Heinrich Karl Brugsch

Heinrich Karl Brugsch
Photograph taken c. 1894
Born	(1827-02-18)18 February 1827 Berlin
Died	9 September 1894(1894-09-09) (aged 67) Charlottenburg

Heinrich Karl Brugsch (also Brugsch-Pasha) (18 February 1827 – 9 September 1894) was a German Egyptologist. He was associated with Auguste Mariette in his excavations at Memphis. He became director of the School of Egyptology at Cairo, producing numerous very valuable works and pioneering the decipherment of Demotic, the simplified script of the later Egyptian periods.

Heinrich Karl Brugsch was born in Berlin in 1827. He was the son of a Prussian cavalry officer, and was born in the barracks at Berlin. He early manifested a great inclination to Egyptian studies, in which he was almost entirely self-taught. At the age of 16, he applied himself with success to the decipherment of Demotic, which had been neglected since the death of Champollion in 1832. Brugsch's work, Scriptura Ægyptiorum Demotica (Berlin, 1848), containing the results of his studies, appeared while he was a student at the gymnasium. It was followed by his Numerorum Demoticorum Doctrina (1849), and his Sammlung demotischer Urkunden (1850).

His 1848 work brought him to the attention of Alexander von Humboldt and Prussian King Frederick William IV. After completing his university course, support from the king enabled him to complete his studies with visits to foreign museums at Paris, London, Turin, and Leyden. In 1853, he was sent to Egypt by the Prussian government in 1853, and contracted an intimate friendship with Mariette, whom he assisted in his work. After this he returned to Berlin, where, in 1854, he was appointed privatdocent in the university, and, in 1855, assistant in the Egyptian Museum of Berlin. He visited Egypt again in 1857.