Kurt Heinrich Sethe (30 September 1869 – 6 July 1934) was a German

Egyptologist Egyptology (from ''Egypt'' and Greek , ''-logia''; ) is the scientific study of ancient Egypt. The topics studied include ancient Egyptian history, language, literature, religion, architecture and art from the 5th millennium BC until the end ...

and

philologist Philology () is the study of language in oral and written historical sources. It is the intersection of textual criticism, literary criticism, history, and linguistics with strong ties to etymology. Philology is also defined as the study of ...

from

Berlin Berlin ( ; ) is the Capital of Germany, capital and largest city of Germany, by both area and List of cities in Germany by population, population. With 3.7 million inhabitants, it has the List of cities in the European Union by population withi ...

. He was a student of Adolf Erman. Sethe collected numerous texts from

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 ...

during his visits there and edited the '' Urkunden des ægyptischen Altertums'' which is a standard catalogue of Ancient Egyptian literature and text.

Career

Among Sethe's many contributions to Egyptology, two are singled out by Gardiner (p. 433): "...the pronunciation of Middle Egyptian... The chief authorities to be consulted are Sethe's great work on the Egyptian verb, and a much later brilliant article entitled ''Die Vokalisation des Ägyptischen'' in ''Zeitschrift der deutschen morgenländischen Gesellschaft''"" (1923). Actually, Sethe was the first one to put forth a systematic theory of the Egyptian verb; it was no easy accomplishment, since the

inflection In linguistic Morphology (linguistics), morphology, inflection (less commonly, inflexion) is a process of word formation in which a word is modified to express different grammatical category, grammatical categories such as grammatical tense, ...

of the Egyptian verb was done mainly by changing the vowels, and the Egyptians only wrote consonants. Among Sethe's students were Hans Jakob Polotsky and

Alan Gardiner Sir Alan Henderson Gardiner, (29 March 1879 – 19 December 1963) was an English Egyptologist, linguist, philologist, and independent scholar. He is regarded as one of the premier Egyptologists of the early and mid-20th century. Personal li ...

. Sethe's anthology, ''Aegyptische Lesestuecke,'' is still used by some beginners in the study of the language. Sethe also published a comprehensive collection of Egyptian

epigraphy Epigraphy () is the study of inscriptions, or epigraphs, as writing; it is the science of identifying graphemes, clarifying their meanings, classifying their uses according to dates and cultural contexts, and drawing conclusions about the wr ...

, which he called ''Urkunden der Aegyptologie.''

References

* Kurt Sethe: ''Das aegyptische verbum im altaegyptischen, neuaegyptischen und koptischen'', Leipzig: J. C. Hinrichs, 1902. * Kurt Sethe: ''Urkunden des Alten Reichs'' (= ''Urkunden des ägyptischen Altertums.'' Abteilung 1). 1. Band, 4. Heft. 2., augmented edition, Hinrichs'sche Buchhandlung, Leipzig 1933
available online
* at 2terres.hautesavoie.net * Gardiner, Alan. ''Egyptian Grammar. Being an Introduction to the Study of Hieroglyphs''. 3rd Ed., Rev. London: Oxford University Press, 1957 (1st ed. 1927). 1869 births 1934 deaths German Egyptologists German lexicographers Members of the Prussian Academy of Sciences Archaeologists from Berlin People from the Province of Brandenburg University of Tübingen alumni Humboldt University of Berlin alumni Academic staff of the Humboldt University of Berlin Academic staff of the University of Göttingen Members of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences German male non-fiction writers {{Egyptologist-stub