Gustav Seyffarth (13 July 179617 November 1885) was a

German-American German Americans (german: Deutschamerikaner, ) are Americans who have full or partial German ancestry. With an estimated size of approximately 43 million in 2019, German Americans are the largest of the self-reported ancestry groups by the Unite ...

Egyptologist Egyptology (from ''Egypt'' and Greek , '' -logia''; ar, علم المصريات) is the study of ancient Egyptian history, language, literature, religion, architecture and art from the 5th millennium BC until the end of its native religious ...

, born in Uebigau, in the

Electorate of Saxony The Electorate of Saxony, also known as Electoral Saxony (German: or ), was a territory of the Holy Roman Empire from 1356–1806. It was centered around the cities of Dresden, Leipzig and Chemnitz. In the Golden Bull of 1356, Emperor Charles ...

. He studied

theology Theology is the systematic study of the nature of the divine and, more broadly, of religious belief. It is taught as an academic discipline, typically in universities and seminaries. It occupies itself with the unique content of analyzing the ...

and

philology Philology () is the study of language in oral and writing, written historical sources; it is the intersection of textual criticism, literary criticism, history, and linguistics (with especially strong ties to etymology). Philology is also defin ...

at the

University of Leipzig Leipzig University (german: Universität Leipzig), in Leipzig in Saxony, Germany, is one of the world's oldest universities and the second-oldest university (by consecutive years of existence) in Germany. The university was founded on 2 Decemb ...

, obtaining his doctorate in 1823 with the thesis "De sonis literarum graecarum tum genuis tum adoptivis". He became a

professor Professor (commonly abbreviated as Prof.) is an Academy, academic rank at university, universities and other post-secondary education and research institutions in most countries. Literally, ''professor'' derives from Latin as a "person who pr ...

philosophy Philosophy (from , ) is the systematized study of general and fundamental questions, such as those about existence, reason, knowledge, values, mind, and language. Such questions are often posed as problems to be studied or resolved. Some ...

at Leipzig in 1825 and a professor of archæology in 1830 (a position he held until 1855).Seyffarth, Gustav
@ NDB/ADB Deutsche Biographie From 1826 to 1829 he visited the principal

museum A museum ( ; plural museums or, rarely, musea) is a building or institution that cares for and displays a collection of artifacts and other objects of artistic, cultural, historical, or scientific importance. Many public museums make these ...

s of Germany, France, England, and the Netherlands and collected copies of Egyptian inscriptions and

Copt Copts ( cop, ⲛⲓⲣⲉⲙⲛ̀ⲭⲏⲙⲓ ; ar, الْقِبْط ) are a Christians, Christian ethnoreligious group indigenous to North Africa who have primarily inhabited the area of modern Egypt and Sudan since Ancient history, antiqui ...

ic manuscripts. In 1840, on his initiative, a

sarcophagus A sarcophagus (plural sarcophagi or sarcophaguses) is a box-like funeral receptacle for a corpse, most commonly carved in stone, and usually displayed above ground, though it may also be buried. The word ''sarcophagus'' comes from the Greek ...

was purchased that was to become the centerpiece of the future ''Ägyptisches Museum der Universität Leipzig''. In 1856 he came to America and became a professor of

church history __NOTOC__ Church history or ecclesiastical history as an academic discipline studies the history of Christianity and the way the Christian Church has developed since its inception. Henry Melvill Gwatkin defined church history as "the spiritual ...

and archæology at Concordia College, St. Louis. From 1859 he resided in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

, where he conducted research at the

Astor Library The Astor Library was a free public library in the East Village, Manhattan, developed primarily through the collaboration of New York City merchant John Jacob Astor and New England educator and bibliographer Joseph Cogswell. It was primarily me ...

. Seyffarth was an earnest student of Egyptology, but wrongly held that the

hieroglyphic Egyptian hieroglyphs (, ) were the formal writing system used in Ancient Egypt, used for writing the Egyptian language. Hieroglyphs combined logographic, syllabic and alphabetic elements, with some 1,000 distinct characters.There were about 1,00 ...

characters, with scarcely an exception, were pure phonograms. His method of deciphering hieroglyphics was fundamentally different to that of

Jean-François Champollion Jean-François Champollion (), also known as Champollion ''le jeune'' ('the Younger'; 23 December 17904 March 1832), was a French philologist and orientalist, known primarily as the decipherer of Egyptian hieroglyphs and a founding figure in th ...

— with Seyffarth asserting that the hieroglyphs designated the consonant elements of a syllable and Champollion teaching that the hieroglyphs were symbols standing for definite letters of the alphabet.

Selected works

* "De lingua et literis veterum Aegyptiorum: cum permultis tabulis lithographicis", 1825 (with Friedrich August Wilhelm Spohn). * "Rudimenta Hieroglyphices", 1826. * ''Beiträge zur Kenntniss der Literatur, Kunst, Mythologie und Geschichte des alten Aegypten'', (1826–1840, 7 parts). * "Systema astronomiae aegyptiacae quadripartitum", 1833. * ''Unser alphabet ein abbild des thierkreises'', 1834. * "Alphabeta Genuina Aegyptiorum", 1840. * ''Die Grundsätze der Mythologie und der alten Religionsgeschichte'' 1843. * "Grammatica aegyptiaca", 1855. * "Summary of recent discoveries in Biblical chronology, universal history and Egyptian archæology; with special reference to Dr. Abbott's Egyptian museum in New-York. Together with a translation of the first sacred book of the ancient Egyptians", 1857. * "An Astronomical Inscription Concerning the Year 1722 B.C.", 1859. * "The hieroglyphic tablet of Pompeium, grammatically translated and commented on", 1881. * "The Literary Life of Gustavus Seyffarth ...: An Autobiogaphical Sketch" (with

Karl Knortz Karl Knortz (28 August 1841 Garbenheim, Rhenish Prussia – 27 July 1918 North Tarrytown, New York) was a German-American author. Biography He was educated at the gymnasium of Wetzlar, and the University of Heidelberg. He emigrated to the Unit ...

), 1886.Google Search
published works

References

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Seyffarth, Gustav 1796 births 1885 deaths People from Uebigau-Wahrenbrück People from the Electorate of Saxony German Egyptologists German male non-fiction writers Archaeologists from Brandenburg German emigrants to the United States American Egyptologists Writers from New York City Academic staff of Leipzig University Leipzig University alumni