Maurice Pope (linguist)

Wildon Montague Maurice Pope ( born February 17, 1926) is a British classical philologist. His specialty is the study of Cretan writing.

Pope studied at Cambridge University. Since 1949 he worked as a research assistant at the Chair of Classical Philology at the University of Stellenbosch, there has been a lecturer in 1952 and 1957, appointed university professor. In 1957 he took over as the successor of George Patrick Gould, who had also graduated from the University of Cambridge, the position of Head of the Department of Classical Philology. Together with the later famous philologist Gould, he published several articles on the Minoan linear script A.

In addition to linguistics Pope was interested in archeology. He has participated in archaeological expeditions, including 1954, an underwater expedition of the British School at Athens, one of the archaeological institutes abroad in Athens, near Chios.

In 1960 he was dean of the Faculty of Humanities at the University of Cape Town ( UCT ).

Back in 1959, he turned in a magazine article ( Universities in Ethnasia ) against the prevention of Bantu -speaking university, which should emerge from the University College of Fort Hare, by South African Apartheidspolitker. In August 1968, he resigned from his post in protest and left the university in Cape Town, as it was against the strong interference from the racist government to the university policy. Thus, the then government had forced the university administration, the offer of a place on the black social anthropologists Archie Mafeje to withdraw, which also led to the first student mass protests. Then Maurice Pope moved to Oxford University.

In the 1980s he published in collaboration with Jacques Raison a Corpus of the inscriptions of the Minoan linear script A.

Writings (selection )

  • The Story of Archaeological decipherment, from Egyptian Hieroglyphs to Linear B. Scribner, New York 1975. German edition: The mystery of old scripts. Hieroglyphics, cuneiform, Linear B. Lubbe, Bergisch Gladbach 1978, ISBN 3-7857-0221-3. ( Translator: Anita smell ). - Other title: The mystery of the ancient scriptures. In 1990.
  • Revised edition: The Story of decipherment. From Egyptian Hieroglyphs to Maya Script. Thames and Hudson, London 1999, ISBN 0 - 500-28105 -X.
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