Edward Hincks was an Irish clergyman, best remembered as an Assyriologist and one of the decipherers of Mesopotamian cuneiform.
| FactSnippet No. 2,570,216 |
11 Facts About Edward Hincks
2.
Edward Hincks was one of the three men known as the "holy trinity of cuneiform", with Sir Henry Creswicke Rawlinson and Jules Oppert.
| FactSnippet No. 2,570,217 |
3.
Edward Hincks was the eldest son of the Rev Thomas Dix Hincks, a distinguished Protestant minister, orientalist and naturalist.
| FactSnippet No. 2,570,218 |
4.
Edward Hincks was educated at home by his father and at Midleton College before entering Trinity College Dublin.
| FactSnippet No. 2,570,219 |
5.
Edward Hincks was elected a Scholar of the College in 1810, and in 1812 won the Gold Medal and Bishop Law's Prize for Mathematics.
| FactSnippet No. 2,570,220 |
6.
Edward Hincks deciphered the Egyptian hieroglyphs, which revealed that she was mistress of a great house.
| FactSnippet No. 2,570,221 |
7.
Three men were to play a decisive role in the decipherment of this script: Edward Hincks, Rawlinson and a young German-born scholar called Jules Oppert.
| FactSnippet No. 2,570,222 |
8.
Edward Hincks deduced correctly that cuneiform writing had been invented by one of the earliest civilisations of Mesopotamia, who then bequeathed it to later states such as Babylon, Assyria and Elam.
| FactSnippet No. 2,570,223 |
9.
Edward Hincks discovered that cuneiform characters were "polyphonic, " by which he meant that a single sign could have several different readings depending on the context in which it occurred.
| FactSnippet No. 2,570,224 |
10.
Reverend Edward Hincks devoted the remaining years of his life to the study of cuneiform and made further significant contributions to its decipherment.
| FactSnippet No. 2,570,225 |
11.
Edward Hincks died at his rectory in Killyleagh on 3 December 1866 at the age of 74.
| FactSnippet No. 2,570,226 |