EDMUND

See also:

• EDMUND CASTELL (16o6-1685)

CASTELL (16o6-1685)  , English orientalist, was born in 16o6 at Tadlow, in Cambridgeshire . At the age of fifteen he entered Emmanuel College, Cambridge, but afterwards changed his residence to St John's, on account of the valuable library there . His great work was the compiling of his Lexicon Heptaglotton Hebr aicum, Chaldaicum, Syriacum, Samaritanum, A ethiopicum, Arabicum, et Persicum (1669) . Over this book he spent eighteen years, working (if we may accept his own statement) from sixteen to eighteen hours a day; he employed fourteen assistants, and by an expenditure of £12,000 brought himself to poverty, for his lexicon, though full of the most unusual learning, did not find purchasers . He was actually in prison in 1667 because he was unable to discharge his brother's debts, for which he had made himself liable . A volume of poems dedicated to the king brought him preferment . He was made prebendary of Canterbury and professor of Arabic at Cambridge . Before undertaking the Lexicon Heptaglotton, Castell had helped Dr Brian Walton in the preparation of his Polyglott Bible . His MSS. he bequeathed to the university of Cambridge . He died in 1685 at Higham Gobion, Bedfordshire, where he was rector . The Syriac section of the Lexicon was issued separately at Gottingen in 1788 by J . D .

Michaelis, who offers a tribute to Castell's learning and industry . Trier published the Hebrew section in 1790-1792 .