Heinrich Brugsch

Born Feb. 18, 1827, in Berlin; died there Sept. 9, 1894. German Egyptologist.

In 1853, Brugsch led an archaeological expedition to Egypt, and in 1864 he was appointed Prussian consul in Cairo. In 1868 he became a professor at the University of Göttingen, and from 1870 to 1879 he directed the School of Egyptology in Cairo. Brugsch published and studied many ancient Egyptian texts and compiled the first dictionary of the Egyptian language. His research provided the bases for and was a decisive factor in the decipherment of the demotic script (one of the forms of Egyptian cursive writing). The complete denial of an African cultural influence in Egypt was characteristic of Brugsch’s historical views; he depicted the masses of people as passive, and he ignored social movements. Egyptian culture is represented in his works as unchangeable and isolated from social and economic processes.