Scienceיעקב פולוצקי

Hans Jakob Polotsky

Hans Jakob Polotsky was an Israeli linguist and orientalist who taught Egyptology and Semitic languages at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

1905 to 1991The Standard Theory of the Egyptian verbResearch on Coptic syntaxFounding Hebrew University's Linguistics department

Born: 13 September 1905, Zurich
Died: 10 August 1991, Jerusalem
Occupation: linguist, archaeologist, Egyptologist, university teacher
Education: University of Göttingen, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin

Hans Jakob Polotsky was born in 1905 in Zurich

Polotsky was born in Zurich in 1905 to Jewish parents from the Russian Empire. His father was a chemist and his mother taught languages. He spent most of his childhood in Berlin and learned several languages as a youth.

He studied Egyptology and Semitic languages at the universities of Berlin and Göttingen. In Berlin he was a student of Kurt Sethe. He worked on the Septuagint project at Göttingen and edited Coptic Manichaean texts in Berlin.

After the Nazis rose to power he moved to the Land of Israel and joined the Hebrew University. There he founded the Linguistics department and later served as dean of the Faculty of Humanities. His 1944 work on Coptic syntax changed how scholars understood Coptic and ancient Egyptian grammar.

In Jerusalem he also studied living Semitic languages, including Ge'ez and Amharic. After retiring he kept teaching languages at his home. He died in Jerusalem in 1991 and was buried at Har HaMenuchot.