Gustav Seyffarth

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Gustav Seyffarth (1796-1885) was a German-American Egyptologist, born at Uebigan in Saxony. He studied at the University of Leipzig and under Campolion in Paris in 1820. He became professor of philosophy at Leipzig in 1825 and professor of archæology in 1829. From 1826 to 1829 he visited the principal museums of Germany, France, England, and Holland and collected copies of Egyptian inscriptions and Coptic manuscripts. In 1856 he came to america and became professor of Church history and archæology in Concordia College, St. Louis. From 1859 he resided in New York City. Seyffarth was an earnest student of Egyptology, but wrongly held that the hierglyphic characters, with scarcely an exception, were pure phonograms. His principal works are: Rudimenta Hierglyphica (1826); Systema Astronomiœ Ægyptiacœ (1826-33); Unser Alphabet ein Abbild des Tierkreiss (1834); Alphabeta Genuina Ægyptiorum et Asianorum (1840); Die Grundsätze der Mythologie und der alten Religionsgeschichte (1843) Grammatica Ægyptiaca (1855).

• This article incorporates text from an edition of the New International Encyclopedia that is in the public domain.