- Ignace Gelb
Ignace J. Gelb (October 14, 1907 – December 22, 1985) was a Polish - American ancient historian and Assyriologist who pioneered the scientific study of
writing systems . Born inTarnow ,Austria-Hungary (nowPoland ), he earned his PhD from the University of Rome in 1929, then went to theUniversity of Chicago where he was a professor of Assyriology until his death.Although writing systems have been studied for centuries by linguists, Gelb is widely regarded as the first scientific practitioner of the study of scripts, and coined the term
grammatology to refer to the study of writing systems. In "A Study of Writing" (1952), he suggested that scripts evolve in a single direction, from logographic scripts to syllabaries toalphabet s. This historicaltypology has been criticized as overly simplistic, forcing the data to fit the model and ignoring exceptional cases. Yet, despite more recent refinements of the typology byPeter T. Daniels and others, Gelb's rigorous study of the properties of different kinds of writing system was pioneering and innovative. Gelb believed that the Maya hieroglyphs did not qualify as true writing capable of representing language, which has now been disproven following thedecipherment of the Maya script.Gelb's work in Assyriology focused on publishing editions of Akkadian texts and a grammar and dictionary of Old Akkadian. He began the Chicago
Assyria n Dictionary project in 1947 and remained as the editor of the project until his death. His other important works include works onMesopotamian land tenure and sales,metrology , and other aspects of economic and social history.He was a fellow of the
American Academy of Arts and Sciences , a member of theAccademia Nazionale dei Lincei , and in 1975 he was elected as a member of the prestigiousAmerican Philosophical Society . Additionally, from 1965 to 1966 he was president of theAmerican Oriental Society .References
*Leichty, Erle. 1998. Ignace J. Gelb (14 October 1907 - 22 December 1985). "Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society" 142(4): 668-670.
*Marquis Who Was Who in America, vol. 5, 1986-1989. (ISBN 0-8379-0217-7)
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