A. H. Sayce

Archibald Henry Sayce (1845-1933) was among the first British scholars to build an entire career on reading cuneiform. A fellow of The Queen's College, Oxford, he served as deputy professor of comparative philology from 1876 and held Oxford's chair of Assyriology from 1891 to 1919. He was said to write in at least twenty ancient and modern languages, and he published steadily on Babylonia, Assyria, the Hittites and the historical background of the Hebrew Bible. Poor health sent him to Egypt for most winters from the early 1880s, where he worked from a hired Nile boat big enough to carry his travelling library and put up visiting scholars.