Background
He was born in 1825 at Hamburg, Germany.
(Born in Hamburg to Jewish parents, Julius Oppert (1825-19...)
Born in Hamburg to Jewish parents, Julius Oppert (1825-1905) later moved to France, where he established a reputation as a remarkably gifted Assyriologist, making significant contributions to the decipherment of cuneiform Akkadian. Between 1851 and 1854, he accompanied the orientalist Fulgence Fresnel (1795-1855) on the French expedition to Mesopotamia. In recognition of his role, involving important excavations at the site of the ancient city of Babylon, Oppert was granted French citizenship. In May 1855, however, a great many of the discovered antiquities were lost when the raft transporting them sank in the Tigris under the weight of its priceless cargo. The present work appeared in two volumes between 1859 and 1863; the publication of the second volume preceded that of the first, as Oppert prioritised the analysis of the cuneiform inscriptions. Volume 1 (1863) records the journey and archaeological results. Volume 2 (1859) seeks to decipher the inscriptions.
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(The decipherment of the ancient cuneiform scripts was one...)
The decipherment of the ancient cuneiform scripts was one of the major breakthroughs in nineteenth-century archaeology and linguistics. Among the scholars working on Old Persian was Christian Lassen (1800-76), professor of Sanskrit at Bonn. Lassen's book on cuneiform inscriptions from Persepolis appeared in 1836, a month before his friend Eugène Burnouf independently published very similar conclusions. Lassen's account gives vivid insights into the detective work involved, as he painstakingly compares individual words and grammatical forms with their Avestan and Sanskrit equivalents, and proposes sounds for the symbols. The book uses a specially designed cuneiform font, and credits the printer, Georgi of Bonn. This Cambridge Library Collection volume also includes a short monograph on Old Persian phonology published in Berlin in 1847 by the Assyriologist Julius Oppert (1825-1905). Oppert revisits Lassen's conclusions in the light of Henry Creswicke Rawlinson's important 1846 memoir on the trilingual Behistun inscription.
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(Born in Hamburg to Jewish parents, Julius Oppert (1825-19...)
Born in Hamburg to Jewish parents, Julius Oppert (1825-1905) later moved to France, where he established a reputation as a remarkably gifted Assyriologist, making significant contributions to the decipherment of cuneiform Akkadian. Between 1851 and 1854, he accompanied the orientalist Fulgence Fresnel (1795-1855) on the French expedition to Mesopotamia. In recognition of his role, involving important excavations at the site of the ancient city of Babylon, Oppert was granted French citizenship. In May 1855, however, a great many of the discovered antiquities were lost when the raft transporting them sank in the Tigris under the weight of its priceless cargo. The present work appeared in two volumes between 1859 and 1863; the publication of the second volume preceded that of the first, as Oppert prioritised the analysis of the cuneiform inscriptions. Volume 2 (1859) is devoted to these inscriptions and the painstaking work of deciphering them.
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He was born in 1825 at Hamburg, Germany.
After studying at Heidelberg, Bonn and Berlin, 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 to Oriental studies, in which he had made great progress in Germany, and in 1852 he joined Fresnel's archaeological expedition to Mesopotamia.
On his return in 1854 he occupied himself in digesting the results of the expedition in so far as they concerned cuneiform inscriptions, and published an important work upon them (Dechriffrement des inscriptions cuneiformes, 1861). In 1857 he was appointed professor of Sanscrit in the school of languages connected with the National Library in Paris, and in this capacity he produced a Sanscrit grammar; but his attention was chiefly given to Assyrian and cognate subjects, and he was especially prominent in establishing the Turanian character of the language originally spoken in Assyria.
At a later period he devoted much attention to the language and antiquities of ancient Media, writing Le Peuple et la langue des Medes (1879).
He died in Paris on the 216t of August 1905.
Among his other works may be mentioned: Eltments de la grammaire assyrienne (1868); L'lmmortallti de I'dme chez les Chaldeens, (1875); Salomon et ses successeurs (1877); and, with J. Menant, Doctrines juridiques de I'AsSyrie et de la Chaldee (1877).
(Born in Hamburg to Jewish parents, Julius Oppert (1825-19...)
(Born in Hamburg to Jewish parents, Julius Oppert (1825-19...)
(The decipherment of the ancient cuneiform scripts was one...)
Oppert was a voluminous writer upon Assyrian mythology and jurisprudence, and other subjects connected with the ancient civilizations of the East.