Ignace Jay Gelb (October 14, 1907,
Tarnau,
Austria-Hungary
Austria-Hungary, often referred to as the Austro-Hungarian Empire,, the Dual Monarchy, or Austria, was a constitutional monarchy and great power in Central Europe between 1867 and 1918. It was formed with the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of ...
(now Tarnów,
Poland
Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe. It is divided into 16 administrative provinces called voivodeships, covering an area of . Poland has a population of over 38 million and is the fifth-most populou ...
) - December 22, 1985,
Chicago, Illinois
(''City in a Garden''); I Will
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) was a
Polish-
American
American(s) may refer to:
* American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America"
** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America
** American ancestry, pe ...
ancient historian and
Assyriologist
Assyriology (from Greek , ''Assyriā''; and , ''-logia'') is the archaeological, anthropological, and linguistic study of Assyria and the rest of ancient Mesopotamia (a region that encompassed what is now modern Iraq, northeastern Syria, sout ...
who pioneered the scientific study of
writing systems
A writing system is a method of visually representing verbal communication, based on a script and a set of rules regulating its use. While both writing and speech are useful in conveying messages, writing differs in also being a reliable f ...
.
Early life
Born in
Tarnów,
Austria-Hungary
Austria-Hungary, often referred to as the Austro-Hungarian Empire,, the Dual Monarchy, or Austria, was a constitutional monarchy and great power in Central Europe between 1867 and 1918. It was formed with the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of ...
(now
Poland
Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe. It is divided into 16 administrative provinces called voivodeships, covering an area of . Poland has a population of over 38 million and is the fifth-most populou ...
), he earned his
PhD PHD or PhD may refer to:
* Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), an academic qualification
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** Ph.D. (Ph.D. al ...
from the
University of Rome in 1929, then went to the
University of Chicago
The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, U of C, or UChi) is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its main campus is located in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood. The University of Chicago is consistently ranked among the b ...
where he was a professor of Assyriology until his death.
Contribution
Although writing systems have been studied for centuries by
linguists
Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. It is called a scientific study because it entails a comprehensive, systematic, objective, and precise analysis of all aspects of language, particularly its nature and structure. Lingui ...
, Gelb is widely regarded as the first scientific practitioner of the study of scripts, and coined the term
grammatology to refer to the study of writing systems. In ''A Study of Writing'' (1952), he suggested that scripts evolve in a single direction, from
logographic scripts to
syllabaries
In the linguistic study of written languages, a syllabary is a set of written symbols that represent the syllables or (more frequently) moras which make up words.
A symbol in a syllabary, called a syllabogram, typically represents an (optiona ...
to
alphabet
An alphabet is a standardized set of basic written graphemes (called letters) that represent the phonemes of certain spoken languages. Not all writing systems represent language in this way; in a syllabary, each character represents a syllab ...
s. This historical
typology has been criticized as overly simplistic, forcing the data to fit the model and ignoring exceptional cases. Gelb's typology has since been refined by
Peter T. Daniels and others.
Gelb had contributed significantly to the decipherment of the
Anatolian hieroglyphs
Anatolian hieroglyphs are an indigenous logographic script native to central Anatolia, consisting of some 500 signs. They were once commonly known as Hittite hieroglyphs, but the language they encode proved to be Luwian, not Hittite, and the te ...
(formerly often referred to as 'Hittite hieroglyphs'), having published 3 volumes of studies on the subject.
[Albrecht Goetze]
''Hittite Hieroglyphs III by Ignace J. Gelb''.
Journal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. 64, No. 2 (Apr. - Jun., 1944), pp. 84-86
In the course of his career, he published over 20 books, that have been translated into many languages, and over 250 scientific articles.
View of the Maya
Gelb believed that the
Maya hieroglyphs did not qualify as true writing capable of representing language, which has now been disproven following the
decipherment of the Maya script.
Work in Assyriology
Gelb's work in Assyriology focused on publishing editions of
Akkadian Akkadian or Accadian may refer to:
* Akkadians, inhabitants of the Akkadian Empire
* Akkadian language, an extinct Eastern Semitic language
* Akkadian literature, literature in this language
* Akkadian cuneiform
Cuneiform is a logo-syllabic ...
texts and a grammar and dictionary of Old Akkadian. He became editor of the
Chicago Assyrian Dictionary
The Chicago Assyrian Dictionary (CAD) or The Assyrian Dictionary of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago is a nine-decade project at the University of Chicago's Oriental Institute to compile a dictionary of the Akkadian language an ...
in 1947 and continued work on the project until his death. His other important works include works on
Mesopotamian land tenure and sales,
metrology, and other aspects of economic and social history.
Gelb, supported by Assyriologist Aage Westenholz, differentiated three stages of Old Akkadian: that of the pre-Sargonic era, that of the
Akkadian empire
The Akkadian Empire () was the first ancient empire of Mesopotamia after the long-lived civilization of Sumer. It was centered in the city of Akkad () and its surrounding region. The empire united Akkadian and Sumerian speakers under one r ...
, and that of the
Ur III period
The Third Dynasty of Ur, also called the Neo-Sumerian Empire, refers to a 22nd to 21st century BC (middle chronology) Sumerian ruling dynasty based in the city of Ur and a short-lived territorial-political state which some historians consider t ...
.
He was a fellow of the
American Academy of Arts and Sciences
The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (abbreviation: AAA&S) is one of the oldest learned societies in the United States. It was founded in 1780 during the American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock, James Bowdoin, Andrew Oliver, a ...
(1968) and of the
British Academy
The British Academy is the United Kingdom's national academy for the humanities and the social sciences.
It was established in 1902 and received its royal charter in the same year. It is now a fellowship of more than 1,000 leading scholars s ...
(1978), a member of the
Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei
The Accademia dei Lincei (; literally the "Academy of the Lynx-Eyed", but anglicised as the Lincean Academy) is one of the oldest and most prestigious European scientific institutions, located at the Palazzo Corsini on the Via della Lungara in Rom ...
, and in 1975 he was elected as a member of the prestigious
American Philosophical Society
The American Philosophical Society (APS), founded in 1743 in Philadelphia, is a scholarly organization that promotes knowledge in the sciences and humanities through research, professional meetings, publications, library resources, and communit ...
. Additionally, from 1965 to 1966 he was president of the
American Oriental Society
The American Oriental Society was chartered under the laws of Massachusetts on September 7, 1842. It is one of the oldest learned societies in America, and is the oldest devoted to a particular field of scholarship.
The Society encourages basi ...
.
Notes
References
* Leichty, Erle. 1998. Ignace J. Gelb (14 October 1907 - 22 December 1985). ''Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society'' 142(4): 668–670.
* Marquis Who Was Who in America, vol. 5, 1986–1989. ()
*Ignace J Gelb, ''Hittite hieroglyphic monuments''. Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 1939. (University of Chicago Oriental Institute publications, v. 45.)
*Ignace J Gelb, ''A study of writing''. Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 1963
{{DEFAULTSORT:Gelb, Ignace
20th-century American historians
American male non-fiction writers
American Assyriologists
Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
Fellows of the British Academy
Members of the American Philosophical Society
University of Chicago faculty
Linguists from the United States
Jews from Galicia (Eastern Europe)
American people of Polish-Jewish descent
People from Tarnów
1907 births
1985 deaths
20th-century American archaeologists
20th-century linguists
20th-century American male writers
Corresponding Fellows of the British Academy
Polish expatriates in Italy
Polish emigrants to the United States