page_title: Friedrich Münter
section_title: Career
hierarchical_section_title: Friedrich Münter / Career
caption_attribution_description: English: Niebuhr inscription 1 with word for King
context_page_description: Friedrich Christian Carl Heinrich Münter was a German-Danish scholar, theologian, and Bishop of Zealand from 1808 until his death. His name has also been recorded as Friederich Münter.
  In addition to his position as the Bishop of Zealand within the Church of Denmark, Münter was also a professor of theology at the University of Copenhagen, an orientalist, church historian, archaeologist, and freemason.
context_section_description: In 1781 he began his studies at the University of Göttingen, and in 1784 he was the first protestant to receive a doctorate of philosophy from the University of Fulda. Afterwards, King Christian VII of Denmark sent him to Italy and Sicily to continue his education. In Rome, Münter had contact with Stefano Borgia, who later became cardinal. There he learned the Coptic language. In 1787 he returned to Copenhagen and became a professor at the University of Copenhagen.
  Münter collated and described manuscripts housed in notable Italian libraries. He collated Codex Nanianus for the first time and he sent some extracts from this codex to Andreas Birch. Birch used these extracts in his edition of the text of the four Gospels in Greek. Münter also studied cuneiform inscriptions from Persepolis.  He discovered that the words in the inscriptions were divided from one another by an oblique wedge (𐏐) and that the monuments must belong to the age of Cyrus and his successors. One word (𐎧𐏁𐎠𐎹𐎰𐎡𐎹), which occurs without any variation towards the beginning of each inscription, he correctly inferred to signify "king". These findings were fundamental to the decipherment of Old Persian cuneiform by Grotefend in 1802.
  Münter's main work is "Religion der Karthager" (Copenhagen, 1816).  The second edition (1821) was expanded and included new research. Other works include "Sendschreiben an Kreuzer über Sardische Idole" (Copenhagen, 1822), "Der Tempel der himmlichen Göttin zu Paphos" (Copenhagen, 1824), and "Religion der Babylonier" (Copenhagen, 1827). Some small archaeological works of Münter were included in his "Antiquarische Abhandlungen" (Copenhagen, 1816).
  On numismatics Münter wrote: "De numo plumbео Zenobiae reginae Orientis et aeneo Palmyreno" (Petersburg, 1823) and "Ueber die Münzen der Vandalischen Könige von Karthago" ("Antiquarische Abhandlungen", p. 301).
caption: A Persepolis inscription of Darius the Great, with the word sequence "𐎧𐏁𐎠𐎹𐎰𐎡𐎹" appearing several times (highlighted), and correctly identified by Münter as meaning "King".
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