Karl August Böttiger (8 June 1760 – 17 November 1835) was a German archaeologist and classicist, and a prominent member of the literary and artistic circles in Weimar and Jena.

For the remaining 31 years of his life, he resided at Dresden as director of the Museum of Antiquities, and was active as a journalist and public lecturer.

[3] The second, the Greek theatre, which Böttiger had been interested in since his time as a drama critic in Weimar; his unfavorable review of August Wilhelm Schlegel's Ion was withdrawn at the request of Goethe.

He published lectures on the history of ancient sculpture in 1806, and painting in 1811, and edited the three volumes of an archaeological periodical called Amalthea from 1820 to 1825, which included contributions from the most eminent classical archaeologists of the day.

From his father's papers, he edited the posthumous work Litterarische Zustände und Zeitgenossen (Literary circumstances and contemporaries, 2 vols., Leipzig, 1838).