Karl Richard Lepsius

Karl Richard Lepsius
Karl Richard Lepsius
Born	23 December 1810 Naumburg an der Saale, Kingdom of Saxony
Died	10 July 1884(1884-07-10) (aged 73) Berlin, Province of Brandenburg
Nationality	Prussian, German
Fields	Egyptology

Karl or Carl Richard Lepsius (23 December 1810 – 10 July 1884) was a pioneering Prussian Egyptologist and linguist and pioneer of modern archaeology.

He was born in Naumburg an der Saale, Saxony (Germany), the third son of Friedericke Glaser and Peter Carl Lepsius (1775–1853), Naumburg County Commissioner. Karl Richard's grandfather was Johann August Lepsius (1745–1801), the mayor of Naumburg upon Saale.

He studied Greek and Roman archaeology at the University of Leipzig (1829–1830), the George Augustus University of Göttingen (1830–1832), and the Frederick William University of Berlin (1832–1833). After receiving his doctorate following his dissertation De tabulis Eugubinis in 1833, he travelled to Paris, where he attended lectures by the French classicist Jean Letronne, an early disciple of Jean-François Champollion and his work on the decipherment of the Egyptian language, visited Egyptian collections all over Europe and studied lithography and engraving.

After the death of Champollion, Lepsius made a systematic study of the French scholar's Grammaire égyptienne, which had been published posthumously in 1836 but had yet to be widely accepted. In that year, Lepsius travelled to Tuscany to meet with Ippolito Rosellini, who had led a joint expedition to Egypt with Champollion in 1828-1829. In a series of letters to Rosellini, Lepsius expanded on Champollion's explanation of the use of alphabetic signs in hieroglyphic writing, emphasizing (contra Champollion) that vowels were not written.