Archibald Henry Sayce FRAS (25 September 1845 – 4 February 1933) was a pioneer British Assyriologist and linguist, who held a chair as Professor of Assyriology at the University of Oxford from 1891 to 1919.

[1] He was able to write in at least twenty ancient and modern languages,[2] and was known for his emphasis on the importance of archaeological and monumental evidence in linguistic research.

[5] Due to his poor health, Sayce spent time away from Oxford, and carried out his studies at home and on visits to the Pyrenees and Switzerland.

[5] Sayce achieved a first-class in Classical Moderations (Greek and Latin) in 1866 and in Literae Humaniores (Philosophy and Ancient History) in 1868,[9] and was elected to a vacant Fellowship in the same year.

[20] His two notable works, Introduction to the Science of Language (1879), and The Principles of Comparative Philology (1880), introduced audiences to the changing continental linguistic trends in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

[6] He theorized that the pseudo-sesostris rock carvings in Asia Minor, such as the Karabel relief which had been historically attributed to the Egyptians,[22][23] were actually created by another pre-Greek culture.

[5] In 1876 he speculated that the hieroglyphs in inscriptions discovered at Hamath in Syria, were not related to Assyrian or Egyptian scripts but came from another culture he identified as the Hittites.

[24] In 1879, Sayce further theorized that reliefs and inscriptions at Karabel, İvriz, Bulgarmaden [de], Carchemish, Alaca Höyük, and Yazilikaya were created by the Hittites.

[5] On his return to England, Sayce presented a lecture to the Society of Biblical Archaeology in London, where he announced that the Hittites where a much more influential culture than previously thought with their own art and language.

That very sign standing for the divinity had appeared on the stones of Hamath and other places, always in the form of a prefix of an indecipherable group of hieroglyphics naming the deities.

[28][27] He and William Wright also identified the ruins at Boghazkoy with Hattusa, the capital of a Hittite Empire that stretched from the Aegean Sea to the banks of the Euphrates.

In his seasonal winter digs in Egypt he always hired a well-furnished boat on the Nile to accommodate his travelling library, which also enabled him to offer tea to visiting Egyptologists like the young American James Henry Breasted and his wife.

[32] Sayce also wrote a number of articles in the Encyclopædia Britannica, 9th edition (1875–89) and 10th edition (1902-03), including on Babylon, Babylonia and Assyria, and Wilhelm von Humboldt;[4] Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition (1911), including on Assur (city), Assur-Bani-Pal, Babylon, Babylonia and Assyria, Belshazzar, Berossus, Caria, Ecbatana, Elam, Esar-haddon, Grammar, Gyges, Karl Wilhelm von Humboldt, Kassites, Laodicea, Lycia, Lydia, Persepolis (in part), Sardanapalus, Sargon, Sennacherib, Shalmaneser, Sippara, and Susa.