Georg Zoëga

His father, Vilhad Christian Zoëga (1721–1790), whose family came originally from Northern Italy, was the parish priest at Møgeltønder Church (Møgeltønder kirke); his mother Henriette Emilie Ottosdatter Clausen (ca 1735–1763) was daughter of the superintendent of Schackenborg Castle (Schackenborg Slot).

With the aid of influential friends, he received permanent assistance from Denmark, and in 1790 was made an honorary member of the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen.

In his work on the Rosetta Stone, French linguist and orientalist Silvestre de Sacy (1758–1838), highlighted a suggestion made by Jørgen Zoëga in 1797 that the foreign names in Egyptian hieroglyphic inscriptions might be written phonetically.

[9]Zoëga is regarded as an associate of German art historian and archaeologist Johann Joachim Winckelmann (1717–1768) and Italian antiquarian Ennio Quirino Visconti (1751–1818) in establishing the basis for archaeological science.

His services to learning were also acknowledged in foreign countries by his election in 1806 to membership in the Academies of Science at Berlin and Vienna.

[10][11] Zoëga wrote several treatises on classical archaeology, also translated into German by Welcker, Georg Zoegas Abhandlungen (Göttingen, 1817).