Georg Steindorff (November 12, 1861,

Dessau Dessau is a town and former municipality in Germany at the confluence of the rivers Mulde and Elbe, in the '' Bundesland'' (Federal State) of Saxony-Anhalt. Since 1 July 2007, it has been part of the newly created municipality of Dessau-Roßl ...

– August 28, 1951,

North Hollywood, California North Hollywood is a neighborhood of Los Angeles, California, located in the San Fernando Valley. The neighborhood contains the NoHo Arts District, the El Portal Theatre, several art galleries, and the Academy of TV Arts and Sciences. The Nor ...

) was a German

Egyptologist Egyptology (from ''Egypt'' and Greek , '' -logia''; ar, علم المصريات) is the study of ancient Egyptian history, language, literature, religion, architecture and art from the 5th millennium BC until the end of its native religiou ...

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, (german: Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, known informally as Georgia Augusta) is a public research university in the city of Göttingen, Germany. Founded ...

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

University of Leipzig Leipzig University (german: Universität Leipzig), 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 ...

appointed him to its chair for Egyptology, which had existed since 1870 and had previously been held by

Georg Ebers Georg Moritz Ebers (Berlin, 1 March 1837 – Tutzing, Bavaria, 7 August 1898) was a German Egyptologist and novelist. He is best known for his purchase of the Ebers Papyrus, one of the oldest Egyptian medical documents in the world. Life Ge ...

. 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 ( ar, مصر , ), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a List of transcontinental countries, transcontinental country spanning the North Africa, northeast corner of Africa and Western Asia, southwest corner of Asia via a land bridg ...

he acquired household and grave furnishings and also small-format artworks. He also brought larger finds from excavations back to Leipzig with him (for example the limestone head of Queen

Nefertiti Neferneferuaten Nefertiti () ( – c. 1330 BC) was a queen of the 18th Dynasty of Ancient Egypt, the great royal wife of Pharaoh Akhenaten. Nefertiti and her husband were known for a radical change in national religious policy, in which ...

) with the permission of the then French-run Antiquities Service. Of particular importance are Steindorff's excavations in

Giza Giza (; sometimes spelled ''Gizah'' arz, الجيزة ' ) is the second-largest city in Egypt after Cairo and fourth-largest city in Africa after Kinshasa, Lagos and Cairo. It is the capital of Giza Governorate with a total population of 9.2 ...

, Qau, and

Aniba ''Aniba'' is an American neotropical flowering plant genus in the family Lauraceae. They are present in low and mountain cloud forest in Caribbean islands, Central America, and northern to central South America. Description They are shrubs ...

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 (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country Continental United States, primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., ...

in 1939, to avoid persecution as a Jew in

Nazi Germany Nazi Germany (lit. "National Socialist State"), ' (lit. "Nazi State") for short; also ' (lit. "National Socialist Germany") (officially known as the German Reich from 1933 until 1943, and the Greater German Reich from 1943 to 1945) was ...

. He was married to Elise Oppenheimer, sister of

Franz Oppenheimer Franz Oppenheimer (March 30, 1864 – September 30, 1943) was a German Jewish sociologist and political economist, who published also in the area of the fundamental sociology of the state. Life and career After studying medicine in Freiburg and ...

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