Lepsius, KARL RICHARD

Lepsius, KARL RICHARD, Egyptologist, was born at Naumburg, 23d December 1810. His father, Karl Peter Lepsius (1775-1853), a magistrate there, was himself a zealous antiquary, and published learned treatises on the local antiquities. The younger Lepsius studied at Leipzig, Göttingen, Berlin, and Paris. His first work was Die Paläographie als Mittel der Sprachforschung (1834), for which he obtained the Volney prize of the French Institute. This was followed by works on the most ancient alphabets and other kindred subjects. In 1836 he associated himself intimately with Bunsen at Rome, and eagerly prosecuted his favourite studies there. Between 1834 and 1842 he published his Lettre à M. Rosellini sur l'Alphabet hiéroglyphique, and, in the Transactions of the Archaeological Institute, a number of dissertations on the monuments of Egyptian art and their general architectural style. He also applied himself to the study of the ancient Etruscan and Oscan languages, the remains of which he published in his Inscriptiones Umbricæ et Oscæ (1841) and other works. In 1842 he was placed at the head of an antiquarian expedition sent to Egypt by the king of Prussia, and on his return three years later was appointed ordinary professor in Berlin. His Denkmäler aus Aegypten und Aethiopien (12 vols. folio, with 963 plates, 1849-60) was published at the expense of the king of Prussia, and remains a masterpiece of patient genius and erudition. His Chronologie der Aegypter und Ueber den ersten Aegypt. Götterkreis laid the foundation for a scientific treatment of the earlier parts of Egyptian history. To the study of Egyptian archaeology he joined the investigation of the languages, history, and monuments of the regions farther up the Nile. Other works are his letters from Egypt, Ethiopia, and Sinai (1852); a communication on the Egyptian monuments (1853); the work in which he expounds the Standard Alphabet, a modified Roman alphabet for hitherto unwritten languages, now used in many cases (1855; in its second edition, published in English in 1863, adapted to 120 languages); a work on the Egyptian ell and other measures; the Königsbuch, a list of kings (1858); the Todtenbuch (1867), the Egyptian Book of the Dead (q.v.). He wrote also on Chinese, Arabic, and Assyrian philology; was editor of the Berlin Zeitschrift of Egyptology, member of the Royal Academy, director of the Egyptian section of the Royal Museum, and chief-librarian of the Royal Library at Berlin. He was a creator of Egyptology as a scientific study, and a devoted and single-minded scholar of the best type. He died 10th July 1884. See Ebers, Richard Lepsius, ein Lebensbild (1885; Eng. trans. New York, 1887).