David Hawkins, my colleague and good friend, who has died aged 83, was one of many world’s main students of the languages of historical Turkey.
He spent all his profession at Soas College of London. He was appointed fellow in Hittite at Soas in 1964 and retired as professor in 2005. Hittite, the oldest recognized Indo-European language, was then solely taught at Oxford, by Oliver Gurney, to whom David went to study the language wherein he had been appointed.
Thus geared up, he started his life’s work, the gathering in a single place of inscriptions in hieroglyphic Luwian. Luwian was recognized to be associated to Hittite, however the hieroglyphic script nonetheless offered a formidable impediment to understanding Luwian texts.
The inscriptions have been scattered about Turkey and north Syria on stone monuments and rock faces. David visited all of them no less than as soon as. He was a proficient artist and made definitive and dependable drawings of them for the primary time. His indefatigable efforts within the subject, and his prepared collaboration with others, led to the important thing breakthroughs that noticed Luwian lastly changing into properly understood.
After greater than 30 years’ labour, the primary elements of his monumental Corpus of Hieroglyphic Luwian Inscriptions have been revealed in 2000. Twenty years later the ultimate quantity of the Corpus went to press. Collectively they supply a meticulous file of all recognized Luwian inscriptions, forming a kind of uncommon achievements: a permanent monument of scholarship that units an entire educational subject on agency footings for the primary time.
David was born in Exmouth, Devon, to Main John Hawkins, an officer within the British Indian military, and his spouse, Audrey (nee Spencer), who had simply returned from Quetta (now in Pakistan) on one of many final trains to cross France earlier than it fell in 1940.
After the second world conflict they exchanged military life for a farm in Devon, which as David grew up engendered in him a robust choice for nation over city. From Bradfield school, Berkshire, he went to College School, Oxford, to review classics. Then he spent two years on the Institute of Archaeology in London earlier than becoming a member of Soas.
David’s main function within the decipherment of hieroglyphic Luwian and his excessive distinction because the world’s pre-eminent knowledgeable in Luwian inscriptions led to his election in 1993 as a fellow of the British Academy and to different honours.
Extra necessary to him have been the tributes from nearer colleagues. Many students are celebrated by a festschrift at a milestone birthday. Some are so honoured twice, on first one birthday after which one other. It’s a measure of David’s place in academia that when he turned 70, he acquired two celebratory volumes on the identical day. The displays occurred within the place he beloved greatest: his backyard in Oxfordshire, the place many loved his friendship, cooking and unmatched love of fine firm.
David is survived by his companion, the author Geoff Ryman, and by a brother, Timothy, and a sister, Denzil. David and Geoff met in Oxford in 1973 and entered right into a civil partnership in 2006.
