Books by Archibald Henry Sayce

The philologist and orientalist Archibald Henry Sayce (1845-1933) had studied Middle Eastern languages and scripts since adolescence. This 1875 teaching grammar/reader, aimed at helping students to grasp Assyrian cuneiform, includes a full syllabary as well as texts, transliterations and translations.

The philologist Archibald Henry Sayce (1845-1933) had studied Middle Eastern languages and scripts since adolescence. In this 1872 grammar, using transliteration rather than cuneiform, Sayce first considers the place of Assyrian in the Semitic language family and its development over time, then presents its phonology, morphology, syntax and prosody.

In this 1907 work, Sayce begins with the history of the decipherment of cuneiform, and goes on to describe what the tablets reveal of political and trade interactions among the different nations of the Near East and Asia Minor, and the relevance of these discoveries to Old Testament studies.

This 1900 work, in a series intended to present knowledge of the more important facts in the history of the Near Eastern civilisations, is scholarly, but written for a popular audience, and remains of relevance to anyone interested in studying the everyday lives of ordinary people in this ancient society.

This 1894 work is an introduction to the world of ancient Assyria. Beginning with the geography of Mesopotamia and with the early archaeological discoveries in the region, Sayce next describes the decipherment of the cuneiform inscriptions and tablets, before describing religion, literature, and what can be deduced about everyday life.

This 1895 work considers the history of Palestine in the context of new archaeological material coming to light in the course of the nineteenth century. Sayce's approach opposed the 'higher criticism' of the Old Testament; in his opinion, 'in the narrative of the Pentateuch we have history and not fiction'.

This 1874 work on the science of comparative philology, its disciplines and its relationship to physiology, history, and religion, describes the ways in which the laws of language, and especially of language change and development, can be hypothesised and tested. The notion of 'the metaphysics of language' is also examined.