František Lexa (5 April 1876 – 13 February 1960) was a

Czech Czech may refer to: * Anything from or related to the Czech Republic, a country in Europe ** Czech language ** Czechs, the people of the area ** Czech culture ** Czech cuisine * One of three mythical brothers, Lech, Czech, and Rus *Czech (surnam ...

Egyptologist Egyptology (from ''Egypt'' and Greek , ''-logia''; ) is the scientific study of ancient Egypt. The topics studied include ancient Egyptian history, language, literature, religion, architecture and art from the 5th millennium BC until the end ...

Biography

Lexa was born on 5 April 1876 in

Pardubice Pardubice (; ) is a city in the Czech Republic. It has about 92,000 inhabitants. It is the capital city of the Pardubice Region and lies on the Elbe River. The historic centre is well preserved and is protected as an Cultural monument (Czech Repub ...

. He began his career as a secondary school teacher. Having learnt the

Egyptian language The Egyptian language, or Ancient Egyptian (; ), is an extinct branch of the Afro-Asiatic languages that was spoken in ancient Egypt. It is known today from a large corpus of surviving texts, which were made accessible to the modern world ...

by himself, he became the first person to translate and publish Egyptian texts into

in 1905. Lexa spent the rest of his career at

Charles University Charles University (CUNI; , UK; ; ), or historically as the University of Prague (), is the largest university in the Czech Republic. It is one of the List of oldest universities in continuous operation, oldest universities in the world in conti ...

Prague Prague ( ; ) is the capital and List of cities and towns in the Czech Republic, largest city of the Czech Republic and the historical capital of Bohemia. Prague, located on the Vltava River, has a population of about 1.4 million, while its P ...

, first as a private senior lecturer of Egyptology in 1919, then an associate professor in 1922, then Czechoslovakia's first Professor for Egyptology in 1927, and finally the first director of the Czechoslovak Institute of Egyptology in 1958. Lexa's students included Jaroslav Černý and

Zbyněk Žába Zbyněk Žába (June 19, 1917 – August 15, 1971) was a Czechoslovak Egyptologist. Life In 1945 Zbyněk Žába commenced his studies on the subject and in 1949 he became an assistant to František Lexa. In 1954 Žába was named an assoc ...

. He died on 13 February 1960 in Prague.

Works

* Papyrus Insinger (in French, Librairie orientaliste: P. Geuthner, Paris; 1926) *Výbor z mladší a starší literatury staroegyptské *Náboženská literatura staroegyptská *Staroegyptské čarodějnictví *Obecné mravní nauky staroegyptské *Grammaire démotique *Veřejný život ve starém Egyptě

Biography

Works

References

Further reading