News and Views

Abstract

AN honorary fellowship of the British Academy—a signal distinction—has been added to the many academic honours which have been conferred on that veteran scholar, Prof. A. H. Sayce. He has also been awarded the Huxley Memorial Medal of the Royal Anthropological Institute for 1929, and invited to deliver the Institute's Huxley Memorial Lecture in 1930. Prof. Sayce's long career—he is now in his eighty-fourth year, and has been a fellow of Queen's College, Oxford, since 1869—is a remarkable record of scholarship, both in the study and in the field. For to the long list of books and articles from his pen dealing with the archæology of the Near East, especially as related to Biblical archæology, must be added his work as an explorer and excavator in Asia Minor, Egypt, and other countries of the East which bear upon his special studies. His work in the decipherment of cuneiform and Hittite inscriptions will always be a monument to British scholarship in this branch of study. Yet notwithstanding the highly specialised character of his studies, his interests have always remained wide, as was shown by the “Reminiscences” published in 1923. It was probably a surprise to most of his readers to learn that he was nearly shot as a spy in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870.