Archibald Sayce
Encyclopedia
The Rev. Archibald Henry Sayce (25 September 1846 - 4 February 1933), was a pioneer British
Assyriologist
and linguist
, who held a chair as Professor of Assyriology at the University of Oxford
from 1891 to 1919.
, Bristol
, to a family of Shropshire descent. A delicate child who suffered from tuberculosis
and got a late start, he soon caught up with a private tutor and was reading Homer
in Greek
at ten. He attended The Queen's College, Oxford
, becoming a fellow in 1869.
In 1874 Sayce published a long paper, "The Astronomy and Astrology of the Babylonians" in Transactions of the Society of Biblical Archaeology vol. 3, part 1), with transcriptions and translations of the relevant cuneiform
texts, that was one of the first articles to recognise and translate astronomical cuneiform texts
.
In 1879 Rev. Sayce linked the reliefs near Magnesia on the Maeander
in western Anatolia
to those of the site at Yazilikaya
in the Turkish plateau, and recognised that they belonged to an unidentified pre-Greek culture.
In 1876, he deciphered one of the hieroglyphic
s inscribed on stones at Hamath in Syria
, by deducing that the profile of a man stood for "I". In 1880, he deciphered another hieroglyphic which he recognized as the governing prefix that identified divinity. He had suspected for some time that Boghazkoy was the capital of the Hittites
because some hieroglyphic scripts found at Aleppo
and Hamath in northern Syria were matched the script on a monument at Boghazkoy.
In 1882, in a lecture to the Society of Biblical Archaeology in London
, he announced that the Hittites, far from being a small Canaan
ite tribe who dealt with the kings of the northern Kingdom of Israel, were the people of a "lost Hittite empire," which Egyptian
texts were then bringing to light. He and William Wright
identified the ruins at Boghazkoy with Hattusa
, the capital of a Hittite Empire that stretched from the Aegean Sea
to the banks of the Euphrates
, centuries before the age of the Old Testament
patriarchs.
Sayce concluded that the Hittite hieroglyphic system was predominantly a syllabary
, that is, its symbols stood for a phonetic syllable. There were too many different signs for a system that was alphabetical and yet there were too few for it to be a set of ideographs. That very sign standing for the divinity had appeared on the stones of Hamath and other places, always in the form of a prefix of an indecipherable group of hieroglyphics naming the deities. This led Sayce to conclude that by finding the name of one of these deities with the help of another language endowed with similar pronunciation, one might analyze the conversion of the aforesaid name in Hittite hieroglyphics. Also, he stated that the keys to be obtained through that process might in turn be applied to other parts of a Hittite inscription where the same sign were to occur.
Sayce dreamed of finding a bilingual Rosetta Stone
. In 1880, he found a clue on a writing that spoke of an ancient silver disk discovered in Istanbul
. It was a small-sized relic resembling a seal. In its centre, the figure of a warrior wearing a short robe, cape, helmet and upward-toe-capped boots (a Hittite apparel, no doubt) lay. The frieze around the warrior contained a cuneiform inscription in Hurrian dialect. Sayce supposed that the cuneiform inscription on the seal and the Hittite characters contained in its inner circle expressed one only meaning. Therefore, he was facing a bilingual text.
Working with a plaster impression, Sayce translated the cuneiform text of a seal "Tarritktimme, king of the country of Erme" (Walters Gallery, Baltimore). By late 1886, only seven signs had been deciphered out of the totality of signs belonging to the hieroglyphic system.
Later, after Sayce had turned his attention to Egyptology
, archives were discovered at Hattusa
that unlocked the language spoken there.
Lectures were his favourite vehicle for publication. He published in 1887 his Hibbert lectures
on Babylonian religion; in 1902 his Gifford lectures
on Egyptian and Babylonian religion; and in 1907 his Rhind lectures
.
Rev. Sayce was working at El Kab in Egypt with Somers Clarke
in the 1900s. In his seasonal winter digs in Egypt he always hired a well-furnished boat on the Nile
to accommodate his travelling library, which also enabled him to offer tea to visiting Egyptologists like the young American James Henry Breasted
and his wife.
He also contributed important articles to the 9th, 10th and 11th editions of the Encyclopædia Britannica
.
