Patriarchal Palestine (Dodo Press)

The Rev. Archibald Henry Sayce (1846-1933) was a pioneer Assyriologist and linguist who held a chair as Professor of Assyriology at Oxford from 1891 to 1919. He was born in Shirehampton, Bristol, a delicate child who suffered from tuberculosis and got a late start, he soon caught up with a private tutor and was reading Homer in Greek at ten. He attended Queens College, Oxford, becoming a fellow in 1869. Sayce turned his attention to Egyptology and archives were discovered at Hattusa that unlocked the language spoken there. Lectures were his favourite vehicle for publication. Sayce was working at El Kab in Egypt in the 1900s. In his seasonal winter digs in Egypt, he always hired a well-furnished boat on the Nile to accommodate his travelling library.