Archibald Henry Sayce was born on September 25, 1845, in Shirehampton, Bristol, Gloucestershire, England.

He was a pioneer British Assyriologist and linguist. Despite frequent ill health as a child, he was a voracious reader, and by the age of 18, he taught himself to read some Ancient Egyptian, Sanskrit, and Hebrew and became interested in cuneiform. In 1865, he published his first academic paper, Cuneiform inscriptions of Van. He graduated from Queen's College, Oxford (B.A., 1869) and was elected a Fellow and Classical Lecturer. In 1870, he became a college tutor and was also ordained as a priest of the Church of England. In the early 1870s, Sayce was a regular weekly contributor to The Times and the New York Independent. In 1879, he resigned from his role as a college tutor to free up time for exploration and was instrumental in founding the Alexandria Museum in Cairo. In 1891, Sayce returned to Oxford to become the University's first Professor of Assyriology, a position he held until his retirement in 1915. He was the Hibbert (1887), Gifford (1900-1902) and Rhind Lecturer (1906) and travelled to Sudan, Ethiopia, and the Far East. He helped found the Society of Biblical Archaeology (1898-1919) and the Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies. After his retirement, Sayce continued to write and spent his time in Edinburgh, Oxford, and Egypt.

He died unmarried on February 4, 1933, in Bath, Somerset, England.