Lepsius

Lepsius, Karl Richard (1810-84), the Egyptologist, was the son of a Naumburg magistrate of antiquarian tastes. He studied philology at Leipzig and Gottingen, and at Berlin under Bopp. In 1834 his Palccography as an Instrument in the Study of Language gained the Volney prize at the Institute of France. He soon after began to devote himself to his life-study, and as early as 1837 his letter to Rossellini on the hieroglyphic alphabet gave him high rank as an Egyptian scholar. In 1842 he was appointed Professor of Egyptology at Berlin, and by the advice of Bunsen was placed at the head of a scientific expedition to Egypt by the King of Prussia. The results of this were given to the world in his Monuments of Egypt and Ethiopia (1849-59), with 900 large plates, and a work on Egyptian chronology. His last work was a Nubian grammar.