Georg Steindorff (November 12, 1861,

Dessau Dessau is a district of the independent city of Dessau-Roßlau in Saxony-Anhalt at the confluence of the rivers Mulde and Elbe, in the ''States of Germany, Bundesland'' (Federal State) of Saxony-Anhalt. Until 1 July 2007, it was an independent ...

– August 28, 1951, North Hollywood, California) was a German Egyptologist.

Life

Georg Steindorff was a graduate of the Egyptology seminars of the

University of Göttingen The University of Göttingen, officially the Georg August University of Göttingen (, commonly referred to as Georgia Augusta), is a Public university, public research university in the city of Göttingen, Lower Saxony, Germany. Founded in 1734 ...

. He earned a doctorate in 1884 with a linguistic dissertation on Coptic noun forms. In 1893, the

University of Leipzig Leipzig University (), in Leipzig in Saxony, Germany, is one of the world's oldest universities and the second-oldest university (by consecutive years of existence) in Germany. The university was founded on 2 December 1409 by Frederick I, Electo ...

appointed him to its chair for Egyptology, which had existed since 1870 and had previously been held by Georg Ebers. The Egyptian collection was founded by the archaeologist Gustav Seyffarth, but Steindorff built the small training collection that was left to him into a true museum. On his research trips to

Egypt Egypt ( , ), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a country spanning the Northeast Africa, northeast corner of Africa and Western Asia, southwest corner of Asia via the Sinai Peninsula. It is bordered by the Mediterranean Sea to northe ...

he acquired household and grave furnishings and also small-format artworks. He also brought larger finds from excavations back to Leipzig with him with the permission of the then French-run Antiquities Service. But these were mostly coming from the excavations organized by Steindorff in Egypt. Of particular importance are Steindorff's excavations in

Giza Giza (; sometimes spelled ''Gizah, Gizeh, Geeza, Jiza''; , , ' ) is the third-largest city in Egypt by area after Cairo and Alexandria; and fourth-largest city in Africa by population after Kinshasa, Lagos, and Cairo. It is the capital of ...

Abusir Abusir ( ; Egyptian ''pr wsjr'' ' "the resting place of Osiris"; ) is the name given to an ancient Egyptian archaeological pyramid complex comprising the ruins of 4 kings' pyramids dating to the Old Kingdom period, and is part of the ...

, Qau, and Aniba between 1903 and 1931. The Egyptian Museum possesses many objects that were discovered on these expeditions. After his retirement in 1934, Steindorff lived another four years in Leipzig before emigrating to the

United States The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...

in 1939, to avoid persecution as a Jew in

Nazi Germany Nazi Germany, officially known as the German Reich and later the Greater German Reich, was the German Reich, German state between 1933 and 1945, when Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party controlled the country, transforming it into a Totalit ...

. He was married to Elise Oppenheimer, sister of Franz Oppenheimer.

External links

*
Egyptian Museum at the University of Leipzig

Homepage of the Museum
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Steindorff, Georg 1861 births 1951 deaths People from Dessau-Roßlau Jewish emigrants from Nazi Germany to the United States German Egyptologists German Protestants University of Göttingen alumni German male non-fiction writers Archaeologists from Saxony-Anhalt