German archæologist and Egyptologist, born in Uebigau, Saxony, on the 13th of July 1796. He was educated at Leipsic, in the Gymnasium and University, and afterward studied in Paris under Champollion, the French Egyptologist. From 1825 to 1855 he was professor of Oriental archæology in the University of Leipsic; in 1855 came to America and became professor of archæology and exegesis in Concordia Lutheran Seminary in St. Louis; retired in 1871, and lived thereafter until his death in New York City. He claimed to have been the first to decipher the Egyptian hieroglyphics on the Rosetta stone, and was a strong opponent of Champollion in the conclusion which the latter reached that the hieroglyphic characters represented sounds, not ideas. His theories have been sustained by Heinrich Karl Brugsch and others. Seyffarth published many works on Egyptology, and also on theology and history. Among the most important are Chronologia Sacra (1846); Die Grundsätze der Mythologie (1843); Chiliasm Critically Examined (1861); Rudimenta Hieroglyphices (1826); Brevis Defensio Hieroglyphices Inventæ; and The Literary Life of Gustavus Seyffarth (1886). He died in New York on the 17th of November 1885.
