Sven Lidman

Sven Fredrik Lidman (11 December 1786 – 9 March 1845) was a Swedish priest and Orientalist.

Lidman was born in Norrköping, Sweden and received a PhD from Uppsala University in 1806 and became an ordained priest in the Evangelical-Lutheran Church of Sweden in 1811; in the same year he was also appointed as a lecturer of Arabic.

From 1811 to 1817, he served as a preacher at the Swedish legation in Constantinople (now Istanbul) where he purchased a number of antiquities from the French team at Luxor from Deir el-Medina; while Lidman's notebooks of his travels in Egypt survived, the collection was destroyed in fire in Constantinople in 1818. In 1817, he obtained a teaching position in Linköping, where he was appointed cathedral dean (domprost) in 1824. He represented the diocese of Linköping in the parliament.

Death and legacy He died in 1845 in Linköping, aged 58, and is interred in the family grave in the southeast corner of Linköping city cemetery.

Lidman was a member of the Geatish Society, using the pseudonym Sigurd Jorsalefarer.

The Lidman family grave in Linköping, Sweden. Standing cross: the priest. Front black stone: the writer