Archibald Sayce
British Assyriologist and linguist (1845–1933)
Archibald Henry Sayce (25 September 1845 – 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. He was able to write in at least twenty ancient and modern languages, and was known for his emphasis on the importance of archaeological and monumental evidence in linguistic research. He was a contributor to articles in the 9th, 10th and 11th editions of the Encyclopædia Britannica.
Life
Sayce was born in Shirehampton, near Bristol, on 25 September 1845. Although the start of his education was delayed due to ill health he had suffered since birth, Sayce was a quick learner. When his first tutor was appointed in 1855, he was already reading works in Latin and Ancient Greek. He began his formal education at Grosvenor College shortly after his family moved to Bath in 1858. By the age of 18, he had already taught himself to read some Ancient Egyptian, Sanskrit and Hebrew and had become interested in cuneiform. He published his first academic paper, Cuneiform inscriptions of Van in 1865.
In 1865 he became a classical scholar at The Queen's College, Oxford.
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This entry incorporates text from “Archibald Sayce” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.