Ludwig Ross

Ludwig Ross (22 July 1806, Bornhöved – 6 August 1859, Halle an der Saale) was a German classical archaeologist. He is chiefly remembered for the rediscovery and reconstruction of the Temple of Athena Nike in 1835–1836, and for his other excavation and conservation work on the Acropolis of Athens. He was also a significant figure in the early years of archaeology in the independent Kingdom of Greece, serving as Ephor General of Antiquities between 1834 and 1836.

As a representative of the ''Bavarocracy —'' the dominance by northern Europeans, especially Bavarians, of Greek government and institutions under the Bavarian-born King Otto ''—'' Ross attracted the enmity of the native Greek archaeological establishment. He was forced to resign as Ephor General over his delivery of the Athenian 'naval records', a series of inscriptions first unearthed in 1834, to the German August Böckh for publication. He was subsequently appointed as the first professor of archaeology at the University of Athens, but once again forced to resign by the nativist 3 September 1843 Revolution, which removed non-Greeks from public service in the country. He spent his final years as a professor in Halle, where he argued unsuccessfully against the reconstruction of the Indo-European language family, believing the Latin language to be a direct descendant of Greek.

Ross is credited with creating the foundations for the science of archaeology in independent Greece, and for establishing a systematic approach to excavation and conservation in the earliest days of the country's formal archaeological practice. His publications, particularly in epigraphy, were widely used by contemporary scholars, and his role at Athens in training the first generation of natively-trained Greek archaeologists was particularly significant for producing Panagiotis Efstratiadis, one of the foremost Greek epigraphers of the 19th century and a successor of Ross as Ephor General. Provided by Wikipedia