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Johan David Akerblad (1763-1819)

Johan David Akerblad, 6 May 1763, Stockholm  7 February 1819, Rome, was a Swedish diplomatist and orientalist. In 1778 he started his studies of classical and oriental languages at the University of Uppsala. In 1782 he opposed his graduate dissertation in front Professor Eric Michael Fant. From 1783, he improved his language skills at the Swedish royal court of chancery in Constantinople.

From 1784 onwards he was a diplomat in Asia Minor, Syria, Palestine, Egypt and North Africa. From 1800 he taken research at the University of Göttingen, and at other places of learning in Paris, The Hague, and Rome. He centered on the study of ancient Egyptian. He also got together material for a lexicon of Coptic language.

While in Paris, he was a student of Silvestre de Sacy. Sacy's investigation of the Rosetta Stone resulted in him being able to showed five names, such as "Alexandros". This was reported by him in 1802. Åkerblad played his work, and his major part in this area was issued the same year in Paris

?kerblad managed to identify all unique names in the demotic text in just two months. He could too read words like "Greek", "temple" and "Egyptian" and got out the correct sound rate from 14 of the 29 signs, but he wrongly considered the demotic hieroglyphs to be entirely alphabetic. One of his strategies of comparisons the demotic to Coptic later gone a key in Champollion's eventual decipherment of the hieroglyphic script and the Ancient Egyptian language.

In 1810, Åkerblad sent to Sacy for publication his work entitled MEMOIRE: Sur les noms coptes de quelques villes et villages d'Egypte. Yet, unfortunately, its publishing was delayed, and it was not published until 1834. Some scholarly people saw such delay as motivated by political or personal circumstances.

Publications:

 Johan David Akerblad, Lettre sur l'inscription Egyptienne de Rosette: adresse au citoyen Silvestre de Sacy, Professeur de langue arabe  l'Ecole spciale des langues orientales vivantes, etc.; Rponse du citoyen Silvestre de Sacy. Paris: L'imprimerie de la Rpublique, 1802
Om det sittande Marmorlejonet i Venedig (18003)

1802: Inscriptionis phoenicie? Oxoniensis nova interpretatio

1804: Lettre sur une inscription phnicienne, trouve  Athenes

1804: Notice sur deux inscriptions en caractres runiques, trouves  Venise et sur les Varanges, avec les remarques de M. d'Ansse de Villoison

1811: Sopra due laminette di bronzo trovate ne' contorni di Atene. Dissertazione letta nell'accademia libera d'archeologia al campidoglio li 30. Giugno 1811 Digitalisat at Google Books

1813: Inscrizione greca sopra una lamina di piombo, trovata in un sepolcro nelle vicinanze d'Atene

1817: Lettre  M:r le cheval. Italinsky sur une inscription phnicienne

Johan David Akerblad, MEMOIRE: Sur les noms coptes de quelques villes et villages d'Egypte. Journal asiatique, 1834, vol. XIII p337

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