Josef Keil was an Austrian historian

Historian

A historian is a person who studies and writes about the past and is regarded as an authority on it. Historians are concerned with the continuous, methodical narrative and research of past events as relating to the human race; as well as the study of all history in time. If the individual is...

, epigrapher

Epigraphy

Epigraphy Epigraphy Epigraphy (from the , literally "on-writing", is the study of inscriptions or epigraphs as writing; that is, the science of identifying the graphemes and of classifying their use as to cultural context and date, elucidating their meaning and assessing what conclusions can be...

 and an archaeologist.

Keil was born in Reichenberg, now Liberec

Liberec

Liberec is a city in the Czech Republic. Located on the Lusatian Neisse and surrounded by the Jizera Mountains and Ještěd-Kozákov Ridge, it is the fifth-largest city in the Czech Republic....

 in northern Bohemia

Bohemia

Bohemia is a historical region in central Europe, occupying the western two-thirds of the traditional Czech Lands. It is located in the contemporary Czech Republic with its capital in Prague...

 in the Czech Republic

Czech Republic

The Czech Republic is a landlocked country in Central Europe. The country is bordered by Poland to the northeast, Slovakia to the east, Austria to the south, and Germany to the west and northwest....

. He began his career in 1904 as a scientific secretary at the Österreichischen Archäologischen Instituts in Smyrna

Smyrna

Smyrna was an ancient city located at a central and strategic point on the Aegean coast of Anatolia. Thanks to its advantageous port conditions, its ease of defence and its good inland connections, Smyrna rose to prominence. The ancient city is located at two sites within modern İzmir, Turkey...

, now İzmir

Izmir

Izmir is a large metropolis in the western extremity of Anatolia. The metropolitan area in the entire Izmir Province had a population of 3.35 million as of 2010, making the city third most populous in Turkey...

, Turkey

Turkey

Turkey , known officially as the Republic of Turkey , is a Eurasian country located in Western Asia and in East Thrace in Southeastern Europe...

. He excavated archaeological sites in Asia Minor

Asia Minor

Asia Minor is a geographical location at the westernmost protrusion of Asia, also called Anatolia, and corresponds to the western two thirds of the Asian part of Turkey...

 particularly in Lydia

Lydia

Lydia was an Iron Age kingdom of western Asia Minor located generally east of ancient Ionia in the modern Turkish provinces of Manisa and inland İzmir. Its population spoke an Anatolian language known as Lydian....

. He led the excavations in Ephesus

Ephesus

Ephesus was an ancient Greek city, and later a major Roman city, on the west coast of Asia Minor, near present-day Selçuk, Izmir Province, Turkey. It was one of the twelve cities of the Ionian League during the Classical Greek era...

. He was a professor at Greifswald

Greifswald

Greifswald , officially, the University and Hanseatic City of Greifswald is a town in northeastern Germany. It is situated in the state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, at an equal distance of about from Germany's two largest cities, Berlin and Hamburg. The town borders the Baltic Sea, and is crossed...

 from 1927 to 1936, Vienna

Vienna

Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...

 from 1936 to 1945. From 1945, he became a Secretary General of Österreichischen Akademie der Wikssenschaften, the Austrian Academy of Sciences until 1949. From 1949 to 1956, he was the directof of the Österreichen Archäologischen Instituts with Otto Walter

Otto Walter

Otto Walter was an Austrian archaeologist.He was a co-worker from 1910-1945 and was a director of the Österreichische Archäologische Institute, lit. the Austrian Archaeological Institute in Athens. He became a professor in 1945 at the University of Vienna...

 and Fritz Eichler

Fritz Eichler

Fritz Eichler was an Austrian archaeologist.He was born in Graz, where he graduated in 1910, and studied in Berlin, England, Italy, Greece and Asia Minor, and was active from 1913 to 1933 as the antiquity collector at the Kunsthistorischen Museums, the Historical Art Museum in Vienna...

. He died in Vienna in 1963.

Works

Numerous publications of inscriptions from Ephesus especially in Jahresheften des Österreichischen Archäologischen Instituts.

• Ephesos. Ein Führer durch die Ruinenstätte und ihre Geschichte, Vienna, 1915
• Drei Berichte über Reisen in Lydien und weiteren Gebieten, Three reports over journeys in Lydia and other areas (with Anton von Premerstein), Vienna, 1908, 1911, 1914