Archibald Sayce facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Archibald Sayce
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Sayce in 1911
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Archibald Henry Sayce
25 September 1845 Shirehampton, England
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| Died | 4 February 1933 (aged 87) Bath, Somerset, England
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| Education | Grosvenor College, Bath; The Queen's College, Oxford |
| Occupation | Assyriologist and linguist |
| Scientific career | |
| Institutions | University of Oxford |
Archibald Henry Sayce (born September 25, 1845 – died February 4, 1933) was a very important British scholar. He was an Assyriologist and a linguist.
An Assyriologist studies the ancient history, languages, and cultures of Mesopotamia. A linguist studies languages.
Sayce was a professor at the University of Oxford from 1891 to 1919. He was amazing at languages, able to understand at least twenty old and new ones. He believed it was important to use clues from old buildings and artifacts to understand languages better. He also wrote articles for the famous Encyclopædia Britannica.
Contents
Life of Archibald Sayce
Archibald Sayce was born in Shirehampton, England, on September 25, 1845. He was often sick when he was young, which delayed his schooling. But he was a very fast learner!
When he got his first teacher in 1855, he was already reading books in Latin and Ancient Greek. His family moved to Bath in 1858, and he started at Grosvenor College.
By the time he was 18, he had taught himself to read some Ancient Egyptian, Sanskrit, and Hebrew. He also became very interested in cuneiform, an ancient writing system. In 1865, he published his first academic paper about cuneiform writings from Van.
In 1865, Sayce became a student at The Queen's College, Oxford. He made friends with other famous people there, like Max Müller and John Ruskin. Because of his health, he often studied at home or traveled to places like the Pyrenees and Switzerland.
He did very well in his studies at Oxford. In 1868, he became a Fellow, which is like a special member of the college.
In 1869, Sayce became a lecturer at Queen's College. He also became a priest in the Church of England in 1870. Problems with his eyesight almost stopped his career. He traveled a lot in Europe to find help for his eyes.
From 1874, his eyesight improved, and he could continue his studies. That same year, he helped revise the Old Testament, a part of the Bible. Sayce also gave talks to groups like the Nineveh Society of Biblical Archaeology. He wrote for newspapers like The Times.
In 1876, he became a Deputy Professor of Comparative Philology. This meant he helped teach about how languages are related.
From 1872, Sayce spent most summers traveling for his health. He also looked for new ancient texts. In 1879, he left his teaching job at Oxford to focus on his research and explore the Near East.
In 1881, he was one of the first scholars to study the Siloam Inscription. This was an important ancient Hebrew writing. Sayce left his professorship in 1890 and moved to Egypt for a short time. He helped reopen the Museum of Cairo in 1891.
Later in 1891, Sayce returned to Oxford. He became the university's first Professor of Assyriology. He loved giving lectures, and he published many of them. These included his Hibbert Lectures on Babylonian religion in 1887. He also gave the Gifford Lectures (1900–1902) and Rhind Lectures (1906).
Sayce helped start the Society of Biblical Archaeology. He was its president from 1898 until it joined the Royal Asiatic Society in 1919. He was also a founding member of the Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies.
After he retired in 1915, Sayce kept writing. He spent his time in Edinburgh, Oxford, and Egypt. In 1923, he published Reminiscences, a book about his life and travels. When he died on February 4, 1933, in Bath, he was working on translating ancient writings from Ras Shamra.
Sayce's Research and Discoveries
Studying Ancient Languages
Sayce's early work focused on the Sumerian and Akkadian languages. These were spoken in ancient Mesopotamia. In 1870, he wrote an article called An Accadian Seal. In it, he shared important discoveries about how Sumerian worked.
His book, An Assyrian grammar for comparative purposes (1872), helped other scholars notice these "new" languages. In 1874, Sayce published a paper translating ancient astronomical cuneiform texts. This was one of the first times anyone had done this.
New Ideas in Language Study
Some people see Sayce as a founder of a "Reform Movement" in language research. This happened at the end of the 19th century. His books, Introduction to the Science of Language (1879) and The Principles of Comparative Philology (1880), introduced new ideas.
These books showed how language studies were changing in Europe. They challenged older ways of thinking about how languages compare to each other.
Discovering the Hittites
In the late 1870s, Sayce started studying Indo-European languages. He thought that some old rock carvings in Asia Minor, like the Karabel relief, were not made by Egyptians. He believed they were made by another ancient culture.
In 1876, he guessed that symbols found in Syria were not like Assyrian or Egyptian writing. He thought they came from a different group he called the Hittites.
In 1879, Sayce suggested that other carvings and writings were also made by the Hittites. He visited some of these places himself to confirm his ideas. When he returned to England, he announced that the Hittites were a much more powerful culture than people thought. They had their own art and language.
Sayce believed the Hittite writing system was mostly a syllabary. This means each symbol stood for a sound, like a syllable. He hoped to find a "Rosetta Stone" for Hittite. A Rosetta Stone is a special artifact that has the same text in different languages, which helps scholars translate unknown languages.
He tried to translate a short Hittite writing found with a cuneiform text on a silver disk. He also helped identify the ruins at Boghazkoy as Hattusa. This was the capital of the Hittite Empire, which was very large.
Sayce published his research on the Hittites in 1888 in a book called The Hittites: The Story of a Forgotten Empire. He wrote many studies about the Hittites and their language. However, his attempts to figure out the Hittite hieroglyphs were not successful.
Work in Egypt
From the early 1880s, Sayce spent most of his winters in Egypt because of his health. He became very interested in the ancient sites there. He was friends with Flinders Petrie, another famous archaeologist. Sayce worked on cuneiform writings that Petrie found at Tel el Amarna.
He also worked at El Kab in Egypt with Somers Clarke in the 1900s. During his winter digs, he would rent a comfortable boat on the Nile River. He used it to hold his large library of books. He also invited other Egyptologists, like the young American James Henry Breasted, for tea on his boat.
Images for kids
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Sayce in 1911
