Friedrich Preisigke

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Friedrich Preisigke (14 February 1856 in Dessau – 8 February 1924 in Heidelberg) was a German Egyptologist and papyrologist.

Life

Born in Dessau, he attended the Cathedral gymnasium at

University of Halle with a thesis supervised by the orientalist Ulrich Wilcken. In 1908 he became Director of Telegraphs in Strasbourg, and in 1913 was appointed professor at the Faculty of Philosophy of the University of Strasbourg. In June 1915 he was elected an extraordinary member of the Academy of Sciences in Heidelberg, and in 1918 founded the Institut für Papyrologie in the same city, which continues today to be Germany's leading centre of papyrology.[1]

Works

The activity of Preisigke concentrated mainly in the reconstruction of the financial and administrative system in Egypt during the Roman occupation, particularly the bank giro, the fruit of which was published in 1910:

  • Girowesen im griechischen Ägypten, enthaltend Korngiro, Geldgiro, Girobanknotariat mit Einschluss des Archivwesens. 1910.

A major lexical source utilised by

Moulton & Milligan (MM)
is the papyrus collection:

  • Sammelbuch griechischer Urkunden aus Ägypten Wissenschaftliche Gesellschaft in Strassburg. Strasbourg 1915[2]

Another fundamental contribution to scientific papyrology by this writer was the dictionary of Greek language papyrus documents of Egypt finished and published 20 years after his death titled:

  • Wörterbuch der griechischen Papyrusurkunden mit Einschluss
    University of Heidelberg
    , 1944

References

  1. ^ Obituary Friedrich Preisigke H. I. Bell The Journal of Egyptian Archaeology, Vol. 10, No. 2 (Jul., 1924), pp. 172-173 Egypt Exploration Society
  2. ^ PM Fraser Bibliography: Graeco-Roman Egypt Greek Inscriptions (1950-51) 1952 "Deservedly or otherwise, PREISIGKE'S. Sammelbuch has won a central place as a handbook of the documentary sources for the history of Graeco-Roman Egypt"