Sayce, ARCHIBALD HENRY, philologist, was born at Shirehampton, near Bristol, September 25, 1846, and was educated privately and at Grosvenor College, Bath. He entered Queen's College, Oxford, in 1865, took a classical first-class in 1869, and became fellow, then tutor, of his college. He took orders in 1870, and was appointed in 1876 deputy to Max-Müller in the chair of Comparative Philology at Oxford, which office he resigned in
1890. Professor Sayce joined the Old Testament Revision Company in 1874, was elected a member of numerous home and foreign learned societies, and received the degree of LL.D. from Dublin in 1881, and D.D. from Edinburgh in 1889.
Among his many books the most important are The Principles of Comparative Philology (1874), Introduction to the Science of Language (2 vols. 1880), The Ancient Empires of the East (1884), Origin and Growth of Religion as illustrated by the Ancient Babylonians (1887); and admirable short popular works on Fresh Light from the Ancient Monuments, Assyria, the Hittites, and the Races of the Old Testament (1891), in 'By-paths of Bible Knowledge.' Besides his Assyrian Grammar (1872) and Lectures on the Assyrian Syllabary (1875), he has contributed many books and papers on the subject to the learned journals, and he edited George Smith's History of Babylonia (1877) and Chaldean Genesis (1880). Further works were an edition of Herodotus I.-III. (1883), an Introduction to Ezra, Nehemiah (1885), Records of the Past (2d series, 1888-93), The Times of Isaiah (1889), Egypt of the Hebrews (1895), &c.