Jørgen Alexander Knudtzon

Jørgen Alexander Knudtzon (9 September 1854 – 7 January 1917) was a Norwegian linguist and historian.

After a short spell at the Cathedral School in Trondheim, he returned to Christiania to study Semitic languages, in particular Akkadian, Arabian and Hebrew, the last of which he also gave lectures on.

degree with the thesis Det saakaldte Perfektum og Imperfektum i Hebraisk ("The So-called Perfect and Preterite in Hebrew").

[1] In recognizing the Hittite language as Indo-European on the basis of two letters from Arzawa (in Western Anatolia), found in Egypt (Die zwei Arzawa-Briefe, 1902), he played an important role in the deciphering of the Hittite language script.

In two landmark volumes (1907 and 1915) he published the Amarna letters, diplomatic correspondence of the reign of Pharaoh Amenhotep IV, better known as Akhenaten (1351–1334 BC).