- Julius Oppert
Julius Oppert (
July 9 ,1825 -August 21 ,1905 ), French-German Assyriologist, was born atHamburg , ofJewish parents.After studying at
Heidelberg ,Bonn andBerlin , he graduated at Kiel in 1847; and in the following year went to France, where he was teacher of German at Laval and at Reims. His leisure was given toOriental studies , in which he had made great progress in Germany.In 1851, he joined the French archaeological mission to
Mesopotamia and Media underFulgence Fresnel . On his return in 1854, he was naturalized as a French citizen in recognition of his services. He occupied himself in digesting the results of the expedition, with special attention to the cuneiform inscriptions he had collected.In 1855, he published "Écriture Anarienne", advancing the theory that the language originally spoken in Assyria was
Turanian (related to Turkish and Mongolian), rather thanAryan orSemitic in origin, and that its speakers had invented the cuneiform writing system. Although the classification of the "Casdo-Scythian" inscriptions as Turanian would later come into doubt, scholarship would confirm Oppert in his identification of the discrete character of theSumerian language (as he renamed it in 1869) and the origin of its script.In 1856 he published "Chronologie des Assyriens et des Babyloniens".
In 1857, he was appointed professor of
Sanskrit and comparativephilology in the school of languages connected with the National Library of France, and in this capacity he produced his "Grammaire Sanscrite" (1859). But his attention was chiefly given to Assyrian and cognate subjects.His account of the Fresnel mission and the results of his consequent study were published as "Expédition Scientifique en Mésopotamie" (1859-1863), with the second volume entitled "Déchiffrement des inscriptions cunéiformes".
In 1865 he published a history of Assyria and
Chaldaea ("Histoire des Empires de Chaldée et d'Assyrie") in the light of new archaeological findings. His Assyrian grammar, "Éléments de la grammaire assyrienne", was published in 1868. In 1869 Oppert was appointed professor of Assyrian philology and archaeology at the College de France.In 1876, Oppert began to focus on the antiquities of ancient Media and its language, writing "Le Peuple et la langue des Médes" (1879).
In 1881, he was admitted to the Academy of Inscriptions and in 1890, he was elected to its presidency.
He died in Paris on the 21st of August, 1905.
Bibliography
Oppert was a voluminous writer upon Assyrian mythology and
jurisprudence , and other subjects connected with the ancient civilizations of the East. Among his other works may be mentioned:
*"L'Immortalité de idiome chez les Chaldéens", (1875)
*"Salomon et ses successeurs" (1877)
*"Doctrines juridiques de l'Assyrie et de la Chaldée" (1877, withJoachim Menant ).A list of his articles may be found in Haupt and Delitzsch, "Beiträge zur Assyriologie" (Leipzig, 1891).
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