Carl Ludwig Grotefend


Carl Ludwig Grotefend was a German epigraphist, philologist and numismat. He played a key role in the decipherment of the Indian Kharoshthi script on the coinage of the Indo-Greek kings, around the same time as James Prinsep, publishing Die unbekannte Schrift der Baktrischen Münzen in 1836. He was the son of the famous philogist Georg Friedrich Grotefend, who made the first successful attempts at deciphering Old Persian cuneiform.
It is thought that Carl Ludwig Grotefend independently accomplished the first decipherment of the Kharoshthi script around the same time as Prinsep, as Grotefend was "evidently not aware of the latter's article".
In 1839, he wrote Die Münzen der griechischen, parthischen und indoskythischen Könige von Baktrien und den Ländern am Indus.

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