Gustav Seyffarth

Gustav Seyffarth (13 July 1796 – 17 November 1885) was a German-American Egyptologist, born in Uebigau, in the Electorate of Saxony.

[1] From 1826 to 1829 he visited the principal museums of Germany, France, England, and the Netherlands and collected copies of Egyptian inscriptions and Coptic manuscripts.

In 1840, on his initiative, a sarcophagus was purchased that was to become the centerpiece of the future Ägyptisches Museum der Universität Leipzig.

[2] In 1856 he came to America and became a professor of church history and archæology at Concordia College, St. Louis.

[1] Seyffarth was an earnest student of Egyptology, but wrongly held that the hieroglyphic characters, with scarcely an exception, were pure phonograms.