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SKETCH OF
D®. SEYFFARTH.
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SKETCH OF DR
. SEYFFARTH.
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Read December 9, 1889 by Jno. G. Morris.
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HE purpose of our Society is not only to investigate and
record recondite and little known facts relating to the
history of the Germans generally in this country and
in Maryland particularly, but also to exhibit the career of
German individuals who have distinguished themselves in any
department of human effort.
Following out this design of our Society, I will give a
brief sketch of a very celebrated German Scholar, who for 60
years pursued a brilliant career, thirty of which were spent in
this country. I allude to the late D®.
GUSTAVUS SEYFFARTH,
the learned Aegyptiologist, who died in New York, Nov. 17,
1885. He was almost as much a Marylander, as he was a
Missourian or a New Yorker. He spent some time in Balti-
more, where I had the pleasure of a personal acquaintance
with him and of enjoying his visits at my house.
He was a German by birth and education, and yet a cos-
mopolitan by practice and inclination. Having no family ties
to keep him at home any where, he lived in this country
nearly 30 years, sometimes in St. Louis, Baltimore, Boston,
New York and probably at other places; wherever he could
find books relating to his favorite subject, or Egyptian relics
or men who pursued similar studies, there he went and stayed
until he had learned every thing such sources could supply;
but he finally settled in New York, where the treasures of
the Astor, Lenox and other libraries, and the Abbot and other
Egyptian collection were open to him.
He was born July
13th, 1796, at Uebigau, a Saxon village,
near Torgau. He finished his university course with high
distinction, and in early life showed a particular fondness for
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the study of language. This he demonstrated when yet a
young man by a latin dissertation on the popular pronunciation
of Greek and Hebrew letters, which he regarded as wrong and
which he sought to modify. The public defence of his theory
in a Latin disputation with members of the Philosophical
Faculty of Leipzig, secured for him the privilege of deliver-
ing public lectures (1823), when he was 28 years of age.
At this time already, he had mastered several oriental
languages, and when Prof. Spohn died before he had com-
pleted a great work on "The language and literature of the
ancient Egyptians", our Seyffarth, being the only person in
Leipzig familiar with Coptic, the fundamental language of
Egyptian literature, was invited by the University to complete
and edit Spohn's work. He accepted this offer and his scientific
career was thus impelled in a new direction.
Having examined the immense mass of Spohn's Manu-
scripts, he came to the conclusion that it would be impossible
for him to accomplish his task, unless he previously examined
all the Egyptian museums in Europe and copied the principal
papyri and inscriptions. Accordingly, during the years 1826—
1828, he visited the public and private collections of Aegyptian
antiquities of 16 different cities of Europe and took copies of
all important inscriptions, which now constitute his "Biblio-
theca Aegyptiaca Manuscripta," a work of 15 vols. in royal
folio, and which is by his will, the property of the New York
Historical Society. The Saxon Government aided him by a
donation of 400 Thalers.
In
1856 he came to the United States and accepted a
professorship of Archaeology and Cognate Sciences, in the
Lutheran Concordia Collegium at St. Louis, Mo. Here he
gave gratuitous instruction for several years. In 1859, he
moved to New York, where the treasures of the Astor library
gave him ample opportunity for pursuing his favorite studies.
His writings since 1821, treat of the following subjects,
Egyptian Philology and Palaeography: the ancient astronomy
of the Aegyptians, Greek, Romans and Cypriotes, universal
history and chronology, especially of the old and new tes-
taments, of the Egyptians, Greeks, Babylonians, Chinese, &c.,
Mythology, ancient Geography, Apologetics, &c.
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The titles of his books and dissertations in German, Latin,
English and French, amount to 127, 55 of which were first
published in this country. Besides these, there are 31 volu-
minous manuscripts. — He was a very diligent student and
untiring investigator, who for months together devoted 12 to
16 hours a day to his work. None but an enthusiastic German
would ever have the patience to persevere in one branch of
learning to this extent. But he did it and never grew weary
of it. His severe studies did not seem to injure his health,
for he lived to be 90 years of age.
He made himself so familiar with the topography of Egypt
that he seemed to know the precise and relative position of
every ruin, obelisk, pyramid, temple and of every thing else
that is ancient in that wonderful country. He knew the
measurement of every structure, its internal and external
ornamentation, its inscriptions, sculpture and exact confor-
mation, and yet he told me himself, that he had never visited
Egypt, but he read every thing ever written upon the subject,
and he had a wonderful memory.
The great Egyptiologists, as Champollion, Lepsius, Ebers,
Brugsch, Bunsen and others, violently opposed Seyffarth's
theory and a furious controversy ensued, the details of which
would neither be edifying or interesting to us. To some extent
it was acrimonious and undignified.
Of Champollion's theory of the hieratic writing of the
ancient Egyptians, Seyffarth says, it has given rise to number-
less absurdities. Brugsch-Bey, for instance, (by the way,
Brugsch was in this country in '76 (?), when I had the pleasure
of meeting him) discovered that the Egyptians were fond of
lager beer, and that some thousands of years B. C., breweries
existed in Egypt.
Ebers, too, learned, that "one gallon of
lager beer" constituted a dose for a sick Egyptian.
Many important Egyptian antiquities were brought to
light by Dr. Seyffarth. Among them are:
1. The origin of Manetho's Egyptian History, written in
hieratic characters.