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
Assyriologist
Assyriology
Assyriology is the archaeological, historical, and linguistic study of ancient Mesopotamia and the related cultures that used cuneiform writing. The field covers the Akkadian sister-cultures of Assyria and Babylonia, together with their cultural predecessor; Sumer...
and linguist
Linguistics
Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. Linguistics can be broadly broken into three categories or subfields of study: language form, language meaning, and language in context....
, who held a chair as Professor of Assyriology at the University of Oxford
University of Oxford
The University of Oxford is a university located in Oxford, United Kingdom. It is the second-oldest surviving university in the world and the oldest in the English-speaking world. Although its exact date of foundation is unclear, there is evidence of teaching as far back as 1096...
from 1891 to 1919.
Life
Archibald Sayce was born in ShirehamptonShirehampton
Shirehampton, near Avonmouth, at the north-western edge of the city of Bristol, England, is a district of Bristol which originated as a separate village. It retains something of its village feel, having a short identifiable High Street with the parish church situated among shops, and is still...
, Bristol
Bristol
Bristol is a city, unitary authority area and ceremonial county in South West England, with an estimated population of 433,100 for the unitary authority in 2009, and a surrounding Larger Urban Zone with an estimated 1,070,000 residents in 2007...
, to a family of Shropshire descent. A delicate child who suffered from tuberculosis
Tuberculosis
Tuberculosis, MTB, or TB is a common, and in many cases lethal, infectious disease caused by various strains of mycobacteria, usually Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Tuberculosis usually attacks the lungs but can also affect other parts of the body...
and got a late start, he soon caught up with a private tutor and was reading Homer
Homer
In the Western classical tradition Homer , is the author of the Iliad and the Odyssey, and is revered as the greatest ancient Greek epic poet. These epics lie at the beginning of the Western canon of literature, and have had an enormous influence on the history of literature.When he lived is...
in Greek
Greek language
Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the majority of its history;...
at ten. He attended The Queen's College, Oxford
The Queen's College, Oxford
The Queen's College, founded 1341, is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England. Queen's is centrally situated on the High Street, and is renowned for its 18th-century architecture...
, becoming a fellow in 1869.
In 1874 Sayce published a long paper, "The Astronomy and Astrology of the Babylonians" in Transactions of the Society of Biblical Archaeology vol. 3, part 1), with transcriptions and translations of the relevant cuneiform
Cuneiform script
Cuneiform script )) is one of the earliest known forms of written expression. Emerging in Sumer around the 30th century BC, with predecessors reaching into the late 4th millennium , cuneiform writing began as a system of pictographs...
texts, that was one of the first articles to recognise and translate astronomical cuneiform texts
History of astronomy
Astronomy is the oldest of the natural sciences, dating back to antiquity, with its origins in the religious, mythological, and astrological practices of pre-history: vestiges of these are still found in astrology, a discipline long interwoven with public and governmental astronomy, and not...
.
In 1879 Rev. Sayce linked the reliefs near Magnesia on the Maeander
Magnesia on the Maeander
Magnesia or Magnesia on the Maeander was an ancient Greek city in Anatolia, considerable in size, at an important location commercially and strategically in the triangle of Priene, Ephesus and Tralles. The city was named Magnesia, after the Magnetes from Thessaly who settled the area along with...
in western Anatolia
Anatolia
Anatolia is a geographic and historical term denoting the westernmost protrusion of Asia, comprising the majority of the Republic of Turkey...
to those of the site at Yazilikaya
Yazilikaya
Yazılıkaya was a sanctuary of Hattusa, the capital city of the Hittite Empire, today in the Çorum Province, Turkey....
in the Turkish plateau, and recognised that they belonged to an unidentified pre-Greek culture.
In 1876, he deciphered one of the hieroglyphic
Logogram
A logogram, or logograph, is a grapheme which represents a word or a morpheme . This stands in contrast to phonograms, which represent phonemes or combinations of phonemes, and determinatives, which mark semantic categories.Logograms are often commonly known also as "ideograms"...
s inscribed on stones at Hamath in Syria
Syria
Syria , officially the Syrian Arab Republic , is a country in Western Asia, bordering Lebanon and the Mediterranean Sea to the West, Turkey to the north, Iraq to the east, Jordan to the south, and Israel to the southwest....
