James Bruce
James Bruce of Kinnaird (* December 14, 1730 at Kinnaird, County of Stirling in Scotland, † April 27, 1794 same place ) was a Scottish naturalist and traveler. Its official botanical author abbreviation is " Bruce ". James Bruce was a striking appearance (1.93 m) and equipped with exceptional talent: He spoke 11 languages , was a good geographer, astronomer, historian, linguist, botanist, ornithologist and cartographer. In medicine, he knew his stuff.
Life and work
Bruce came of an old Scottish noble family. He received his education at Harrow and Edinburgh, where he studied from 1747 to 1750 law. After that he went to London and worked in a wine shop. At 24, he married and led the wine shop of his father. After the death of his wife in the same year he gave up his job and devoted himself to mathematical and astronomical studies in Spain and Portugal. He learned the Arabic language and got a job in 1762 as consul at the Bey of Algiers. After several trips both inside Africa as well as on the shores of the Mediterranean in 1767, he went to Asia and visited Baalbek and Palmyra. He made of the most important monuments of antiquity drawings, which he gave to the Royal Library at Kew.
In the spring of 1768, he started in Cairo with the preparations for his great journey in search of the sources of the Nile. The Italian artist Luigi Balugani should accompany him as an assistant. With the support of Mamlukenherrschers Ali Bey, he traveled some disguised as a Turk, and followed the course of the Nile upstream. His expedition ended in 1773. Bruce visited Thebes and the Valley of the Kings, where he loomed some relief. Particularly well known were his drawings from the grave of Ramses III. , Which was open, but not documented at the time. Henceforth, this was Bruce's grave grave. He traveled on to Aswan, returned to Qena and traveled with a caravan to Kosseir the Red Sea. As a Turkish sailor he sat in May 1769 to Jeddah and stayed some months in Arabia. In September, he went by ship to Massawa. From there he left for Abyssinia. His journey took him from Aksum and Sire, from there south through the river system of the Atbara to Gondar, the former capital of Abyssinia, where he arrived in February 1770.
In Gondar he excited by his height, his confident appearance and mastery of the national language Amharic quite a stir. He gained the outbreak of small-pox great reputation in the treatment of the disease. The Ethiopian Emperor Tekle Haymanot II took him into his service. For over three years he remained in Ethiopia, also visited here the sources of the eastern Nilarms and walked around the Lake Tana. He is complaining that the first detections of the sources, although this was discovered in 1618 by the Portuguese priest Pedro Páez, and were visited later by the Portuguese priest Jerónimo Lobo in 1622 and described. James Bruce, however, doubted their reports because they did not measure the exact point by means of astronomical instruments and their reports also contained exaggerations. In 1772, he set out on his return journey. She led him west to the Blue Nile, and thence down the river on Schandi to 5 cataract, where he teed on the Karawanenenweg through the Nubian desert. From waterhole to waterhole we went north to Aswan. By boat continued his journey to Alexandria, where he arrived in 1773. On the journey he was accompanied by Balugani.
Finally he returned after eleven years of absence to Scotland, where he wrote his major work Travels to discover the sources of the Nile. 5 vols (Edinburgh 1790) published. The Ethiopic manuscripts, among others, the Book of Enoch, and named after him Codex Brucianus that Bruce had brought, opened up completely new perspectives for the study of Gnosticism and the Ethiopian languages and established this branch of Oriental Studies at a much safer basis.
James Bruce died on 27 April 1794 in Kinnaird.
Honors
1776 Bruce was elected as a member ( "Fellow" ) to the Royal Society. He was the genus Brucea J.F.Mill honor. the plant family of bitter ash plants ( Simaroubaceae ) named.