This he was enabled to do by examining a huge box,
preserved in the Egyptian museum of Turin, which contained
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at least half a million of papyrus fragments, of which the
largest were three inches long. He spent six weeks in putting
them together, and obtained a papyrus eight feet long and
one foot broad, and he found that it corresponds in all re-
spects to the Greek Manetho, as preserved by Josephus, Julius
Africanus, Eisenbein and others. He does not hesitate to state
that this papyrus scroll was written by Manetho himself. It
is not perfect, but enough remains to show its great import-
ance in Egyptian Archaeology.
The Doctor cannot help giving a severe blow to his rival
Champollion, in saying, that the same box had been examined
two years before by Champollion and having selected one frag-
ment, he ordered the custos to put the rest of it in the privy.
"So we owe to Champollion's researches the loss of the most
important relic of Egyptian Antiquity."
2. There are more than thirty other discoveries which
the Doctor made, or hieroglyphics which he decyphered, which
were unknown to the learned world before. Many of these are
very interesting to the Egyptiologist and have brought much
credit to the investigator.
It was he, who was the only man in this country, who
could read the inscriptions on the obelisk, which was erected
in New York Central Park, on January 23, 1880. It
was the
gift of the viceroy of Egypt and will always constitute the
most interesting object in those grounds. It is said that our
climate is destructive to the material, although, I believe, that
measures have been taken to prevent it. It represents accord-
ing to Seyffarth, the names of Thutmor III, and of Ramses II,
who lived two hundred years later. The former was the noted
Pharaoh, who perished while pursuing the Israelites in the
Red Sea, in 1866 before Christ. He estimates this obelisk to
be about 3750 years old, and asks: "Is it not a singular act
of Providence that, after so long a time, the name of a hero
of a tragedy unparalleled in history, has come to light ?"
The Doctor has also settled the chronology of many events
in Egyptian and Sacred history, and therein has displayed a
wealth of astronomical and historical knowledge that is simply
amazing.
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He bequeathed most, if not all, of his literary treasures
to the New York Historical Society; it consists of more than 60
printed volumes, with the addition of almost equally numerous
manuscripts. A great dictionary of the Egyptian hieroglyph-
ical language, absorbed the energies of the later portion of his
life. During those years, an aged man, with a deep disfigur-
ing scar in his cheek, was sometimes to be met at twilight,
walking for recreation to Central Park. He lived near by
and the exercise only followed a day's severe labor in his study
and the man who spent from 13 to 15 hours a day in literary
labor, needed recreation in the evening. Three years before
his death, he delivered a lecture on the subject of the in-
scriptions on the obelisk in Central Park, and he was so per-
fectly absorbed in his theme, that he continued his lecture
over several hours, for the stopping of his watch misled him
as to the flight of time. He was then 86 years of age, but
this mental effort was followed by so serious an illness that
it was thought he would die, but he held out nearly four
years longer. "No man was ever so thoroughly absorbed by
the fascination of penetrating by slow degrees the long sealed
product of high civilisation and sacerdotal culture preserved
from the days of Menes and Atholis."
The earliest of his productions is the Rudimenta Hiero-
glyphica, published in Leipzig in 1826, when he was 30 years
of age, but he had previously edited the works of Spohn;
and thus through a period of more than 60 years, he pursued
his favorite theme with unabated industry. He was compelled
to maintain his ground against the bitter opposition of three
generations of Egyptiologists, but he also had many able vin-
dicators and defenders.
Of course, he committed some errors, but as soon as he
became conscious of them, he abandoned and corrected them.
After a Professorship of 32 years duration at Leipzig, he
came to this country. He had issued during that period an
average of one publication annually on Egyptian literature.
The reason of his leaving his native country, is no where
stated.
As I stated before, he lectured in Concordia College, St.
Louis. In a subsequent unsuccessful experiment to establish
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a Lutheran Seminary, at Danville, N. Y., he lost some thou-
sand dollars, and then settled in the city of New York. I said
that a great number of volumes remain in manuscript, which
will probably never be published. Many of his recently pub-
lished works first appeared in different periodicals, or were
printed by scientific associations. Like those of earlier date,
they are in vehement conflict with accepted theories. He was
almost without sympathy in his tremendous struggle, but he
was defended and respected by such men as Prof. Ùhlemann
of Göttingen and Profs. Wuttke and Delitzsch of Leipzig.
Many others have revered him as a man of profound philolo-
gical learning.
He claims to have discovered the principle of syllabic
hieroglyphs, without which, he maintains, no adequate in-
terpretation is possible. Champollion and his school held, that
Egyptian literature originated from ideologic writing and con-
sists partly of phonetic figures and partly of phonetic images,
what the difference really is, I am not competent to determine,
but it appears, that Seyffarth's system has triumphed, and
Champollion's grammar is out of date.
I thought, that this brief sketch of an eminent German,
who spent nearly 30 years of his life in this country, who so-
journed in Baltimore for some time, and was personally known
to some of us, was proper to be brought before this Society.
He died in 1886, in New York, in his 90th year, and as
far as I know, has left no successor who will equal him in
the breadth of his general attainments and in the profundity
of his Egyptiological knowledge.
We have eminent scholars among us who are pursuing
oriental studies, but they confine their researches to the archae-
ology of the holy land and Assyria, and not to Egypt as
Dr. Seyffarth did. I know but one man who is making this
a specialty, and he is a young Lutheran minister in New York,
named Mohldehnke, who has already written several pamphlets
upon the subject, but who, I presume, has neither the time
nor opportunity to prosecute this work.
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