Hans Jakob Polotsky was an Israel

Israel

The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...

i orientalist, linguist, and professor for Semitic languages

Semitic languages

The Semitic languages are a group of related languages whose living representatives are spoken by more than 270 million people across much of the Middle East, North Africa and the Horn of Africa...

 and 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”...

 at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Hebrew University of Jerusalem

The Hebrew University of Jerusalem ; ; abbreviated HUJI) is Israel's second-oldest university, after the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology. The Hebrew University has three campuses in Jerusalem and one in Rehovot. The world's largest Jewish studies library is located on its Edmond J...

.

Biography

Polotsky was born in Zürich

Zürich

Zurich is the largest city in Switzerland and the capital of the canton of Zurich. It is located in central Switzerland at the northwestern tip of Lake Zurich...

, Switzerland

Switzerland

Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....

, as the son of a Russian Jewish couple. He grew up in Berlin

Berlin

Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...

 and studied Egyptology and Semitics at the universities of Berlin and Göttingen. From 1926 to 1931 he was a co-worker of the Septuaginta-Unternehmen of the Academy of Sciences at Göttingen. In 1929 he received his Ph.D. degree for the dissertation Zu den Inschriften der 11. Dynastie. He worked in Berlin editing Coptic

Coptic language

Coptic or Coptic Egyptian is the current stage of the Egyptian language, a northern Afro-Asiatic language spoken in Egypt until at least the 17th century. Egyptian began to be written using the Greek alphabet in the 1st century...

 Manichean texts from 1933 till 1934, with the Church historian Karl Schmidt. He left Germany in 1935 and settled in Mandate Palestine, where he taught and researched at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, becoming professor in 1948. He died in Jerusalem.

His main achievement was the Études de syntaxe copte published in 1944 which fundamentally changed the scientific view of the syntax of the Coptic and earlier ancient Egyptian languages. Polotsky's theory of the Egyptian verb (a particularly delicate argument, since Egyptians distinguished their different verb forms mainly by the vocalizations, and vowels were not written) had so much success that it has been called Polotsky's standard theory.

In Berlin, Polotsky had been a student of the famous egyptologist Kurt Heinrich Sethe

Kurt Heinrich Sethe

Kurt Heinrich Sethe was a noted German Egyptologist and philologist from Berlin. He was a student of Adolf Erman...

; in Jerusalem, one of his students was Miriam Lichtheim

Miriam Lichtheim

Miriam Lichtheim was a translator of ancient Egyptian texts whose translations are still widely used.-Biography:In the 1930s she studied under Hans Jakob Polotsky at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem...

, known for her extensive translations of ancient Egyptian texts.

Awards

• In 1962, Polotsky received the Rothschild Prize
• In 1966, he was awarded the Israel Prize
  Israel Prize
  The Israel Prize is an award handed out by the State of Israel and is largely regarded as the state's highest honor. It is presented annually, on Israeli Independence Day, in a state ceremony in Jerusalem, in the presence of the President, the Prime Minister, the Knesset chairperson, and the...
  
   in the humanities.
• In 1982, he received the Harvey Prize
  Harvey Prize
  The Harvey Prize is awarded by the Technion in Haifa, Israel. It is awarded in different disciplines of Science, Technology, Human Health, and Contributions to Peace in the Middle East. Two awards - each of $75,000 - are given away annually...
  
  .

