Paul Haupt

Who was Paul Haupt?

Hermann Hugo Paul Haupt was a Semitic scholar, one of the pioneers of Assyriology in the United States.

He studied at the universities of Berlin and Leipzig. In 1880 he became privatdocent in the University of Göttingen and from 1883 to 1889 was assistant professor of Assyriology. In 1883 he became professor of Semitic languages at Johns Hopkins University, but until 1889 continued to lecture in the summer at Göttingen.

He introduced the principle of the neogrammarians into Semitic philology, and discovered the Sumerian dialect in 1880.

In addition to numerous smaller articles, he projected and edited the Polychrome Bible, a critical edition of the Hebrew text of the Old Testament, and a new English translation with notes. A unique feature of this edition is the use of different colors to distinguish the various sources and component parts in the Old Testament books—each one of which is entrusted to a specialist in biblical studies.

He was an associate editor of Hebraer. In 1881, he became co-editor with Friedrich Delitzsch of the Beiträge zur Assyriologie und semitischen Sprachwissenschaft published in Leipzig.