Kokovtsov, Pavel

Born June 19 (July 1), 1861, in the city of Pavlovsk, present-day Leningrad Oblast; died Jan. 1, 1942, in Leningrad. Soviet philologist, Semitologist. Academician of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1912).

Kokovtsov graduated from the University of St. Petersburg in 1884. He became a professor of the University of St. Petersburg in 1900. He was the author of fundamental works in Hebrew and Hebrew-Arabic philology, including The Book of Comparison of Hebrew With Arabic by Abu Ibrahim (Isaac) Ibn Barun (1893), New Materials for the Characterization of Judah Hayyuj, Samuel Nagid, and Other Representatives of Jewish Philological Scholarship in the 10th, 11th, and 12th Centuries (1916), and Jewish Khazar Correspondence in the Tenth Century (1932). Kokovtsov published and did research on one of the most important remnants of Semitic epigraphy, the commercial treaty of Palmyra. His edition of the Aramaic inscriptions from Neirab (ninth century B.C.) had great importance for the study of the history of the ancient Orient.