Archibald Henry Sayce was born in Bristol in 1845. He was privately tutored before attending Queen's College, Oxford, becoming a fellow in 1869. His interests were in Assyriology and he became a pioneer in its studies, publishing many articles and undertaking translations of cuneiform inscriptions. Sayce held a chair as Professor of Assyriology at the University of Oxford from 1891 to 1919.
Ernest Mason Satow was a British diplomat, scholar and Japanologist. Satow was influential in East Asia and Japan, particularly in Bakumatsu (1853–1867) and the Meiji-period (1868–1912). He also served in China after the Boxer Rebellion (1900–1906), in Thailand, Uruguay and Morocco, and represented Britain at the Second Hague Peace Conference in 1907. Satow was a linguist, a traveller, a writer of travel guidebooks, a dictionary compiler, a mountaineer, a keen botanist (chiefly with Frederick Dickins) and a major collector of Japanese books and manuscripts on all kinds of subjects. He authored A Diplomat in Japan and, in retirement, published A Guide to Diplomatic Practice .