Archibald Henry Sayce (25 September 18454 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, 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.
In 1865 he became a classical scholar at The Queen's College, Oxford. While a student at Oxford, Sayce became friends with Max Müller, John Rhys, John Ruskin and Henry Acland. and was elected to a vacant Fellowship in the same year. Ongoing problems with his sight almost led to the end of his Oxford career and Sayce spent much of his time travelling Europe. It was only from 1874, when he came under the supervision of ophthalmologist Richard Liebreich, that Sayce was able to continue his academic career. In 1876 Sayce was appointed the Deputy Professor of Comparative Philology, a role shared with the continuing Professor, Max Müller, who wanted to reduce his duties. Sayce resigned his professorship in 1890 and briefly moved to Egypt, where he was instrumental in the reopening of the Museum of Cairo in 1891. Sayce was also the Gifford Lecturer, 1900–1902; and Rhind Lecturer, 1906. He was also an active member of the Royal Asiatic Society from 1874 and a founding member of the Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies. In 1874, Sayce published his paper, The Astronomy and Astrology of the Babylonians, one of the first articles to translate astronomical cuneiform texts.
Science of language
Sayce is also seen by some as one of founding fathers of the 'Reform Movement' in linguistic research at the end of the 19th century. His two notable works, Introduction to the Science of Language (1879), and The Principles of Comparative Philology (1880), introduced audiences to the changing continental linguistic trends in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The books challenged the current thinking in comparative philology and the importance of what Sayce termed the principle of analogy. were actually created by another pre-Greek culture. In 1879, Sayce further theorized that reliefs and inscriptions at Karabel, İvriz, , Carchemish, Alaca Höyük, and Yazilikaya were created by the Hittites. His hypothesis was confirmed when he visited some of the sites on a tour of the Near East in the same year. Sayce concluded that the Hittite hieroglyphic system was predominantly a syllabary, that is, its symbols stood for a phonetic syllable. There were too many different signs for a system, that was alphabetical and yet there were too few for it to be a set of ideographs. That very sign standing for the divinity had appeared on the stones of Hamath and other places, always in the form of a prefix of an indecipherable group of hieroglyphics naming the deities. This led Sayce to conclude that by finding the name of one of these deities with the help of another language endowed with similar pronunciation, one might analyse the conversion of the aforesaid name in Hittite hieroglyphics. Also, he stated that the keys to be obtained through that process might in turn be applied to other parts of a Hittite inscription where the same sign were to occur.
Sayce dreamed of finding a Hittite Rosetta Stone to help with his research. Sayce attempted to translate a short Hittite hieroglyphic inscription found with a cuneiform text on a silver disk featuring a representation of the Hittite king, Tarkondemos.
Sayce published his research on the Hittites in The Hittites: The Story of a Forgotten Empire in 1888. Sayce produced many studies on the Hittites and their language, but they were criticised by fellow scholars as his work did not apply Historical criticism, and his attempts to decipher the Hittite hieroglyphics were also unsuccessful.
He worked at El Kab in Egypt with Somers Clarke in the 1900s. In his seasonal winter digs in Egypt he always hired a well-furnished boat on the Nile to accommodate his travelling library, which also enabled him to offer tea to visiting Egyptologists like the young American James Henry Breasted and his wife.
Bibliography
Books
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Articles
Sayce also wrote a number of articles in the Encyclopædia Britannica, 9th edition (1875–89) and 10th edition (1902-03), including on Babylon, Babylonia and Assyria, and Wilhelm von Humboldt;
Editorials
Primary sources
- A collection of letters by Sayce are held in the Emory University Archives (Manuscript Collection No. 264).
- A collection of Sayce's notes, photographs, squeezes, correspondence, and offprints are held by the Griffith Institute (Collection Sayce MSS)