Bossert's greatest achievement in the scientific field was deciphering the Hittite Hieroglyphic script.
(1889-1961) German-born Turkish archaeologist. He deciphered the Hittite hieroglyphic script. Philipp Helmuth Theodor Bossert was born in the town of Landau in Southern Germany. After graduating from high school in 1908, he continued his education at the universities of Heidelberg, Strasbourg, Freiburg, and Munich. He graduated from the Albert-Ludwig University in Freiburg in 1913 with his doctorate. He entered the Freiburg Museum as an assistant. He participated in World War I as a communications reserve officer in the German army.
Helmuth Theodor Bossert (September 11, 1889 – February 5, 1961) was a German art historian, philologist and archaeologist. He is best known for his excavations of the Hittite fortress city at Karatepe, Turkey, and the discovery of bilingual inscriptions, which enabled the translation of Hittite hieroglyphs.
After the war, he worked on deciphering the Cretan script and Hittite hieroglyphs. He focused on the subjects of art history and focused on publishing studies that he started when he was a university student. Between 1919 and 1933, he published nearly fifteen books on various subjects from European folk art to the ancient Cretan civilization.
He went to Turkey in 1933 and participated on behalf of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences in the excavations led by the Germans in Boğazköy, the capital of the Hittites. Here he studied the Hittite hieroglyphs in the Nişantaş rock inscription and the legends of the rock reliefs in Yazılıkaya.
In Ankara, he met the then Minister of National Education Reşit Galip. In those days, Istanbul Darülfünun was closed and Istanbul University was established in its place. In addition to Turkish professors, Western scientists were also brought to this new university in the Western sense. Bossert was also recommended to take a position at Istanbul University. When he accepted the proposal, he was appointed as a professor to the Faculty of Letters in 1934 and was appointed as the director of the Turkish Archeology Institute, which later turned into a chair.
He served as the Chair of Ancient Near East Languages and Cultures between 1942-1959. When World War II broke out, Hitler did not return to Germany, he remained in Turkey, continuing his duty at the university and his excavations in Anatolia. He gained Turkish nationality in 1947. He died in 1961 in Istanbul.
Bossert's greatest achievement in the scientific field was deciphering the Hittite Hieroglyphic script.
Bossert, who is one of the leading contributors to the development of Anatolian archeology, also pioneered the formation of a scientific environment in the field of archeology in Turkey. The scientists he trained at the university are doing successful work today, bringing solid data and opinions to the world of archeology.
Bossert is a prolific scientist who has written 34 books and 107 articles throughout his life. A work that collects Anatolian cultures and the products of these cultures from various periods and a book that he thought to call Turkish Folk Art was left unfinished after his death.