Fritz Hommel (31 July 1854 – 17 April 1936) was a German Orientalist.

Biography

Hommel was born in

Ansbach Ansbach (; ; East Franconian: ''Anschba'') is a city in the German state of Bavaria. It is the capital of the administrative region of Middle Franconia. Ansbach is southwest of Nuremberg and north of Munich, on the river Fränkische Rezat, ...

. He studied in

Leipzig Leipzig ( , ; Upper Saxon: ) is the most populous city in the German state of Saxony. Leipzig's population of 605,407 inhabitants (1.1 million in the larger urban zone) as of 2021 places the city as Germany's eighth most populous, as ...

and was

habilitated Habilitation is the highest university degree, or the procedure by which it is achieved, in many European countries. The candidate fulfills a university's set criteria of excellence in research, teaching and further education, usually including a ...

in 1877 in

Munich Munich ( ; german: München ; bar, Minga ) is the capital and most populous city of the German state of Bavaria. With a population of 1,558,395 inhabitants as of 31 July 2020, it is the third-largest city in Germany, after Berlin and ...

, where in 1885, he became an extraordinary professor of

Semitic languages The Semitic languages are a branch of the Afroasiatic language family. They are spoken by more than 330 million people across much of West Asia, the Horn of Africa, and latterly North Africa, Malta, West Africa, Chad, and in large immigrant ...

. He became a full professor in 1892, and after his retirement in 1925, continued to give lectures at the

University of Munich The Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich (simply University of Munich or LMU; german: Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München) is a public research university in Munich, Germany. It is Germany's sixth-oldest university in continuous operatio ...

.Hommel, Fritz
@ NDB/ADB Deutsche Biographie He was the doctoral supervisor of

Muhammad Iqbal Sir Muhammad Iqbal ( ur, ; 9 November 187721 April 1938), was a South Asian Muslim writer, philosopher, Quote: "In Persian, ... he published six volumes of mainly long poems between 1915 and 1936, ... more or less complete works on philos ...

, who wrote the thesis

The Development of Metaphysics in Persia ''The Development of Metaphysics in Persia'' is the book form of Muhammad Iqbal's PhD thesis in philosophy at the University of Munich submitted in 1908 and published in the same year. It traces the development of metaphysics in Persia from the ...

under his supervision. He was intrigued by linguistical problems, and also interested in the history of the

Middle East The Middle East ( ar, الشرق الأوسط, ISO 233: ) is a geopolitical region commonly encompassing Arabian Peninsula, Arabia (including the Arabian Peninsula and Bahrain), Anatolia, Asia Minor (Asian part of Turkey except Hatay Pro ...

and its connection with culture and intellectual life. He excelled in studies of

cuneiform Cuneiform is a logo- syllabic script that was used to write several languages of the Ancient Middle East. The script was in active use from the early Bronze Age until the beginning of the Common Era. It is named for the characteristic wedge- ...

literature, ancient

Arabic poetry Arabic poetry ( ar, الشعر العربي ''ash-shi‘ru al-‘Arabīyyu'') is the earliest form of Arabic literature. Present knowledge of poetry in Arabic dates from the 6th century, but oral poetry is believed to predate that. Arabic poetry ...

, old Turkic inscriptions and Egyptian

pyramid texts The Pyramid Texts are the oldest ancient Egyptian funerary texts, dating to the late Old Kingdom. They are the earliest known corpus of ancient Egyptian religious texts. Written in Old Egyptian, the pyramid texts were carved onto the subterran ...

. He died at the age of 81 in

Works

Among his better written efforts were a history of

Babylonia Babylonia (; Akkadian: , ''māt Akkadī'') was an ancient Akkadian-speaking state and cultural area based in the city of Babylon in central-southern Mesopotamia (present-day Iraq and parts of Syria). It emerged as an Amorite-ruled state c ...

and

Assyria Assyria ( Neo-Assyrian cuneiform: , romanized: ''māt Aššur''; syc, ܐܬܘܪ, ʾāthor) was a major ancient Mesopotamian civilization which existed as a city-state at times controlling regional territories in the indigenous lands of the A ...

, ''Geschichte Babyloniens und Assyriens'' (1885) and a highly regarded work on the geography and history of the ancient Near East, titled: ''Grundriss der Geographie und Geschichte des Alten Orients'' (1904). Other significant writings by Hommel include: *''Die äthiopische Übersetzung des Physiologus'' (1877) – Ethiopian translation of the

Physiologus The ''Physiologus'' () is a didactic Christian text written or compiled in Greek by an unknown author, in Alexandria; its composition has been traditionally dated to the 2nd century AD by readers who saw parallels with writings of Clement of A ...

*''Die Namen der Säugetiere bei den südsemitischen Völkern'' (1879). *''Zwei Jagdinschriften Asurbanipals'' (1879). *''Die semitischen Völker und Sprachen''. Bd. 1 (1883) – Semitic peoples and languages. *''Die älteste arabische Baarlam-Version'' (1887) – The oldest Arabic version of Barlaam. *''Abriß der Geschichte des alten Orients'' (1887) – Outline on the history of the ancient Orient. *''Der babylonische Ursprung der ägyptischen Kultur'' (1892) – The Babylonian origin of Egyptian culture. *''Aufsätze und Abhandlungen arabistisch-Semitologischen Inhalts'' Bd. I-III (1892–1901) – Essays and treatises of Arabic- Semitological content. *''Südarabische Chrestomathie'' (1893) – South Arabian anthology. *''Sumerische Lesestücke'' (1894) –

Sumer Sumer () is the earliest known civilization in the historical region of southern Mesopotamia (south-central Iraq), emerging during the Chalcolithic and early Bronze Ages between the sixth and fifth millennium BC. It is one of the cradles of ...

ian readings. *''Geschichte des alten Morgenlandes'' (1904). *''Die altisraelische Überlieferung in inschriftlicher Beleuchtung'' (1896). *''Der Gestirndienst der alten Araber und die altisraelische Überlieferung'' (1900). *''Vier neue arabische Landschaftsnamen im Alten Testament'' (1901) – Four new Arab landscape names in the

Old Testament The Old Testament (often abbreviated OT) is the first division of the Christian biblical canon, which is based primarily upon the 24 books of the Hebrew Bible or Tanakh, a collection of ancient religious Hebrew writings by the Israelites. The ...

. *''Zwei hundert sumero-türkische Wortvergleichungen'' (1915) – 200 Sumerian-Turkish word comparisons.

References

* List of published works copied from an equivalent article at the

German Wikipedia The German Wikipedia (german: Deutschsprachige Wikipedia) is the German-language edition of Wikipedia, a free and publicly editable online encyclopedia. Founded on March 16, 2001, it is the second-oldest Wikipedia (after the English Wikipedi ...

, whose sources are listed as: ** *
Catalog of the German National Library

Estate of Fritz Hommel at the Bavarian State Library
{{DEFAULTSORT:Hommel, Fritz German orientalists German scholars People from Ansbach People from the Kingdom of Bavaria Leipzig University alumni Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich alumni Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich faculty 1854 births 1936 deaths German male non-fiction writers Paleolinguists Linguists of Sumerian