, by deducing that the profile of a man stood for "I". In 1880, he deciphered another hieroglyphic which he recognized as the governing prefix that identified divinity. He had suspected for some time that Boghazkoy was the capital of the Hittites
Hittites
The Hittites were a Bronze Age people of Anatolia.They established a kingdom centered at Hattusa in north-central Anatolia c. the 18th century BC. The Hittite empire reached its height c...
because some hieroglyphic scripts found at Aleppo
Aleppo
Aleppo is the largest city in Syria and the capital of Aleppo Governorate, the most populous Syrian governorate. With an official population of 2,301,570 , expanding to over 2.5 million in the metropolitan area, it is also one of the largest cities in the Levant...
and Hamath in northern Syria were matched the script on a monument at Boghazkoy.
In 1882, in a lecture to the Society of Biblical Archaeology in London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
, he announced that the Hittites, far from being a small Canaan
Canaan
Canaan is a historical region roughly corresponding to modern-day Israel, Palestine, Lebanon, and the western parts of Jordan...
ite tribe who dealt with the kings of the northern Kingdom of Israel, were the people of a "lost Hittite empire," which Egyptian
New Kingdom
The New Kingdom of Egypt, also referred to as the Egyptian Empire is the period in ancient Egyptian history between the 16th century BC and the 11th century BC, covering the Eighteenth, Nineteenth, and Twentieth Dynasties of Egypt....
texts were then bringing to light. He and William Wright
William Wright (missionary)
William Wright was an Irish missionary in Damascus and the author of The Empire of the Hittites , which introduced the history of the recently discovered Hittite civilization to the general public.-References:...
identified the ruins at Boghazkoy with Hattusa
Hattusa
Hattusa was the capital of the Hittite Empire in the late Bronze Age. It was located near modern Boğazkale, Turkey, within the great loop of the Kızıl River ....
, the capital of a Hittite Empire that stretched from the Aegean Sea
Aegean Sea
The Aegean Sea[p] is an elongated embayment of the Mediterranean Sea located between the southern Balkan and Anatolian peninsulas, i.e., between the mainlands of Greece and Turkey. In the north, it is connected to the Marmara Sea and Black Sea by the Dardanelles and Bosporus...
to the banks of the Euphrates
Euphrates
The Euphrates is the longest and one of the most historically important rivers of Western Asia. Together with the Tigris, it is one of the two defining rivers of Mesopotamia...
, centuries before the age of the Old Testament
Old Testament
The Old Testament, of which Christians hold different views, is a Christian term for the religious writings of ancient Israel held sacred and inspired by Christians which overlaps with the 24-book canon of the Masoretic Text of Judaism...
patriarchs.
Sayce concluded that the Hittite hieroglyphic system was predominantly a syllabary
Syllabary
A syllabary is a set of written symbols that represent syllables, which make up words. In a syllabary, there is no systematic similarity between the symbols which represent syllables with the same consonant or vowel...
, that is, its symbols stood for a phonetic syllable. There were too many different signs for a system that was alphabetical and yet there were too few for it to be a set of ideographs. That very sign standing for the divinity had appeared on the stones of Hamath and other places, always in the form of a prefix of an indecipherable group of hieroglyphics naming the deities. This led Sayce to conclude that by finding the name of one of these deities with the help of another language endowed with similar pronunciation, one might analyze the conversion of the aforesaid name in Hittite hieroglyphics. Also, he stated that the keys to be obtained through that process might in turn be applied to other parts of a Hittite inscription where the same sign were to occur.
Sayce dreamed of finding a bilingual Rosetta Stone
Rosetta Stone
The Rosetta Stone is an ancient Egyptian granodiorite stele inscribed with a decree issued at Memphis in 196 BC on behalf of King Ptolemy V. The decree appears in three scripts: the upper text is Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs, the middle portion Demotic script, and the lowest Ancient Greek...
. In 1880, he found a clue on a writing that spoke of an ancient silver disk discovered in Istanbul
Istanbul
Istanbul , historically known as Byzantium and Constantinople , is the largest city of Turkey. Istanbul metropolitan province had 13.26 million people living in it as of December, 2010, which is 18% of Turkey's population and the 3rd largest metropolitan area in Europe after London and...
