Karl Richard Lepsius

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Karl Richard Lepsius
University of Berlin
Known forDenkmäler aus Ägypten und Äthiopien
Spouse
Elisabeth Klein
​
(m. 1846)​
Children6
RelativesBernhard Klein (father-in-law)
Awards
Royal Gold Medal
Scientific career
FieldsEgyptology
InstitutionsUniversity of Berlin
Signature
R Lepsius

Karl Richard Lepsius (

Prussian Egyptologist, linguist and modern archaeologist.[1]

He is widely known for his opus magnum Denkmäler aus Ägypten und Äthiopien.

Early life

Karl Richard Lepsius was the son of Karl Peter Lepsius, a classical scholar from Naumburg, and his wife Friederike (née Gläser), who was the daughter of composer Carl Ludwig Traugott Gläser.[2] The family name was originally "Leps" and had been Latinized to "Lepsius" by Karl's paternal great-grandfather Peter Christoph Lepsius.[3] He was born in Naumburg on the Saale, Saxony.[4]

He studied Greek and Roman

Jean Letronne, an early disciple of Jean-François Champollion and his work on the decipherment of the Egyptian language, visited Egyptian collections all over Europe and studied lithography and engraving
.

Work

Notebook of Karl Richard Lepsius for the Prussian Expedition in Egypt, 1842–1845. Neues Museum, Berlin
Guest book of Karl Richard Lepsius set up in his days in Western Thebes in 1844. Neues Museum, Berlin

After the death of Champollion, Lepsius made a systematic study of the French scholar's

hieroglyphic writing, emphasizing (contra Champollion) that vowels
were not written.

Denkmäler

Main article: Denkmäler aus Ägypten und Äthiopien

In 1842, Lepsius was commissioned (at the recommendation of the minister of instruction, Johann Eichhorn, and the scientists

Christian Charles Josias Bunsen) by King Frederich Wilhelm IV of Prussia to lead an expedition to Egypt and the Sudan to explore and record the remains of the ancient Egyptian civilization. The Prussian expedition was modelled after the earlier Napoleonic mission, with surveyors, draftsmen, and other specialists.[5] The mission reached Giza in November 1842 and spent six months making some of the first scientific studies of the pyramids of Giza, Abusir, Saqqara, and Dahshur. They discovered 67 pyramids recorded in the pioneering Lepsius list of pyramids and more than 130 tombs of noblemen in the area.[5] While at the Great Pyramid of Giza, Lepsius inscribed a graffito written in Egyptian hieroglyphs that honours Friedrich Wilhelm IV above the pyramid's original entrance; it is still visible.[6]

Members of the Prussian expedition to Egypt celebrate Frederick William IV's birthday on the summit of the Great Pyramid of Giza

Working south, stopping for extended periods at important Middle Egyptian sites, such as

Dayr al-Barsha. In 1843, he visited sites in Nubia such as Jebel Barkal, Meroë and Naqa, ruined ancient cities of the Kushitic Kingdom of Meroë, and copied some of the inscriptions and representations of the temples and pyramids there.[7]

Lepsius reached as far south as

Tanis, before returning to Europe in 1846.[citation needed
]

In 1845, he was elected as a member to the American Philosophical Society.[9]

Tura
from Denkmäler aus Aegypten und Aethiopien

The chief result of this expedition was the publication of

Denkmäler aus Aegypten und Aethiopien (Monuments from Egypt and Ethiopia), a massive twelve volume compendium of nearly 900 plates of ancient Egyptian inscriptions, monuments and landscapes, as well as accompanying commentary and descriptions. These plans, maps, and drawings of temple and tomb walls remained the chief source of information for Western scholars well into the 20th century, and are useful even today as they are often the sole record of monuments that have since been destroyed or reburied.[10] For example, he described a "Headless Pyramid" that was subsequently lost until May 2008, when a team led by Zahi Hawass removed a 25-foot-high sand dune to re-discover the superstructure (base) of a pyramid believed to belong to King Menkauhor
.

Later career

Upon his return to Europe in 1845, he married Elisabeth Klein in 1846 and was appointed as a professor of Egyptology at Berlin University in the same year, and the co-director of the

demotic) and Greek
.

Lepsius was president of the

typographer Ferdinand Theinhardt (on behalf of the Prussian Academy of Sciences) to cut the first hieroglyphic typeface
, the so-called Theinhardt font, which is in use today.

Lepsius published widely in the field of Egyptology, and is considered the father of this modern scientific discipline, assuming a role that Champollion might have achieved, had he not died so young. Much of his work is fundamental to the field. Indeed, Lepsius even coined the phrase Totenbuch ("

African Languages; it was published 1855 and revised in 1863. His 1880 Nubische Grammatik mit einer Einleitung über die Völker und Sprachen Afrika's contains a sketch of African peoples and a classification of African languages, as well as a grammar of the Nubian languages
.

Family

On 5 July 1846, he married Elisabeth Klein, (1828–1899), daughter of the composer

Darmstadt University of Technology G. Richard Lepsius (1851–1915), the chemist and director of the Chemical Factory Griesheim Bernhard Lepsius (1854–1934), the portrait painter and member of the Prussian Academy of Arts (as of 1916) Reinhold Lepsius (1857–1929) and the youngest son Johannes Lepsius
, Protestant theologian, humanist and Orientalist.

Major works

Richard Lepsius (Gottlieb Biermann [de], circa 1885)

Death

He had stomach ulcers which became cancerous. After five weeks of eating little, he died at 9 am on 10 July 1884.[11]

See also

References

Citations
  1. ISBN 978-1-317-30747-1
    .
  2. ^ Lepsius 1854, pp. 9–10.
  3. ^ Lepsius 1854, p. 9.
  4. ^ Lepsius 1993, p. 316.
  5. ^ a b Peck 2001, p. 289.
  6. ^ Orcutt, Larry (2002). "GP Hieroglyphics". Retrieved 18 February 2005.
  7. ^ Clammer 2005, pp. 128–31.
  8. ^ Lepsius, Richard (1853). Letters from Egypt, Ethiopia, and the Peninsula of Sinai. H.G. Bohn. pp. 176–180.
  9. ^ "APS Member History". search.amphilsoc.org. Retrieved 2021-04-12.
  10. ^ "Denkmaeler aus Aegypten und Aethiopien". library.si.edu. 2015. Retrieved 2021-06-29.
  11. ^ Ebers 1887, p. 280-81.

Sources

Further reading

External links
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