Kurt Heinrich Sethe was a noted German

Germans

The Germans are a Germanic ethnic group native to Central Europe. The English term Germans has referred to the German-speaking population of the Holy Roman Empire since the Late Middle Ages....

 Egyptologist and philologist from Berlin

Berlin

Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...

. He was a student of Adolf Erman

Adolf Erman

Johann Peter Adolf Erman was a renowned Egyptologist and lexicographer.-Life:Born in Berlin, he was the son of Georg Adolf Erman and grandson of Paul Erman....

. Sethe collected numerous texts from Egypt

Egypt

Egypt , officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, Arabic: , is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Southwest Asia. Egypt is thus a transcontinental country, and a major power in Africa, the Mediterranean Basin, the Middle East and the Muslim world...

 during his visits there and edited the Urkunden des ægyptischen Altertums

Urkunden des Ægyptischen Altertums

The Urkunden des ægyptischen Altertums is a series of eight books composed of autographed transcriptions of hieroglyphic documents from ancient Egypt.-Volumes:* I. Urkunden des Alten Reichs, “Documents from the Old Kingdom”...

which is a standard catalogue of Ancient Egyptian literature and text.

Among Sethe's many contributions to Egyptology, two are singled out by Gardiner (p. 433): "...the pronunciation of Middle Egyptian... The chief authorities to be consulted are Sethe's great work on the Egyptian verb, and a much later brilliant article entitled Die Vokalisation des Ägyptischen in Zeitschrift der deutschen morgenländischen Gesellschaft"" (1923). Actually, Sethe was the first one to put forth a systematic theory of the Egyptian verb; it was no easy accomplishment, since the flexion

Flexion

In anatomy, flexion is a position that is made possible by the joint angle decreasing. The skeletal and muscular systems work together to move the joint into a "flexed" position. For example the elbow is flexed when the hand is brought closer to the shoulder...

 of the Egyptian verb was done mainly by changing the vowels, and the Egyptians only wrote consonants.

Among Sethe's students were Polotsky

Hans Jakob Polotsky

Hans Jakob Polotsky was an Israeli orientalist, linguist, and professor for Semitic languages and Egyptology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.- Biography :...

 and Gardiner

Alan Gardiner

Sir Alan Henderson Gardiner was one of the premier British Egyptologists of the early and mid-20th century...

; Sethe's anthology, Aegyptische Lesestuecke, is still doing sterling service to the beginners in the study of the language. Sethe also published a comprehensive collection of Egyptian epigraphy

Epigraphy

Epigraphy Epigraphy Epigraphy (from the , literally "on-writing", is the study of inscriptions or epigraphs as writing; that is, the science of identifying the graphemes and of classifying their use as to cultural context and date, elucidating their meaning and assessing what conclusions can be...

, which he called Urkunden der Aegyptologie.