. It was a small-sized relic resembling a seal. In its centre, the figure of a warrior wearing a short robe, cape, helmet and upward-toe-capped boots (a Hittite apparel, no doubt) lay. The frieze around the warrior contained a cuneiform inscription in Hurrian dialect. Sayce supposed that the cuneiform inscription on the seal and the Hittite characters contained in its inner circle expressed one only meaning. Therefore, he was facing a bilingual text.
Working with a plaster impression, Sayce translated the cuneiform text of a seal "Tarritktimme, king of the country of Erme" (Walters Gallery, Baltimore). By late 1886, only seven signs had been deciphered out of the totality of signs belonging to the hieroglyphic system.
Later, after Sayce had turned his attention to Egyptology
Egyptology
Egyptology is the study of ancient Egyptian history, language, literature, religion, and art from the 5th millennium BC until the end of its native religious practices in the AD 4th century. A practitioner of the discipline is an “Egyptologist”...
, archives were discovered at Hattusa
Hattusa
Hattusa was the capital of the Hittite Empire in the late Bronze Age. It was located near modern Boğazkale, Turkey, within the great loop of the Kızıl River ....
that unlocked the language spoken there.
Lectures were his favourite vehicle for publication. He published in 1887 his Hibbert lectures
Hibbert Lectures
The Hibbert Lectures are an annual series of non-sectarian lectures on theological issues. They are sponsored by the Hibbert Trust, which was founded in 1847 by the Unitarian Robert Hibbert with a goal to uphold "the unfettered exercise of private judgement in matters of religion."...
on Babylonian religion; in 1902 his Gifford lectures
Gifford Lectures
The Gifford Lectures were established by the will of Adam Lord Gifford . They were established to "promote and diffuse the study of Natural Theology in the widest sense of the term — in other words, the knowledge of God." The term natural theology as used by Gifford means theology supported...
on Egyptian and Babylonian religion; and in 1907 his Rhind lectures
Rhind Lectures
Rhind Lectures are a series of lectures on topics of archaeology, delivered over the course of a weekend by a chosen expert. They have been hosted by the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland since 1874...
.
Rev. Sayce was working at El Kab in Egypt with Somers Clarke
Somers Clarke
George Somers Clarke was an architect and English Egyptologist who worked at a number of sites throughout Egypt, notably in El Kab, where he built a house. He was born in Brighton and died in Egypt....
in the 1900s. In his seasonal winter digs in Egypt he always hired a well-furnished boat on the Nile
Nile
The Nile is a major north-flowing river in North Africa, generally regarded as the longest river in the world. It is long. It runs through the ten countries of Sudan, South Sudan, Burundi, Rwanda, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Tanzania, Kenya, Ethiopia, Uganda and Egypt.The Nile has two major...
to accommodate his travelling library, which also enabled him to offer tea to visiting Egyptologists like the young American James Henry Breasted
James Henry Breasted
James Henry Breasted was an American archaeologist and historian. After completing his PhD at the University of Berlin in 1894, he joined the faculty of the University of Chicago. In 1901 he became director of the Haskell Oriental Museum at the University of Chicago, where he continued to...
and his wife.
Works
- Assyrian Grammar for Comparative Purposes (1872)
- Principles of Comparative Philology (1874)
- Babylonian Literature (1877)
- Introduction to the Science of Language (1879)
- Monuments of the Hittites (1881)
- Herodotus i-ui. (1883)
- Ancient Empires of the East (1884)
- Introduction to Ezra, Nehemiah and Esther (1885)
- Assyria (1885)
- Hibbert Lectures on Babylonian Religion (1887)
- The Hittites (1889)
- Races of the Old Testament (1891)
- Higher Criticism and the Verdict of the Monuments (1894)
- Patriarchal Palestine (1895)
- The Egypt of the Hebrews and Herodotus (1895)
- Early History of the Hebrews (1897)
- Israel and the Surrounding Nations (1898)
- Babylonians and Assyrians (1900)
- Egyptian and Babylonian Religion (1903)
- Archaeology of the Cuneiform Inscriptions (1907)
He also contributed important articles to the 9th, 10th and 11th editions of the Encyclopædia Britannica
Encyclopædia Britannica
The Encyclopædia Britannica , published by Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., is a general knowledge English-language encyclopaedia that is available in print, as a DVD, and on the Internet. It is written and continuously updated by about 100 full-time editors and more than 4,000 expert...
.