Publications

• (with: Karl Schmidt) Ein Mani-Fund in Ägypten, Original-Schriften des Mani und seiner Schüler. Berlin: Akademie der Wissenschaften 1933.
• "Manichäische Studien", in: Le Muséon 46, 1933, pp. 247–271.
• (ed.) Manichäische Homilien. Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer 1934.
• Manichäische Handschriften der Staatlichen Museen Berlin, W. Kohlhammer Stuttgart: 1935
• "Études de grammaire gouragué", in: Bulletin de la Societé de Linguistique de Paris 39, 1938, pp. 137–175
• Études de syntaxe copte, Publications de la Société d'Archéologie Copte. Le Caire, 1944
• "Notes on Gurage grammar", Israel Oriental Society, No. 2, 1951
• "Syntaxe amharique et syntaxe turque", in: Atti del Convegno Internazionale di Studi Etiopici, Roma (Acc. Naz. dei Lincei) 1960: , pp. 117–121
• "Studies in Modern Syriac", in Journal of Semitic Studies 6, 1961, pp. 1–32
• "Aramaic, Syriac, and Ge'ez", in: Journal of Semitic Studies 9, 1964, pp. 1–10
• "Egyptian Tenses", The Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, Vol. II, No. 5. 1965
• E.Y. Kutscher (ed.), Collected Papers by H.J. Polotsky Magnes Press, Jerusalem 1971
• "Les transpositions du verbe en égyptien classique", in Israel Oriental Studies 6, 1976, pp. 1–50
• "A Point of Arabic Syntax: The Indirect Attribute", in Israel Oriental Studies 8, 1978, pp. 159–174.
• "Verbs with two Objects in Modern Syriac (Urmi)", in Israel Oriental Studies 9, 1979, pp. 204–227.
• Grundlagen des koptischen Satzbaus, Scholars Press, Decatur, Ga. , 1987, ISBN 1-55540-076-0
• "Incorporation in Modern Syriac", in G. Goldenberg & Sh. Raz (eds.), Semitic and Cushitic studies. Harrassowitz Wiesbaden 1994, pp. 90–102.
• "Notes on Neo-Syriac Grammar", in Israel Oriental Studies 16, 1996, pp. 11–48.

Further reading

• Erdal, M. (1994). "Hans Jakob Polotsky (1905-1991) : an appreciation", in: Mediterranean language review, 8, pp. 1–9. http://www.ilx.nl/blonline/blonlinesearch2.php?ficheid=104242400589
• Hopkins, S. (1992/3). "H.J. Polotsky 1905-1991", in: Rassegna di Studi Etiopici, 34, pp. 115–125. http://www.ilx.nl/blonline/blonlinesearch2.php?ficheid=110021450807
• Osing, J. (1993). "Hans Jakob Polotsky: 13. September 1905 - 10. August 1991", in: Zeitschrift für ägyptische Sprache und Altertumskunde 120/1, pp. iii-v.
• Shisha-Halevy, Ariel (1992). "In memoriam Hans Jakob Polotsky (1905-1991)", in: Orientalia (nova series) 61, pp. 208–213.
• Shisha-Halevy, Ariel (2006). "H. J. Polotsky Structuralist", in: After Polotsky: Proceedings of the Colloquium, Bad Honnef, September 2005 (Lingua Aegyptia 14), pp. 1–8.
• Shisha-Halevy, Ariel & Goldenberg, Gideon (2007). "H. J. Polotsky", in: Lexicon Grammaticorum, 2nd ed., (ed. H. Stammerjohann).
• Shivtiel, A. (1994). "Polotsky Hans (Hayyim) Jacob (1905-91)", in: The encyclopedia of language and linguistics. Oxford: Pergamon, vol. 6, pp. 3226–3227
• Ullendorff, Edward
  Edward Ullendorff
  Edward Ullendorff FBA was a British scholar and historian, especially in Semitic languages and Ethiopia.-Biography:...
  
   (ed.; 1992). H.J. Polotsky (1905-1991): Ausgewählte Briefe (Äthiopistische Forschungen, Band 34). Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag. ISBN 3-515-06066-9
• Ullendorff, Edward (1994). "H.J. Polotsky (1905-1991): Linguistic Genius", in: Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, Series 3, 4, 1, pp. 3–13. [=E. Ullendorff, From Emperor Haile Selassie to H.J. Polotsky. Harrassowitz: Wiesbaden 1995, pp. 165–175]

See also

• List of Israel Prize recipients