Ignace Gelb

Ignace Jay Yellow ( born October 14, 1907 in Tarnów, Poland, † December 22, 1985 in Chicago, Illinois ) was a Polish- American orientalist of the University of Chicago.

Life

Yellow was born in Poland and attended from 1917 to 1925, the school in his home town of Tarnów. After school, he went to Florence to study Renaissance art, but soon became interested in the Middle East and Middle Eastern languages ​​studied from 1926 in Rome. After graduating in 1929 he went to the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago. In 1947 he became a professor and remained until his retirement in 1980 at the Institute.

Work

Yellow worked on the decipherment of the Hittite hieroglyphs. In his book, A Study of Writing (English under the title: from cuneiform to the alphabet: foundations of a science writing ) he tried Grammatology to establish the science of writing as an academic discipline. His theory of the monogenesis of writing and letter writing as a logical end point of the development of writing is controversial.

Publications (selection)

Yellow has published over twenty books and 250 scientific articles.

• From cuneiform to the alphabet: Fundamentals of writing science. Dt. Übers from d Amerikan. by Renate Voretzsch. Stuttgart, Kohlhammerstraße 1958 ( A Study of writing, the foundations of Grammatology, dt )