Gordon, Cyrus H.

(1908-2001)

   A prominent American scholar of Near Eastern cultures and a renowned expert on ancient languages. Born in Philadelphia, Gordon early showed a talent for learning languages and became fluent in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin as a child. He then added Old Persian, Sanskrit, and others to his repertoire while earning degrees at the University of Pennsylvania. Wasting no time following his graduation, Gordon headed for Mesopotamia, and in the early 1930s he worked with the great archaeologist Charles Leonard Woolley, who was directing the pivotal excavations at the ancient Sumerian site of Ur. Not long afterward, Gordon assisted another giant of archaeology, Flinders Petrie, at a site in Palestine. During World War II Gordon enlisted and, because of his expertise in languages, served with distinction as a cryptologist for the U.S. military. The German Nazis sometimes coded their secret messages in Arabic and ancient Persian, and Gordon was instrumental in deciphering them. Also during the war, he was stationed for a while in Iraq, where he learned still more ancient languages and toured the leading archaeological sites. Following the war Gordon returned to the United States and taught at various universities, including Brandeis University and New York University. He also greatly advanced modern scholarship by turning out numerous books. These covered, among other subjects, the science of archaeology, Mesopotamian cuneiform writing, the Bible and its connections with ancient Near Eastern history, the Hebrew language, Hittite culture, and Sumerian culture. Especially important were Gordon's studies of and writings about Ugaritic, the lan-guage of the important ancient Syrian port of Ugarit.

   See also: Petrie, Flinders; Ugarit; Woolley, Charles Leonard