Dillmann, CHRISTIAN FRIEDRICH AUGUST

Dillmann, CHRISTIAN FRIEDRICH AUGUST, a great Orientalist, born 25th April 1823, at Illingen, in Württemberg. Already as a student at Tübingen his studies under Ewald's influence had been turned to oriental, and in 1846-48 he visited the libraries at Paris, London, and Oxford, cataloguing the Ethiopic MSS. at the last two, and returning to Tübingen to join its teaching staff. In 1854 he accepted a call to Kiel, where he became professor of Oriental Languages in 1860, but was transferred in 1864 to the chair of Old Testament Exegesis at Giessen, which in 1869 he resigned to become Hengstenberg's successor at Berlin. Dillmann was beyond question the first authority in Europe on the Ethiopic languages. The best books for the student in this obscure department of learning are his Grammatik der Aethiopischen Sprache (1857), Lexicon Linguae Aethiopicae (1865), and his Chrestomathia Aethiopica (1866). Other works are his German translations of the Book of Enoch (1853), of the Book of Jubilees or the 'Little Genesis' (1849-51), and the Book of Adam (1853) in Ewald's Jahrbücher, as well as editions in the original of the first two; and an edition of the ancient Ethiopic translation of the Old Testament, Biblia Veteris Testamenti Aethiopica (2 vols. 1853-72). His contributions to pure theology are Ueber den Ursprung der Alt-testamentlichen Religion (1865), Ueber die Propheten des alten Bundes (1868), and fresh editions for the 'Kurzgefasstes Exegetisches Handbuch' of Hirzel's commentary on Job (1869), as well as of Knobel's commentaries on Exodus and Leviticus (1880), and on Genesis (1882). Dillmann became in 1877 a member of the Berlin Royal Academy of Sciences, and contributed many papers to its issues. He was president of the fifth International Congress of Orientalists, and edited its Abhandlungen (3 vols. 1881-82). Other works (1879-84) deal with the history of the Ethiopic kingdom of Axum (q.v.). He died 4th July 1894.