H. J. Polotsky

Citation:

Goldenberg, G. & Shisha-Halevy, A., 2007. H. J. Polotsky. In H. Stammerjohann, ed. Lexicon Grammaticorum.
polotsky.pdf7.77 MB

Abstract:

Polotsky, Hans Jakob, b. Sep. 13, 1905, Zürich, Switzerland, d. Aug. 10, 1991, Jerusalem, Israel; Egyptologist, Semitist, and Orientalist.

P. was born to Russian-speaking parents who emigrated from the Crimea and settled in Germany. From an early age he was well versed in Classical languages, esp. in Greek, and studied hieroglyphic Egyptian and Hebrew. In the universities of Berlin and Göttingen he studied Egyptology (with K. Sethe), Semitic languages (with M. Lidzbarski), Iranian (with F. C. Andreas) and Turkic (with W. Bank). He also specialized in late Greek. During his studies and afterwards, P. was engaged in the Septuagint project directed by A. Rahlfs, and took active part in the study and publications of the Coptic Manichaean texts. His comprehensive article on “Manichäismus” (1935), based on the synthesis of all the sources in the various languages, has remained the most important research paper on the subject and P.’s only non-linguistic study. (It was translated into Italian and appeared sixty years later with updated notes [1996]). After the rise of Nazism P. left Germany, and in 1934 began teaching at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where he became Professor of Egyptian and Semitic Linguistics and founded the Department of Linguistics and the Department of Egyptian. He was elected a member of the Israel academy of Sciences and Humanities, the Hebrew Language Academy, and the British, Danish, and Dutch academies, was awarded the Israel Prize, other prestigious prizes, and the gold Lidzbarski medal of the Deutche Morgenländische Gesellschaft, as well as some honorary doctorates.

Last updated on 01/18/2018