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Object 5. Louis Loewe's notebook - Nubian vocabulary

c. late 1830s - early 1840s

Description:

Louis Loewe was widely known for his polyglot skills; in Celebrities of the Day: A monthly Repertoire of Contemporary Biography (April 1881, p. 63), he was described as a “monster of human languages; a Briareus [100-armed, 50-headed mythical creature - ed.] of the parts of speech”. Jessie Kurrein, in her portrayal of the scholar, claims Louis had perfect command of 39 languages.

One of the languages he studied was Nubian; Loewe visited Nubia and its capital, Derr, in 1839 - the exhibited item shows his Nubian vocabulary lists, one column of Nubian parallel to a column with a German translation recorded in Hebrew characters; the notebook also contains brief observations of places and cultures he visited; a fragment on Nubia is displayed beneath the vocabularies.

Further pages (not displayed here), contain notes on and in other languages, i.e. Borgo Bornou, Arabic, and Hebrew written in Rashi, block and modern script.

Credits: Leopold Muller Memorial Library, Raphael Loewe Archive, shelfmark: Alouis 2,15