Abraham Sachs

Who is Abraham Sachs?

Abraham Sachs was an American assyriologist. He earned his PhD in Assyriology in 1939 at Johns Hopkins University. He is known for his collaboration with Otto Neugebauer, whom he met in 1941 when the latter visited the Oriental Institute in Chicago; Neugebauer and Sachs joined on the publication of Babylonian astronomical texts.

In 1948 Sachs was offered the Chair in Assyriology at Johns Hopkins University in succession to William Albright.

In 1949 he worked at the Pontificio Instituto Biblico. In 1952 received a Rockefeller Foundation travel grant to study Babylonian astronomical diaries in the British Museum, where he had access to the text stocked by the pioneer British assyriologist Theophilus Pinches between 1895 and 1900. Sachs died due to cancer, leaving the task to Austrian assyriologist Hermann Hunger.