Hugo Winckler

Archaeologist, Academic

1863 – 1913

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Who was Hugo Winckler?

Hugo Winckler was a German archaeologist and historian who uncovered the capital of the Hittite Empire at Boğazkale, Turkey.

Winckler was a student of the languages of the ancient Middle East. He wrote extensively on Assyrian cuneiform and the Old Testament, compiled a history of Babylonia and Assyrian that was published in 1891, and translated both the Code of Hammurabi and the Amarna letters. In 1904, he was appointed professor of Oriental languages at the University of Berlin.

Winckler began excavations at Boğazkale in 1906 with support from the German Orient Society together with Ottoman archeologist Theodore Makridi. His excavations revealed a stockpile of thousands of hardened clay tablets, many written in the hitherto unknown Hittite language, that allowed Winckler to draw a preliminary outline of Hittite history in the 14th and 13th centuries BC. Winckler continued excavations at the site until 1912, during which time his finds proved that the city was once the capital of a great empire.

Otto Rank references Winckler in Art and Artist as the, "rediscoverer of the ancient Oriental world picture, in the fifth to sixth millenia B.C... Winckler's popular description: "The whole universe is the great world, the macrocosm; it's parts are small universes in themselves, microcosms. Such a *microcosm* is man, who is himself an image of the universe and a perfect being. But the great universe is likewise a man, and as it is `God,' God has human form. *`In his own image,'* therefore, was man created. This was still the belief of medieval medicine, which we know to have had a method of dividing up the human body according to the twelve signs of the zodiac. On this `scientific' treatment of a patient was based... "

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Born
Jul 4, 1863
Gräfenhainichen
Nationality
  • Germany
Profession
Lived in
  • Berlin
Died
Apr 19, 1913
Berlin

Submitted
on July 23, 2013

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