took up the scientific riddle and presented the solution to the problem in the middle of the First World War. At the same time he published a short grammatical sketch and proved that it was the language of the Hittites. He also proved that this language belonged to the Indo-European language family and is similar to Greek , Latin , but also Indian languages .
After the establishment of Czechoslovakia , Hrozný was appointed professor of cuneiform writing and the history of the Ancient Near East at the Charles University in Prague in 1918 . In 1924 he received funds for the first Czechoslovak expedition to Syria . He found remains of Greek buildings, ceramics and terracotta statues . In 1925 he found around a thousand clay tablets during excavations in Kültepe in Asia Minor. Most of them were contracts and letters from ancient Assyrian traders. In November 1925 he returned to Czechoslovakia.
In 1929 Hrozný founded the Oriental Archive. In 1939, with the German occupation of the Czechoslovak Republic, he could have emigrated. He stayed and was appointed rector of Charles University. He was proposed for a post in the Ministry of Education in 1940, but he turned it down.
On November 12, 1952, he was appointed a member of the newly founded Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic . Hrozný died a month later on December 12, 1952.
Deciphering the Hittite language
To solve the riddle of the Hittite language, Bedřich Hrozný used the two sentences NINDA - an ezzatteni watar - ma ekutteni that appear in a text . It was known at that time that the ideogram for NINDA in Sumerian meant bread . Hrozný thought that the ending -an could perhaps form the Hittite accusative. Then he assumed that the second word ed - / - ezza could have something to do with bread and assumed that it was the verb to eat . By comparing it with the Latin edere , the English eat and the German essen , he came to the assumption that NINDA - an ezzatteni is "you will eat the bread". In the second sentence Hrozný noticed the word watar , which had similarities with the English water and the German water . The last word of the second sentence, ekutteni , had the stem eku- , which was similar to the Latin word aqua (water). So he translated the second sentence as "you will drink water". Building on these initial findings, Hrozný published the Hittite grammar in 1917 .
Fonts
- Sumerian-Babylonian myths of the god Ninrag (Ninib). Wolf Peiser, Berlin 1903.
- Obilí ve staré Babylónií. (Korn in Old Babylonia), Holder in commission, Vienna 1913.
- The solution to the Hittite problem. In: Mitteilungen der Deutschen Orient-Gesellschaft 56, 1915, pp. 17–50.
- The language of the Hittites, their structure and their affiliation to the Indo-European language tribe. JC Hinrichs, Leipzig 1917, TU Dresden, Dresden 2002 (reprint), ISBN 3-86005-319-1 .
- Hittite cuneiform texts from Boghazköi, in transcription, with translation and commentary. Hinrichs, Leipzig 1919.
- About the peoples and languages of the ancient Chatti land. Hittite kings. Hinrichs, Leipzig 1920.
- Cuneiform texts from Boghazköi. Volume 5/6. Autographs. Hinrichs, Leipzig 1921, Zeller, Osnabrück 1970 (Neudr.).
- Les inscriptions hittites hiéroglyphiques. Essai de déchiffrement. Suivi d'une grammaire hittite hiéroglyphique en paradigmes et d'une liste d'hiéroglyphes. Orientální Ústav, Praha 1933.
- About the oldest migration of peoples and about the problem of the proto-Indian civilization. An attempt to decipher the Proto-Indian inscriptions of Mohendscho-Daro. Prague 1939.
- The oldest history of the Middle East and India. Melantrich, Prague 1940, 1941, 1943.
- Inscriptions cunéiformes du Kultépé. Vol. 1. Prague 1952.
- Ancient history of Western Asia, India and Crete. New York 1953.
literature
- Jiri Prosecký: Akademik Bedrich Hrozný (6. V. 1879 - 12. XII. 1952), bibliogr. 1902-1979. Prague 1979.
- Lubor Matouš : Bedřich Hrozný. Life and research work of a Czech orientalist. Prague 1949.
- Šárka Velhartická: Bedřich Hrozný a 100 let chetitologie / Bedřich Hrozný and 100 Years of Hittitology . Praha, Národní gallery, 2015.
- Šárka Velhartická: Dopisy Bedřicha Hrozného literárním osobnostem , Praha, Památník národního písemnictví, 2015.
- Šárka Velhartická: Justin Václav Prášek and Bedřich Hrozný. Počátky české staroorientalistiky a klínopisného bádání , Praha – Hradec Králové, Academia – Univerzita Hradec Králové, 2019.
Web links
- Literature by and about Bedřich Hrozný in the catalog of the German National Library
- Photographs
- Biography of Hroznys on hethitologie.de
- Jitka Mládková: 100 years ago: ancient orientalist Hrozný deciphered the language of the Hittites. In: Radio Praha . November 21, 2015, accessed December 19, 2015 .
Remarks
- ↑ Translated from the Turkish Wikipedia.
| predecessor | Office | successor |
|---|---|---|
| Vilém Funk |
Rector of Charles University 1939–1940 |
Jan Bělehrádek |
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Hrozný, Bedřich |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Friedrich Hrozny |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Czech linguist and orientalist |
| DATE OF BIRTH | May 6, 1879 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Lysá nad Labem |
| DATE OF DEATH | December 12, 1952 |
| Place of death | Prague |