Johann David Michaelis was a German biblical scholar and teacher. He was member of a family that was committed to solid discipline in Hebrew and the cognate languages, which distinguished the University of Halle in the period of Pietism. He was a member of the Göttingen school of history.
Carsten Niebuhr, or Karsten Niebuhr, was a German mathematician, cartographer, and explorer in the service of Denmark-Norway. He is renowned for his participation in the Danish Arabia expedition (1761-1767). He was the father of the Danish-German statesman and historian Barthold Georg Niebuhr, who published an account of his father's life in 1817.
Assyriology, also known as Cuneiform studies or Ancient Near East studies, is the archaeological, anthropological, historical, and linguistic study of the cultures that used cuneiform writing. The field covers Pre Dynastic Mesopotamia, Sumer, the early Sumero-Akkadian city-states, the Akkadian Empire, Ebla, the Akkadian and Imperial Aramaic speaking states of Assyria, Babylonia and the Sealand Dynasty, the migrant foreign dynasties of southern Mesopotamia, including the Gutians, Amorites, Kassites, Arameans, Suteans and Chaldeans. Assyriology can be included to cover Neolithic pre-Dynastic cultures dating to as far back as 8000 BC, to the Islamic Conquest of the 7th century AD, so the topic is significantly wider than that implied by the root "Assyria".
Peter Forsskål, sometimes spelled Pehr Forsskål, Peter Forskaol, Petrus Forskål or Pehr Forsskåhl was a Swedish explorer, orientalist, naturalist, and an apostle of Carl Linnaeus.
Georg Friedrich Grotefend was a German epigraphist and philologist. He is known mostly for his contributions toward the decipherment of cuneiform.
Arabia Felix was the Latin name previously used by geographers to describe South Arabia, or what is now Yemen.
Siganidae, the rabbitfishes, are a small family of ray-finned fishes in the order Perciformes. The only extant genus is Siganus, the rabbitfish and spinefoot. However, a number of genera are known from fossils.
Old Persian cuneiform is a semi-alphabetic cuneiform script that was the primary script for Old Persian. Texts written in this cuneiform have been found in Iran, Armenia, Romania (Gherla), Turkey, and along the Suez Canal. They were mostly inscriptions from the time period of Darius I, such as the DNa inscription, as well as his son, Xerxes I. Later kings down to Artaxerxes III used more recent forms of the language classified as "pre-Middle Persian".
The decade of the 1760s in archaeology involved some significant events.
Bayt al-Faqīh or Beit al-Faqih is a city in Al Hudaydah Governorate in Yemen. It is located on the pilgrimage and trade route across the Tihamah plain between Al Hudaydah and Ta'izz. It is 50 km south of Al Hudaydah and 150 km southwest of the Yemeni capital of San‘a’ and lies at an altitude of 122 m. Its population was 28,773 in the 1994 census and was estimated at 41,652 in 2005.
Thorkild Hansen was a Danish novelist most noted for his historical fiction. He is popularly known for his trilogy of novels about the Danish slave trade which is composed of Coast of Slaves (1967), Ships of Slaves (1968), and Islands of Slaves.
The Apostles of Linnaeus were a group of students who carried out botanical and zoological expeditions throughout the world that were either devised or approved by botanist Carl Linnaeus. The expeditions took place during the latter half of the 18th century and the students were designated 'apostles' by Linnaeus.
Friedrich Christian Carl Heinrich Münter was a German-Danish scholar, theologian, and Bishop of Zealand from 1808 until his death. His name has also been recorded as Friederich Münter.
Events from the year 1761 in Denmark.
Frederik Christian von Haven was a Danish philologist and theologian who took part in the Danish expedition to Yemen.
Lawrence J. Baack is an American historian of modern Europe, with a particular interest in Germany and Scandinavia, and a sub-specialty in Antarctica. He is the author of Agrarian Reform in Eighteenth Century Denmark, Christian Bernstorff and Prussia: Diplomacy and Reform Conservatism 1818–1832, and Undying Curiosity: Carsten Niebuhr and the Royal Danish Expedition to Arabia 1761–1767, among other works.
Jørgen Balthazar Winterfeldt was a Danish naval officer and philanthropist. He was admiral from 1804 and was awarded the Order of the Elephant in 1811. He established Winterfeldts Stiftelse at Klerkegade 25 in Copenhagen in 1805. He was chief of the Naval Cadet Academy in from 1782 until 1792.
HDMS Grønland (Greenland) was a ship of the line of the Dano-Norwegian Navy, built in 1756 and decommissioned in 1791. Grønland spent considerable time in the Mediterranean Sea, where she protected Danish merchant convoys. Grønland took part in the bombardment of Algiers in 1770 but otherwise did not see any action in battle. It is noted in the Danish Admiralty's papers that she was an unusually seaworthy ship.
Jørgen Læssøe was a Danish Assyriologist and professor at the University of Copenhagen. He directed the Danish excavations at Tell Shemshara, uncovering an Old Assyrian palace complex and a substantial cache of cuneiform texts known as the Shemshara Archives, which became his main object of study. He also worked on inscriptions from Max Mallowan's excavations at Nimrud, served as the field director of the Scandinavian Joint Expedition to Sudanese Nubia, and published a number of popular history books on Assyriology in Danish, including his magnum opus, The People of Ancient Assyria (1963).
The decipherment of cuneiform began with the decipherment of Old Persian cuneiform between 1802 and 1836.
