drudgery of daily attendance all times and weathers." He died at Oxford on 18 February 1703, aged 66. Works Hyde was an assiduous classical scholar and linguist who helped popularize Orientalism and the study of Asian history in Britain. He learned Chinese from the Chinese Jesuit Michael Shen and wrote in and translated Turkish, Arabic, Syriac, Persian, Hebrew, and Malay. His chief work was the 1700 [On the Ancient Religion of the Persians], the first attempt to use Arab and Persian sources to correct the errors of Greek and Roman historians in their descriptions of Zoroastrianism and the other beliefs of the ancient Persians. He identified Zoroaster as a religious reformer. Like Engelbert Kaempfer, he is sometimes mistakenly credited with coining the word "cuneiform". He is similarly sometimes credited with coining "dualism". His writings and translations include: , a translation of the c. 1438 Zij-i Sultani , a combination of the separate translations of the Dutchmen A.C. Ruyl, J. Van Heurn, and J. Van Hasel with an English foreward by Hyde introducing the Malay language, its orthography, and its grammar. . , a translation of Abraham Farissol's 1524 Iggeret Orḥot 'Olam. . . In parts of the , he relates his understanding of various Chinese games as explained to him by Michael Shen. These include coan ki and a confused account of weiqi (i.e., go) which includes the first Latin mention of the game's concept of "eyes". The was republished by Hunt and Costard in 1760. The other worksincluding some previously unpublished manuscriptswere collected, edited, and published by Gregory Sharpe in 1767 under the title . Sharpe also provided a biography of Hyde in his work. See also List of chess historians Notes External links 1636 births 1703 deaths 17th-century Latin-language writers Alumni of King's College, Cambridge Bodley's Librarians Christian Hebraists English librarians English orientalists Tabletop game writers Chess historians Writers from Shropshire People educated at Eton College Laudian Professors of Arabic Regius Professors of Hebrew (University of Oxford)