John David Hawkins

John David Hawkins (born September 11, 1940 in Exmouth ) is a British Hittite scientist and archaeologist . He was particularly prominent as a researcher of the Luwian hieroglyphs .

Career

John David Hawkins was born in 1940 in Exmouth, southwest England, the son of officer John Alexander Sneyd Hawkins and his wife Audrey Joan Spencer. He first attended Upcott House private school and, from the age of thirteen, Bradfield College in Berkshire . From 1958 he studied Classical Antiquity and Philosophy at University College in Oxford and obtained a BA in 1962 and an MA in 1965. From 1962 he worked on his postgraduate diploma in West Asian archeology at the Institute of Archeology in London and studied archeology with Seton Lloyd, history with Peggy Drower , Hebrew with Raphael Loewe and Akkadian with Harry Saggs and Donald Wiseman. In 1964 he received his diploma with honors and won the Gordon Childe Prize . Hawkins then became a Research Fellow for Akkadian at the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London , where he taught at the Near and Middle East Department until his retirement in 2005. In 1993 he was appointed to a chair for ancient Anatolian languages . At the Institute of Archeology he became an Honorary Visiting Professor and taught archeology.

From 1976 to 1986 he was an Honorary Fellow of the British School of Archeology in Iraq and from 1970 to 1995 he published the journal Iraq . He was also a member of the council and executive committee of the British School of Archeology at Ankara . In 1993 he was elected Fellow of the British Academy and in 1998 Foreign Member of the American Philosophical Society . In 2009 he became an Honorary Fellow at University College Oxford.

Hawkins lives with his partner, the writer Geoff Ryman , in a cottage in Minster Lovell near Oxford.

Researches

When Hawkins was studying Hittite with Oliver R. Gurney in Oxford in the 1960s , he first came into contact with what was then known as hieroglyphic Hittite, which was to become the lifelong focus of his research. From 1965 he traveled regularly to Turkey, Syria and Iraq to study and document inscriptions in museums and on excavation sites. This work culminated in the monumental Corpus of Hieroglyphic Luwian Inscriptions, Vol. I, The Iron Age Inscriptions , in 2000 . He was also significantly involved in the second volume by Halet Çambel on the inscriptions of Karatepe , a third volume with addenda, a register and grammar of the hieroglyphic Luwian is in progress. We owe him numerous new and corrected readings of Luwian texts, which helped Hittitology to gain new knowledge. An example to be mentioned is his deciphering of the inscription on the western Anatolian relief of Karabel , which made it possible to identify the depicted figure as Tarkasnawa , King of Mira .

Fonts (selection)

• The hieroglyphic inscription of the sacred pool complex at Hattusa (Südburg) (= studies on the Boǧazköy texts. Supplement 3). Otto Harrassowitz Verlag, Wiesbaden 1995, ISBN 3-447-03438-6 .
• Tarkasnawa King of Mira. "Tarkondemos", Boǧazköy sealings and Karabel . In: Anatolian Studies 48 (1998) pp. 1-31.
• Corpus of Hieroglyphic Luwian Inscriptions Vol. 1: Inscriptions of the Iron Age. (= Studies on Indo-European Linguistics and Cultural Studies NF 8.1) 3 volumes. Walter de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 2000. ISBN 3-11-010864-X
  • Part 1: Introduction, Karatepe, Karkamiš, Tell Ahmar, Maraş, Malatya, Commagene
  • Part 2: Amuq, Aleppo, Hama, Tabal, Assur Letters, Miscellaneous, Seals, Indices
  • Part 3: Plates

literature

• Itamar Singer (Ed.): Luwian and Hittite Studies presented to J. David Hawkins on the Occasion of his 70th Birthday. Tel Aviv 2010. ISBN 965-266-026-4 pp. IX-XX curriculum vitae and list of publications (PDF file; 1.36 MB)