The Life of J.D. Åkerblad

Johan David Åkerblad (1763–1819) contributed to the decipherment of Egyptian hieroglyphs and Demotic and is known as a predecessor of Jean-François Champollion. This intellectual biography offers a new and less heroic interpretation of the first reading of the Egyptian scripts. Åkerblad, an exceptional linguist, was a diplomat and orientalist who spent several decades living in the Ottoman Empire, France and Italy. Of humble birth, he was a supporter of the French Revolution – something that stymied his career. His life cannot be understood in a purely Swedish national framework, and this study firmly situates him as an international scholar. The book discusses European expansion in the Eastern Mediterranean during the tumultuous decades around the year 1800, and traces Åkerblad’s momentous life in relation to the debates on ‘orientalism,’ the tradition of classical studies and the history of science.

Fredrik Thomasson, Ph.D. (2009) in History, European University Institute, Florence, is a Research Fellow at Uppsala University. He has recently published a number of articles on eighteenth century history, e.g. in the International Journal of Cultural Property, Lychnos and several anthologies.

‘’This is a sad but admirable work, well-written and well-researched. It is also extremely well-illustrated; the color plates of Åkerblad’s work in hieroglyphics are especially fine.’’
In: Reference & Research Book News, December 2013 p. 37.