Edward Hincks was born in Cork on 19 August 1792. He was the
eldest son of Thomas Dix Hincks a distinguished Protestant
minister, orientalist and naturalist. He was also the brother of
Francis Hincks a Canadian politician. Hincks was educated at
home by his father and later at Trinity College, Dublin,
graduating in 1811 at the age of 19. In 1825, after taking
orders in the Church of Ireland, he was appointed rector of
Killyleagh in County Down, an office he was to hold for the
remaining forty-one years of his life. The undemanding nature of
his clerical duties left him with more than enough time to
pursue his interest in ancient languages. His first love was for
the hieroglyphic writing of ancient Egypt. By 1823 the Frenchman
Jean-Francois Champollion had succeeded in deciphering this
enigmatic script, but Hincks made a number of telling
discoveries of his own which established him as a leading light
in the field of ancient philology. In the 1830s he turned his
attention to Old Persian cuneiform, a form of wr