He was born at Braunschweig, and educated at Göttingen under Ewald. In 1858 he won a university prize for a treatise on the Ethiopian languages, and in 1863 became professor of theology at the University of Zürich. Subsequently, he occupied chairs at Giessen (1870) and Jena (1873), and finally became professor of Oriental languages at the Friedrich Wilhelm University, Berlin in 1878. Though he turned first to biblical research, his chief achievements were in the field of Assyriology, in which he was a pioneer in Germany and acquired an international reputation. He died in Berlin and he was buried at the Stahnsdorf South-Western Cemetery.
Works
His publications include:
Studien zur Kritik und Erklärung der biblischen Urgeschichte (1863).
Keilinschriften und Geschichtsforschung (1878). online
Die Höllenfahrt der Istar (text, trans., notes, 1874).
Die Namen der Meere in den assyrischen Inschriften, Berlin 1878 (online)
Zur Frage nach dem Ursprung der altbabylonischen Kultur (1884).
Keilinschriftliche Bibliothek, in conjunction with scholars Ludwig Abel, Carl Bezold, Peter Christian Albrecht Jensen, Felix Ernst Peiser and Hugo Winckler (1889).[1]
