Gottfried Zumoffen

Johann Joseph Gottfried Caesar Zumoffen SJ (born October 2, 1845 in Salgesch , † September 1, 1928 in Beirut ) was a Swiss Jesuit and archaeologist .

Life

Gottfried Zumoffen was the son of the procurator Joseph Zumoffen and his wife Anna Maria, geb. Cina.

After primary school , he attended the teachers' college in Sion from 1861 to 1862 and was then a primary school teacher in Salgesch.

From 1868 to 1861 he was a student at the college in Brig , but did not finish it for financial reasons, but entered the Jesuit order on April 21, 1871 and served his novitiate in Lons-le-Saunier from 1871 to 1873 . From 1873 to 1874 he again attended high school in Lons-le-Saunier and then began studying philosophy in Vals-près-le-Puy , which he finished in 1877; This was followed from 1877 to 1880 by attending the Magisterium or Interstiz in Dole and studying theology from 1880 to 1884 in Mold , Northern Wales ; there he was ordained a priest on May 19, 1883 . He spent his tertiary education from 1884 to 1885 in Slough , England .

In 1885 he became prefect of the Jesuit College d'Arc in Dole and was then from 1886 to 1889 French teacher and librarian for the mission in Sivas in the Ottoman Empire , where he also learned the Turkish language .

In 1889 he was appointed to the University of Saint Joseph of the Order in Beirut ; There he was prefect of the Konvikt and ran Arabic language studies until 1895, from 1895 to 1914 he was a lecturer in physics, chemistry and natural history at the University of Beirut. Because the Jesuits had to leave Lebanon after the outbreak of World War I , he was a lecturer in chemistry and physics at the Jesuit college in Cairo from 1914 to 1919 and then returned to the University of Beirut.

His initially geologically motivated investigations in Lebanon then almost inevitably led to the first discovery of archaeological sites, including Nahr Ibrahim and Ksar Akil . He became known for his geological , paleontological and archaeological field research ( Géologie du Liban, 1926) and is considered to be the founder of the exploration of the Stone Age in Lebanon, especially the pre-Phoenician cultural group of Yabrudia (100,000 BC). He made the first geological map of Lebanon and wrote a book about its prehistory, La Phénicie avant les phéniciens: l'âge de la pierre .

About halfway between the two southern Lebanese cities of Sidon and Tire , the town of Aadloun is around one kilometer from the Mediterranean coast. A 1.2 kilometer long and 20-30 meter high cliff stretches between the settlement and the coast , interspersed with caves, rock shelter roofs and quarries. In the immediate vicinity of the Mugharet-el-Bezez cave there is a rock shelter that was built in 1945 by the French Jesuit priest Dr. Henri Fleisch (1904–1985) could be identified as the site where Gottfried Zumoffen carried out initial explorations shortly before the turn of the century in 1898 and in the following years 1900 and 1908.

Honors

When the two English archaeologists Dorothy Annie Elizabeth Garrod and Diana Kirkbride carried out an excavation campaign in Aadloun in February and March 1958, they named the site they investigated in memory of its discoverer, Abri Zumoffen .

Fonts (selection)

• La Phénicie avant les Phéniciens , Imp. Catholique, Beirut 1900.
• Géologie du Liban carte géologique du Liban , Barrère, Paris 1926.

literature

• Karl Zimmermann: Gottfried Zumoffen (1845–1928) and his archaeological research in Lebanon , in: Blätter aus der Walliser Geschichte, 1988, pp. 273–285 (PDF, 4.4 MB).

Web links

• Paul Oberholzer: Zumoffen (Zumofen), Gottfried. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland .