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Thirty Years of 
 Oriental Studies 
 
 The Oriental Club 
 of Philadelphia 
 
 1888-1918 
 
The original of tiiis book is in 
 tine Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924026790984 
 
THIRTY YEARS 
 
 OF 
 
 ORIENTAL STUDIES 
 
 Issued in 
 commemoration of thirty years of activity 
 
 OF 
 
 THE ORIENTAL CLUB OF PHILADELPHIA 
 
 Edited By 
 ROLAND G. KENT 
 Secretary of the Club 
 
 Philadelphia 
 igiiS 
 
^r^ 
 
 /^.^5f^-)7 
 
 Intelligencer Printing Co. 
 
 StEINMAN & FOLTZ 
 
 Lancaster, Fa. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 Page 
 The Oriental Club of Philadelphia 
 
 compiled by the Secretary 
 Historical Sketch 5 
 
 Constitution and By-laws 11 
 
 Membership 15 
 
 Thirty Years' Progress in Semitic Studies, by the 
 Rev. Dr. John P. Peters 22 
 
 Discussion of Dr. Peters' Paper, by Rev. Dr. Robert 
 W. Rogers 48 
 
 Supplementary Account of Thirty Years' Progress 
 IN Semitic Studies, and Discussion of Dr. Peters' 
 Paper, by Prof. Morris Jastrow, Jr 50 
 
 Thirty Years of Indo-European Studies, by Prof. E. 
 Washburn Hopkins 73 
 
THE ORIENTAL CLUB OF 
 PHILADELPHIA 
 
 Historical Sketch 
 
 In the spring of 1888, Messrs. Trumbull, Lyman, Peters, 
 Jastrow, Jr., Hilprecht, Hopkins, Williams and Culin 
 issued an invitation to a number of scholars living in 
 Philadelphia and in the vicinity, to meet for the purpose 
 of forming a local Oriental Club. This meeting took 
 place on April 30 of that year, at the home of Dr. Williams, 
 1833 Spruce Street, and was attended by 20 scholars: 
 the signers of the call, and Messrs. Baba, Boardman, 
 Easton, Garrison, Harris, Jastrow, Sr., Law, McCauley, 
 Myer, Rogers, Stronach and Sulzberger. Dr. Trumbull 
 was elected chairman, Mr. Culin served as secretary, 
 and Dr. Peters spoke informally upon "The Proposed 
 University of Pennsylvania Expedition to Babylonia." 
 A brief constitution was adopted, and thus the Oriental 
 Club of Philadelphia came into being. Those present, 
 and three others (Messrs. Adier, Goodell and Haupt, 
 who were invited to the meeting and could not attend), 
 were considered to be the foundation members. 
 
 Since that time there has been an unbroken series of 
 meetings, six to ten in each academic year, the thirtieth 
 anniversary meeting being the 205th meeting; and in 
 this time, sixty Orientalists, including two ladies, have 
 accepted election to the Club, in addition to the twenty- 
 three founders. The active membership list, at the end 
 of the thirty years, included thirty-three names. Of those 
 at the original meeting, three are still active members. 
 
6 Thirty Years of Oriental Studies 
 
 five are non-resident members, two are living in Europe, 
 and ten are no longer living; two of the three foundation 
 members not present at the origmal meeting are still 
 active members. In the course of thirty years, the papers 
 presented before the Club by members and by distinguished 
 guests— American, English, German, Greek, Dutch, Bel- 
 gian, Japanese — ^have treated practically every portion of 
 the Oriental field, as well as some themes lying rather in 
 Greek and Roman antiquities and in anthropology. 
 
 After five years, the Club desired to commemorate the 
 occasion by the publication of a volume of papers, which 
 made its appearance from the press a little tardily, in 
 May, 1894, under the title. Oriental Studies, a selection 
 of the papers read before the Oriental Club of Philadelphia 
 1888-1894. This comprised thirteen papers by as many 
 members of the Club, and references to it may still be 
 noted from time to time in scientific periodicals. 
 
 It was at about this time that the only difficulty in the 
 
 life of the Club took place: an unpleasantness because of 
 
 a misunderstanding over the manner of electing members. 
 
 However, by a change to substantially the present method, 
 
 the trouble weis quieted, and the Club resumed the even 
 
 tenor of its happy career. The meetings were held at 
 
 the homes of members, and their private hospitality proved 
 
 most enjoyable; but as years went on, the membership 
 
 roll grew somewhat, and it became increasingly difficult 
 
 to accommodate the meetings in private homes. Thus 
 
 started the practice of entertainment at the Franklin 
 
 Inn Club, and finally, in 1916, it was decided to hold 
 
 all the meetings at that place, except by special request. 
 
 Meanwhile, several interesting events had taken place. 
 
 The original constitution had proved too simple to meet 
 
 the needs of a growing organization, and from time to 
 
 time additional rules were passed and recorded in the 
 
The Oriental Club of Philadelphia 7 
 
 minutes, where they were promptly forgotten. Conse- 
 quently, it was decided to assemble these rules and to 
 re-enact them with some alterations and additions. This 
 codification, which, with a few later changes, is printed 
 in this volume, was adopted on January 9, 1913. Two 
 months later, on March 26, the Club celebrated the con- 
 clusion of twenty-five years of activity by a dinner at 
 the Franklin Inn Club, where it entertained also the 
 members of the American Oriental Society, then meeting 
 in annual session in this city. Twenty-four members of 
 the Club and twenty-nine guests were present. Dr. 
 Cohen, President of the Club, acted as Symposiarch, and 
 the invited speakers were Hon. Mayer Sulzberger, "The 
 Oriental Club of Philadelphia"; Prof. G. F. Moore, of 
 Harvard, President of the American Oriental Society, 
 "The Study of the History of Religions"; Dr. W. H. Ward, 
 of New York City, "Semitic Studies of the Last Twenty- 
 five Years"; and Prof. Bloomfield, of the Johns Hopkins 
 University, "Sanskrit Studies of the Last Twenty-five 
 Years." Prof. Friedrich Hirth, of Columbia University, 
 had been invited to speak on "Chinese Studies," but was 
 obliged to leave early. At the request of the company. 
 Prof. Haupt spoke a few words as President-elect of the 
 American Oriental Society, and Prof. Hopkins spoke for the 
 newly founded Oriental Club of New Haven. A booklet 
 containing the record of the Club's activities was distrib- 
 uted as a souvenir of the occasion. As the rules of the 
 Franklin Inn Club do not permit the presence of ladies, 
 our fellow-member, Mrs. Stevenson, entertained the visit- 
 ing ladies of the American Oriental Society at her own 
 home at the same time. 
 
 On January 13, 1916, the Club met to do honor to their 
 fellow-member. Judge Sulzberger, on the occasion of his 
 retirement from the Judiciary. Twenty-two members and 
 
8 Thirty Years of Oriental Sttidies 
 
 twenty guests were present. The regular scholarly paper 
 of the evening was presented by Dr. Montgomery, the 
 President of the Club, on "The Archaeology of Jerusalem," 
 from which city he had some months previously returned. 
 Addresses of appreciation of Judge Sulzberger as scholar 
 and critic were made by Messrs. Williams, Montgomery, 
 Jastrow and Haupt; and after a collation was served, the 
 Judge was presented with an autograph volume of con- 
 gratulatory addresses composed in eighteen ancient and 
 oriental languages by members of the Club: Sumerian, 
 Assyrian, Phoenician, Ancient Hebrew, Aramaic, Classical 
 Arabic, Syriac, Ethiopic, Modern Arabic, Egyptian, Old 
 Persian, Avestan, Sanskrit, Pali, Greek, Latin, Chinese 
 and Turkish. These were read in the original and in 
 translation by the composers, before the volume was 
 finally presented to the guest of honor. 
 
 The two hundredth meeting of the Club was held on 
 November 8, 1917, and was celebrated by a simple dinner, 
 followed by a special program. Twenty-six members and 
 five guests were present. Prof. Edgerton, as President, 
 made a brief but very happy address, after which the 
 Secretary, Prof. Kent, read a brief sketch of the Club's 
 history. The remainder of the program consisted of five- 
 minute talks on the salient features of recent progress in 
 special portions of the Oriental field: Jewish History, 
 by Prof. Adler; Sumerian, by Prof. Barton; Greek, by 
 Prof. Bates; Indie, by Dr. Brown; Iranian, by Prof. Car- 
 ney; Assyrian, by Prof. Haupt; New Testament, by Dr. 
 Heffern; Arabic, by Prof. Jastrow; Modern Hebrew, by 
 Prof. Maker; Old Testament, by Prof. Margolis; Aramaic, 
 by Prof. Montgomery; Latin, by Prof. Rolfe. 
 
 The Oriental Club celebrated its thirtieth anniversary 
 on April 30, 1918, the exact anniversary of its foundation, 
 by a dinner and meeting at the Franklin Inn Club. There 
 
The Oriental Club of Philadelphia 9 
 
 were present twenty-nine resident members, six non- 
 resident members, and six guests. Of the ten survivors 
 of the original meeting, seven were present and took part 
 in the exercises, and an eighth was represented by a written 
 greeting. Prof. Edgerton, as President of the Club, spoke 
 the welcome and inducted as Toastmaster of the evening. 
 Dr. Williams, who had been the host of the first meeting. 
 Dr. Williams spoke eloquently of the earlier meetings 
 and of the scholars attending them, awakening many 
 feeling recollections. Mr. Culin, Secretary of the first 
 meeting, read the minutes of the first meeting, with the 
 constitution then adopted. Greetings from delegates were 
 then presented: for the Oriental Club of New York, by 
 Rev. Dr. George W. Gilmore, Secretary; for the Oriental 
 Club of New Haven, by Prof. Hopkins, Secretary, who 
 was also a foundation member of our own Club; for the 
 American Oriental Society, by Prof. A. V. Williams Jack- 
 son, Vice-President, who read also a letter of greeting 
 from Prof. J. H. Breasted, President. After this, the 
 Toastmaster read a letter from Dr. Harris, conveying 
 his greetings from England to his old-time associates. 
 Mr. Lyman spoke a few words, received with affectionate 
 applause. Dr. Peters, the speaker at the original meeting, 
 was again the main speaker, taking as his theme "Thirty 
 Years' Progress in Semitics." This paper was discussed 
 from various standpoints by Messrs. Rogers and Jastrow. 
 Prof. Haupt also was called upon by the Toastmaster to 
 add a few remarks. 
 
 Such interest and value attached to Dr. Peters' paper 
 and to the discussion, that at the request and by the 
 generosity of one of the guests they are issued in printed 
 form in this modest volume. To avoid one-sidedness. 
 Prof. Hopkins was invited to prepare a similar review of 
 studies in the Indo-European field, and Prof. Jastrow 
 
lo Thirty Years of Oriental Studies 
 
 was asked to add to his discussion an account of some 
 phases of Semitic studies with which Dr. Peters had not 
 dealt. The papers here printed are accordingly the work 
 exclusively of the Club members who were present at 
 the original meeting; except that this historical sketch 
 and the data of membership have been compiled by the 
 Secretary. 
 
 Bibliography 
 
 Oriental Studies, a selection of the papers read before the 
 Oriental Club of Philadelphia, 1 888-1 894. 1894. 
 
 The Oriental Club of Philadelphia: Record of 25 Years. 
 Issued March 26, 1913. 
 
 Oriental Club Meeting: Presentation of Testimonial Vol- 
 ume to Hon. Mayer Sulzberger on his Retirement from 
 the Bench. Old Penn, Jan. 22, 1916. 
 
 200th Meeting of the Oriental Club. Reprinted from Old 
 Penn, Nov. 16, 1917. 
 
 Oriental Club's 30th Anniversary. The Pennsylvania Ga- 
 zette, May 10, 1918. 
 
 A few copies of these are still to be secured from the 
 Secretary, Prof. Roland G. Kent, 204 St. Mark's Square, 
 Philadelphia, Penna. 
 
CONSTITUTION AND BY-LAWS 
 
 Article I. Name and Object 
 
 1. The name of this organization shall be The Oriental 
 Club of Philadelphia. 
 
 2. Its object shall be the promotion of Oriental studies 
 by friendly intercourse among students and by such other 
 means as may from time to time be determined. 
 
 Article II. Members 
 
 1 . The following, if resident within fifty miles of Phila- 
 delphia, shall be eligible to membership : 
 
 (a) Scholars in Oriental studies. 
 
 (b) Scholars whose special fields of investigation bear 
 directly on Oriental studies. 
 
 (c) Scholars in the historical study of religions. 
 {d) Scholars in anthropology. 
 
 But election from the last three classes shall be only 
 from those who have scientific interest in the subject and 
 whose attention and study are primarily outside of the 
 West-European field. 
 
 2. Any eligible scholar may be nominated for member- 
 ship by two members of the Club. The nominee shall 
 be voted on by written ballot at the next meeting, or as 
 soon as a vacancy occurs in the resident membership of 
 the Club. The negative votes of two members present 
 shall postpone the election of a nominee for one year, 
 after which time he may again be nominated in the usual 
 way. With the notice of the meeting at which the nom- 
 inee is to be voted on, the Secretary shall send to the resi- 
 dent members of the Club his name and qualifications. 
 
 II 
 
12 Thirty Years of Oriental Studies 
 
 3. The resident membership of the Club shall not ex- 
 ceed thirty-five; nominees for membership, who by this rule 
 cannot be elected, shall be placed upon a dated waiting list. 
 
 4. Upon election, members shall be classed as resident 
 members, and shall be expected to present either a main 
 communication or a brief communication at a meeting 
 of the Club within two years after election. 
 
 5. Annual dues of three dollars shall be paid by resi- 
 dent members, to meet the current expenses of the Club; 
 special contributions may be invited for special purposes. 
 
 6. Resident members who display lack of interest in 
 the Club by absence during all the meetings of any aca- 
 demic year, or by failure to comply with sections 4 and 5 
 of this article, shall be invited to explain the matter, and 
 in case of failure to give satisfactory reasons, shall be 
 dropped from the roll of members unless retained by 
 unanimous vote of the members present at the meeting. 
 
 7. Resident members who are in good standing under 
 sections 4, 5 and 6 of this article, may upon removal to 
 a distance of fifty miles or more from Philadelphia, be 
 elected to non-resident membership by vote of the Club. 
 Non-resident members shall receive notice of the meet- 
 ings, unless they are living outside the United States, 
 and shall enjoy all privileges of resident members at the 
 meetings, but shall not be subject to the payment of dues. 
 
 8. Non-resident members returning to within fifty miles 
 of Philadelphia shall be placed upon the list of resident 
 members as soon as a vacancy occurs, and shall have 
 precedence over recent nominees for membership. 
 
 9. Resident members unable to take active part in the 
 meetings may, by unanimous vote of the members present, 
 be elected to honorary membership. 
 
Constitution and By-Laws 13 
 
 Article III. Officers 
 
 1. The officers of the Club shall be a president, a sec- 
 retary, and a treasurer; the secretaryship and treasurer- 
 ship may, at the option of the Club, be vested in one 
 person. 
 
 2. The officers of the Club shall constitute an Execu- 
 tive Committee, empowered to transact routine business 
 and other business that may require immediate attention. 
 
 3. The election of officers shall take place annually at 
 the meeting nearest June first. 
 
 Article IV. Meetings 
 
 1. Stated meetings of the Club shall be held on the 
 second Thursday of each month from November to April, 
 inclusive. 
 
 2. The date of meetings may be changed by the Execu- 
 tive Committee, to secure the attendance of visiting 
 scholars, to avoid conflict with other meetings of Oriental 
 interest, or for other adequate reasons. 
 
 3. The order of business of the meetings shall be: 
 
 (a) Call to order, at 8 P. M. precisely. 
 
 (&) Reading of the minutes, 
 
 (c) Presentation of new members, 
 
 (rf) Unfinished business. 
 
 (e) Business requiring executive session, including 
 
 nomination and election of members, and 
 dropping of members from the roll. 
 
 (f) New business. 
 
 (g) Exhibit of publications by members. 
 Qi) Brief communications. 
 
 {i) The main communication of the evening, at 
 8:30 P. M. precisely. 
 
14 Thirty Years of Oriental Studies 
 
 4. Brief communications are limited to five minutes, 
 and should deal with single items of news, reports of 
 recent discoveries or investigations, or other matters 
 capable of brief statement and not calling for prolonged 
 discussion or debate. 
 
 Article V. Amendments 
 
 Amendments and additions to the Constitution and By- 
 laws shall be presented in writing, and must be seconded; 
 action shall be postponed until the following meeting. 
 The Secretary shall send the text of such amendments 
 and additions to the resident members of the Club prior 
 to the meeting at which they are to be voted on. 
 
MEMBERSHIP 
 
 f before the name indicates foundation members. 
 
 A numeral before the name indicates serial number of 
 election. 
 
 e before a date indicates the year of election. 
 
 n before a date indicates the year of election to non-resi- 
 dent membership. 
 
 t before a date indicates the year in which membership 
 was terminated. 
 
 h before a date indicates the year of election to honorary 
 membership. 
 
 * before a date indicates the year of death. 
 
 Of two numbers in square brackets, the first indicates 
 the number of communications by appointment before 
 the Club, and the second gives the number of brief im- 
 promptu communications. 
 
 Addresses and titles are given as of April 30, 1918. 
 
 f Cyrus Adler, A. M., Ph. D., President of the Dropsie 
 College. [3+0] 
 
 f Paul Haupt, Ph. D., LL. D., Prof, of Semitic Languages, 
 Johns Hopkins Univ. [18+35] 
 
 f Morris Jastrow, Jr., Ph. D., Prof, of Semitic Languages 
 and Librarian, Univ. of Penna. [25+39] 
 
 f Benjamin Smith Lyman, A. B.^ M. E., Consulting En- 
 gineer, Phila. [2+3] 
 
 f Hon. Mayer Sulzberger, A. M., LL. D., retired Presiding 
 Judge of the Court of Common Pleas, Phila. 
 
 31 George A. Barton, A. M., Ph. D., Prof, of Biblical 
 Literature and Semitic Languages, Bryn Mawr Col- 
 lege; eiSQi. [13+6] 
 
 37 William N. Bates, Ph. D., Prof, of Greek, Univ. of 
 Penna.; e 1900. [3+4] 
 
 15 
 
i6 Thirty Years of Oriental Studies 
 
 38 Rev. James Alan Montgomery, Ph. D., S. T. D., Pro- 
 fessor of Hebrew, Univ. of Penna., and Professor of 
 Old Testament Literature and Language, Protestant 
 Episcopal Divinity School, Phila.; e 1900. [5 + 19] 
 
 42 Dr. Solomon Solis Cohen, M. D., Prof, of Clinical Medi- 
 cine, Jefferson Medical College; e 1904. [2-I-1] 
 
 45 John C. Rolfe, A. M., Ph. D., Professor of the Latin 
 Language and Literature, Univ. of Penna.; e 1904. 
 
 [3 + 1] 
 
 50 Roland G. Kent, A. M., Ph. D., Professor of Compara- 
 
 tive Philology, Univ. of Penna.; e 1907. [1+5] 
 
 51 Walton B. McDaniel, A. M., Ph. D., Professor of Latin, 
 
 Univ. of Penna.; e 1907. [2 + 1] 
 
 53 Rev. D. M. Steele, B. D., A. M., Rector of the Prot- 
 
 estant Episcopal Church of St. Luke and the Epiph- 
 any, Phila.; e 1907. 
 
 54 Max L. Margolis, A. M., Ph. D., Professor of Biblical 
 
 Philology, Dropsie College; e 1909. [24-2] 
 
 55 W. Romaine Newbold, Ph. D., Professor of Intellectual 
 
 and Moral Philosophy, Univ. of Penna.; e 1909. 
 
 [1+3] 
 
 64 Wilfred H. Schoff, A. M., Secretary of the Philadelphia 
 
 Museums; e 191 1. [i + i] 
 
 65 Henry Malter, Ph. D., Professor of Rabbinical Litera- 
 
 ture, Dropsie College; e 1912. [2-f-i] 
 
 66 George D. Hadzsits, A. M., Ph. D., Asst. Professor of 
 
 Latin, Univ. of Penna. ; e 1912. [i + i] 
 
 68 Franklin Edgerton, Ph. D., Asst. Professor of Sanskrit, 
 
 Univ. of Penna.; e 1913. [2-I-6] 
 
 70 Walter W. Hyde, A. M., Ph. D., Asst. Professor of 
 
 Greek, Univ. of Penna. ; e 1914. [i -|-o] 
 
 71 Henry J. Cadbury, A. M., Ph. D., Asst. Professor of 
 
 Biblical Literature, Haverford College; e 1915. 
 
 [i+o] 
 
Membership 17 
 
 72 Rev. A. D. Heffern, D. D., Professor of New Testament 
 
 Literature and Language, Protestant Episcopal Di- 
 vinity School, Phila. ; e 1915. [2+0] 
 
 73 Stephen B. Luce, A. M., Ph. D., Junior Lieutenant in 
 
 the Intelligence Office, Navy Dept., Washington, 
 D. C.;ei9i6. [1+3] 
 
 74 J. J. Van Nostrand, A. M., Ph. D., Instructor in An- 
 
 cient History, Univ. of Penna.; e 1916. [i+o] 
 
 75 Isaac Husik, A. M., Ph. D., Asst. Professor of Phi- 
 
 losophy, Univ. of Penna.; e 1916. [o+i] 
 
 76 Albert J. Carnoy, Litt. D., Ph. D., Research Professor 
 
 of Greek, Univ. of Penna.; e 1916. [2+2] 
 
 77 W. Norman Brown, Ph. D., Intelligence Office, War 
 
 Dept., Washington, D. C; e 1916. [3+0] 
 
 78 Edward Chiera, Ph. D., Instructor in Assyriology, Univ. 
 
 of Penna.; e 1916. [o-l-i] 
 
 79 Carl W. Bishop, A. M., Asst. Curator of the Dept. of 
 
 Anthropology, Univ. of Penna. Museum; e 1916. 
 
 [i + i] 
 
 80 Heinrich Friedrich Lutz, Ph. D., Research Fellow in 
 
 Semitics, Univ. of Penna.; e 1916. [i+o] 
 
 81 Rev. Royden Keith Yerkes, A. M., S. T. D., Instructor 
 
 in Hebrew, Univ. of Penna., and Instructor in the 
 History of Religion, Protestant Episcopal Divinity 
 School, Phila.; e 1916. 
 
 82 Rev. C. Theodore Benze, Ph. D., Professor at the Mt. 
 
 Airy Lutheran Theological Seminary; e 191 7. 
 
 83 Elihu Grant, Ph. D., Professor of Biblical Literature, 
 
 Haverford College; e 1918. 
 
 Non-Resident Members 
 
 f Stewart Culin, Curator of the Dept. of Archaeology, 
 Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences; n 1903. 
 
 [9+3] 
 
1 8 Thirty Years of Oriental Studies 
 
 f E. Washburn Hopkins, A. M., Ph. D., LL. D., Professor 
 of the Sanskrit Language and Literature and Com- 
 parative Philology, Yale Univ.; n 1896. [4+0] 
 f Rev. John P. Peters, Ph. D., D. D., Sc. D., Rector of 
 St. Michael's Protestant Episocpal Church, New York 
 City; n 1896. [4+1] 
 f Rev. Robert W. Rogers, A. M., Ph. D., LL. D., D. D., 
 Litt. D., F. R. G. S., Professor of Hebrew and Old 
 Testament Exegesis, Drew Theological Seminary, 
 Madison, N. J.; n 1913. [i+o] 
 f Talcott Williams, A. M., L. H. D., LL. D., Litt. D., 
 Professor of Journalism and Director of the School of 
 Journalism, Columbia Univ.; n 1913. [8 + 13] 
 26 Hermann Collitz, A. M., Ph. D., Professor of Germanic 
 Philology, Johns Hopkins Univ.;e 1888 ;n 1907. [3+0] 
 32 Rev. Loring W. Batten, B. D., Ph. D., S. T. D., Pro- 
 fessor of the Literature and Interpretation of the 
 Old Testament, General Theological Seminary, New 
 York City; e 1895; n 1913. [i-|-i] 
 
 34 William C. Thayer, A. M., L. H. D., Professor of the 
 
 English Language and Literature, Lehigh Univ.; 
 e 1896; n 1910. 
 
 35 Charles P. G. Scott, Yonkers, N. Y.; e 1897; n 1913. 
 
 [4+8] 
 47 Rev. Albert T. Clay, A. M., Ph. D., Professor of As- 
 
 sjn-iology and Babylonian Literature, Yale Univ.; 
 
 e 1904; n 1913. [5 + 10] 
 
 61 Eugene W. Burlingame, A. M., Ph. D., Fellow in Pali, 
 
 Yale Univ.; e 1910; n 1914. [2-^5] 
 
 69 Arthur Ungnad, Ph. D., Professor of Assyriology, Univ. 
 
 of Jena, Germany; e 1913; n 1914. U+o] 
 
 Honorary Members 
 30 Mrs. Cornelius Stevenson, Sc. D., Literary Editor of 
 the Public Ledger; e 1891 ; h 1916. [l + i] 
 
Membership 19 
 
 36 Dr. William Henry Furness 3d, A. B., M. D., Wal- 
 lingford, Pa.; e 1899; h 1914. [3 + 1] 
 
 57 Caroline L. Ransom, Ph. D., Asst. Curator of Egyptian 
 Antiquities, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York 
 City; e 1910; n 1913; h 1917. 
 
 Former Members 
 
 f Tatsui Baba; *i888. 
 
 f Rev. George Dana Boardman, D. D., LL. D., Pastor of 
 
 the First Baptist Church, Phila.; t 1889; *I903. 
 f Morton W. Easton, M. D., Ph. D., Emeritus Professor 
 
 of English and Comparative Philology, Univ. of 
 
 Penna.; n 1913; *I9I7. [5 + 1] 
 
 f Rev. Joseph F. Garrison, D. D., LL. D.; *i892. 
 f Dr. William Goodell, M. D., Professor of Gynecology, 
 
 Univ. of Penna.; t 1890; *i894. 
 f J. Rendel Harris, A. M., Litt. D., LL. D., T. D., Fellow 
 
 of Clare College, Cambridge, England; t 1891. 
 f Herman V. Hilprecht, Ph. D., D. D., LL. D., Germany; 
 
 t 1903- [5+2] 
 
 { Rev. Marcus Jastrow, Ph. D., Rabbi of the Rodef Shalom 
 Congregation, Phila.; *I903. [4+2] 
 
 f Philip Howard Law; *i888. 
 
 f Edward Yorke McCauley, Rear-Admiral U. S. N.; *i894. 
 
 f Isaac Myer, LL. B.; t 1893; *i902. 
 
 f Rev. John Stronach, D. D., Missionary of the Presby- 
 terian Church in China; *i888. 
 
 f Rev. Henry Clay Trumbull, A. M., D. D., Editor of the 
 Sunday School Times; *I903. [2+0] 
 
 24 J. Peter Lesley, LL. D., Professor of Geology and 
 
 Mining, Univ. of Penna.; e 1888; t 1890; *I903. 
 
 25 Daniel G. Brinton, M. D., LL. D., Sc. D., Professor of 
 
 American Archaeology and Linguistics, Univ. of 
 Penna.; e 1888; *i899. [7-I-4] 
 
20 Thirty Years of Oriental Studies 
 
 27 Rev. William J. Mann, D. D., Professor in the Lutheran 
 
 Theological Seminary, Phila.; e 1888; *i892. 
 
 28 Swamee Bhaskara Nand Saraswatee; e 1890; t 1891. 
 
 29 W. Max Mueller, Ph. D., Asst. Professor of Egyptology, 
 
 Univ. of Penna., and Professor of Old and New 
 Testament Exegesis, Reformed Episcopal Theological 
 Seminary, Phila.; e 1890; t 191 7. [14+12] 
 
 33 Paul Elmer More, A. M., Literary Editor of the New 
 York Evening Post; e 1895; t 1897. 
 
 39 Rev. Elwood Worcester, A. M., Ph. D., D. D., S. T. D., 
 
 Rector of the Emmanuel Church, Boston; e 1900; 
 t 1904. 
 
 40 Dana C. Munro, A. M., Professor of History, Princeton 
 
 Univ.; e 1901; t 1913. 
 
 41 Enno Littmann, Ph. D., Professor of Semitic Philology, 
 
 Univ. of Strassburg, Germany; e 1903; t 1904. 
 
 [i+o] 
 
 43 Albert J. Edmunds, A. M., Cataloguer of the Historical 
 
 Society of Penna.; e 1904; t 1916. [2+4] 
 
 44 George Byron Gordon, Sc. D., Director of the Univ. of 
 
 Penna. Museum; e 1904; t 1916. [2+0] 
 
 46 Hermann Ranke, Ph. D., Asst. Professor of Egypt- 
 ology, Univ. of Heidelberg, Germany; e 1904; t 1905. 
 
 [0+2I 
 
 48 Henry S. Drinker, E. M., LL. D., President of Lehigh 
 
 Univ.; e 1906; t 1909. 
 
 49 Rev. William M. Groton, A. B., S. T. D., Dean and 
 
 Professor of Systematic Theology, Protestant Epis- 
 copal Divinity School, Phila.; e 1907; *I9I5. [i-Fo] 
 
 52 David Randall Maclver, Sc. D., in the English army; 
 e 1907; t 1911. [2+0] 
 
 56 Albert Ten Eyck Olmstead, A. M., Ph. D., Professor of 
 Ancient History, Univ. of Illinois; e 1909; t 1909. 
 
 [i+o] 
 
Membership 21 
 
 58 Edward Sapir, Ph. D., Ethnologist in Charge, Geological 
 
 Survey of Canada, Ottawa; e 1910; t 1910. 
 
 59 Frank G. Speck, A. M., Ph. D., Asst. Professor of 
 
 Anthropology, Univ. of Penna.; e 1910; t 1913. 
 
 60 C. Leonard Woolley, in the English Army; e 1910; 
 
 t 1913- [2+0] 
 
 62 Benson Brush Charles, Ph. D., Salamanca, N. Y. ;e 1910; 
 
 t 1917. 
 
 63 Eckley B. Coxe, Jr., Phila.; e 1910; *I9I7. 
 
 67 Robert P. Blake, A. M., Ph. D.; e 1913; t 1915. [i+o] 
 
THIRTY YEARS' PROGRESS 
 IN SEMITICS 
 
 PAPER READ AT THE THIRTIETH ANNIVERSARY OF THE 
 ORIENTAL CLUB OF PHILADELPHIA 
 
 By the Rev. John P. Peters, Ph. D., D. D., Sc. D., who 
 read the paper at the first meeting of the Club 
 
 Preface 
 
 Speaking in. the Franklin Inn Club, beneath the gaze 
 of Franklin, I cannot but be reminded of his contribution 
 to an Oriental Club in France. The story as I have heard 
 it — I presume it exists in writing, but I have never seen 
 it — is as follows: It was the time of blatant infidelity in 
 France, when to know or read the Bible was to be ridicu- 
 lous. Franklin belonged to a little coterie of intellectuals 
 whose members in turn contributed at the meetings original 
 papers or translations from the Oriental literature which 
 the West was just beginning to discover. When Frank- 
 lin's turn came around he engaged a well-known actress 
 to learn the book of Ruth, and took her with him to the 
 meeting to recite the translation of 'an oriental idyl, which 
 with his poor French he felt unable to interpret intelli- 
 gently.' All were charmed with the beauty of the idyl, 
 proclaiming it superior to anything theretofore presented, 
 and all were eager to know in what language it was written 
 and where it might be found. When they had committed 
 themselves irrevocably, he informed them that it was 
 written in Hebrew, and was to be found in the Bible which 
 they despised. 
 
Thirty Years' Progress in Semitics 23 
 
 Reminiscences 
 
 Bear with me if, in trying to deal with the theme assigned 
 to me, I commence with personal reminiscences. It was 
 thirty years ago next month that I sailed for England 
 on my way to Babylonia as Director of the University of 
 Pennsylvania Expedition. It was on the thirtieth of April, 
 some five weeks before starting, when my mind was full 
 of that enterprise, that the first meeting of the Oriental 
 Club of Philadelphia was held and I spoke on the Expe- 
 dition. My mind tonight naturally reverts to the events 
 and conditions of that period, which meant so much to me. 
 
 When, some years ago, a statue of Provost William 
 Pepper was set up on the grounds to the west of the Mu- 
 seum, where he seems to be regarding, placidly and with 
 quiet satisfaction, the result of his life work, a physical 
 and mental attitude, by the way, entirely unlike the actual 
 attitude of his busy, nervous, restless life, I was reminded 
 most vividly of my first interview with him regarding the 
 Expedition, in November of 1887, in a room in the Hospital, 
 the window of which overlooked the spot where his statue 
 now stands. Some of those most active in organizing 
 and financing the Expedition were not friends of the 
 University, which, as I was a professor in that institu- 
 tion, made my position somewhat awkward. We were a 
 group of gentlemen of Philadelphia, gathering funds to 
 send an exploring expedition to Babylonia. As it seemed 
 to me, the Expedition must have some connection with 
 something; but knowing the attitude toward the Uni- 
 versity at that time of some of the gentlemen who had 
 started this work, I had not ventured to propose that the 
 Expedition should be connected with that institution. 
 That seeriied to me the logical and indeed the necessary 
 course to pursue, and I hoped that because it was the 
 logical course, it would force itself upon the minds even 
 
24 Thirty Years of Oriental Studies 
 
 of those who disliked and distrusted the University. In 
 point of fact it did do so, and these gentlemen of their own 
 motion proposed that I should see Provost Pepper and 
 offer the expedition to the University, on condition that 
 the University should provide a proper fire-proof repository 
 for objects found and brought to this country. This meant 
 that the University must expend a sum very much larger 
 than it was proposed to raise for the expedition. I knew 
 the difficulty of getting funds for the University, and its 
 large annual deficit for current expenses, always met out 
 of the pockets of two gentlemen, and I doubted whether 
 the University would feel willing or able to undertake such 
 a task. It was, therefore, with great hesitation that I 
 went to see Dr. Pepper to make the proposition decided 
 upon by the originators of the Expedition. 
 
 I found him resting, after a lecture in the Medical 
 School, in a small room whose window looked out on the 
 place where his statute now stands. As was apt to be 
 the case with him, quite exhausted after the lecture, he 
 was lying down on a bed or couch, and looking so utterly 
 wan and worn that I apologized for my intrusion, and 
 suggested that I should come some other time. He, how- 
 ever, insisted that I should go on with the matter which 
 had brought me to him, and I stated it with much apology. 
 
 We had a certain amount pledged for an expedition to 
 Babylonia. We could and would go ahead and raise the 
 whole amount then agreed upon, which, in our modesty, 
 was only $7500, and would put the whole matter under 
 the control of the University of Pennsylvania, provided 
 the University would undertake to provide a proper fire- 
 proof structure for the housing of objects which might be 
 secured by such an expedition. Very anxious that this 
 should be a University of Pennsylvania undertaking, very 
 fearful of the effect of the condition attached, I added, 
 
Thirty Years' Progress in Semitics 25 
 
 personally, that if this seemed too much to ask, I would 
 do my utmost to change that particular provision. Dr. 
 Pepper had been listening to me quietly, and almost, as 
 it seemed, listlessly and without interest, retaining his 
 attitude of physical exhaustion until I said that. Then 
 he suddenly sprang to a sitting posture, his face fairly 
 on fire with zeal and enthusiasm, and began to pour out 
 to me a vision of the future. On no account should that 
 condition be omitted. It was the most valuable part of 
 the whole proposition. He saw in the Expedition with 
 that condition attached the means by which he could 
 raise the University to a commanding position. Such an 
 expedition undertaken by the University could be made to 
 appeal mightily to men's imaginations, and on the basis 
 of the condition attached he could appeal not only for a 
 museum, but for a library and much more besides. He 
 would reach out into this field and that, and build a real 
 University on great lines. It was the vision of a prophet 
 alike in breadth and scope and fervor. It fairly swept 
 me off my feet, and from that day onward I became a 
 warm admirer of the genius of William Pepper. 
 
 But I must confess that what interested me most at 
 the moment was the assurance his reception gave me of 
 the success of my enterprise. The difficulties of organ- 
 izing and financing the expedition seemed to have vanished ; 
 but for the greater future, much as his zeal inspired me, my 
 faith was not yet equal to his faith. I left to him the vision 
 of the great things beyond, concerning myself primarily 
 with the immediate practical execution of the work of 
 going out to explore in Babylonia. For a long time it 
 had been my belief that here was a great opportunity, 
 that something great could be done in Babylonia, and that 
 America should take part in doing it. That belief was 
 now about to be realized. 
 
26 Thirty Years of Oriental Studies 
 
 William Pepper's monument stands just below the 
 window of the room in which he revealed to me that greater 
 vision — a vision which has been more than fulfilled; and 
 when I first saw that statue it seemed to me as though he 
 had just settled back into the repose from which I had 
 aroused him, bidding me behold that the dream was 
 realized and that he might now rest in peace. 
 
 Thirty years ago we were at the commencement of a 
 great movement in Semitic study in this country. In 
 1883, in a series of articles in the Evening Post of New York, 
 I advocated the introduction of the study of Hebrew 
 as an optional course in colleges, and in connection with 
 that, the establishment of Semitic courses in the univer- 
 sities of the country, claiming that men could not properly 
 teach Hebrew, and hence should not be appointed professors 
 of Hebrew, who had not a broad knowledge of the Semitic 
 languages. 
 
 In preparation for this paper I have been looking over 
 some of my writings and my correspondence of that period. 
 I addressed myself to all the universities, colleges and 
 divinity schools of this country, to ascertain precisely 
 what instruction was offered in the Semitic languages in 
 universities or other institutions, and more particularly 
 what opportunity was offered in our colleges for the study 
 of Hebrew as a preparatory course for students proposing 
 to study theology in divinity schools. 
 
 At that time only one university in this county had 
 actually offered courses in the Semitic languages, viz., 
 Harvard, while another, Johns Hopkins, began to offer 
 them in that year; also in one seminary. Union, instruction 
 in Assyrian was offered by Prof. Francis Brown. About 
 a dozen colleges offered optional courses in Hebrew to 
 undergraduates, but these were feeble and half hearted 
 affairs, intended to teach theological students the letters 
 
Thirty Years' Progress in Semitics 27 
 
 of the Hebrew alphabet and practically little more, and 
 were given in most cases by men very poorly equipped. 
 Indeed, at that time the number of professors of Hebrew 
 throughout the country who had any approximately sci- 
 entific training in the Semitic languages could have been 
 counted on the fingers of one hand. Such as had any 
 training had acquired it perforce in Germany, and there 
 were at that time in Germany a number of students pre- 
 paring for a larger work. But, while the situation of 
 Semitic study in our own colleges, universities and sem- 
 inaries was deplorable, we were really beginning to see 
 light ahead. W. R. Harper had commenced his publica- 
 tions, and was just starting his summer schools of Hebrew, 
 which had the effect of arousing such enthusiasm and 
 interest in the study of Hebrew and the Old Testament 
 throughout the country. As already stated, there were 
 at that time a number of students studying Semitic lan- 
 guages abroad. Lyon, who had shortly before returned 
 from his studies, had already commenced his work at 
 Harvard, and Francis Brown at Union Theological Semi- 
 nary, while Paul Haupt* had just been brought over to 
 this country by Johns Hopkins and was to commence 
 his work that year in Baltimore. 
 
 Three years later, in 1886, I made another canvass 
 of the situation and found that a rapid change was taking 
 place. Yale and the University of Pennsylvania had 
 joined the list of institutions offering full courses in Se- 
 mitic languages, while a number of colleges, universities, 
 and theological seminaries all over the country were offer- 
 ing some sort of facilities for the study of at least some 
 Semitic language. Harper's summer schools had, in 
 addition to Hebrew, introduced courses in Assyrian, Arabic,, 
 
 '■ Member of the Oriental Club of Philadelphia. 
 
28 Thirty Years of Oriental Studies 
 
 and Aramaic; and we had a considerable number of young 
 men who were prepared to instruct in those languages, 
 and were beginning to do good work in research, as shown 
 by their publications. 
 
 An examination of the earlier volumes of the Journal 
 of the American Oriental Society shows how, during pre- 
 cisely these years, interest in and research in Semitic 
 languages in this country was increasing by leaps and 
 bounds. It was in the autumn of 1883, the year in which 
 Prof. Haupt came to Johns Hopkins, and, I think, partly 
 at his suggestion, that the Semitic students in the Oriental 
 Society, were brought together at its meeting in October 
 of that year at New Haven, to consider a proposal for 
 active participation of this country in exploration in 
 Babylonia, the result of which was the Wolfe Expedition 
 under Dr. Wm. Hayes Ward. It was in that year that 
 communications from students interested in Semitic studies 
 first began to assume a really prominent part in the pro- 
 ceedings of the Oriental Society. Three years later, in 
 1886, the bulk of these communications had become so 
 considerable that I remember hearing complaints from 
 some of my Indo-European colleagues, who had hereto- 
 fore had everything their own way in the Society, that 
 all the papers read nowadays dealt with Semitic topics. 
 
 In 1888, when this Club was founded, we were, however, 
 still only at the beginning. In the University of Penn- 
 sylvania the three professors who taught Semitics were 
 unpaid, deriving their living from other sources; and with 
 the exception of the three universities. Harvard, Yale, 
 and Johns Hopkins, it may be said that, in spite of the 
 interest which had been aroused, the position of Semitic 
 study was extremely precarious. We were even weaker 
 in our provisions for research, in libraries and museums, 
 than in our facilities for instruction in Semitics. Here 
 
Thirty Years' Progress in Semitics 29 
 
 and there, in the hands of individuals, there were a few 
 antiquities of Semitic character; one or two libraries had 
 a few old books or manuscripts. A few museums and 
 colleges had a tablet of Ashurnazirpal with the standard 
 inscription. (A little while before, one of these tablets, 
 in its original box, never unpacked, had turned up in the 
 lumber room of a deceased merchant in Philadelphia, 
 to whom it had been sent years before by a missionary 
 of the A. B. C. F. M. as a token of gratitude.) The Met- 
 ropolitan Museum in New York had half a dozen Baby- 
 lonian tablets and one small Nebuchadrezzar cylinder. 
 (This collection, partly genuine, partly fraudulent, had 
 been brought over by the notorious Maimon. Dr. Ward 
 and I were called in and had the good fortune to separate 
 the sheep from the goats. Accordingly, the New York 
 Museum got the genuine, and another institution the 
 fraudulent antiquities.) Harvard was just commencing 
 to make a collection of casts, and the Smithsonian Institute 
 in Washington was thinking of doing the same. As a 
 result of his preliminary expedition to Babylonia, Dr. 
 Ward had commenced a collection of seal cylinders and 
 their study, which resulted later in the publication of his 
 monumental work. 
 
 That is roughly where we stood in Semitic study and in 
 facilities for Semitic study and research in this country 
 when this Oriental Club was founded in 1888, and the 
 University of Pennsylvania Expedition, which Dr. Pepper 
 proposed to make a fulcrum for the development of a 
 great university, was setting out on its way to Babylonia. 
 
 I cannot pretend to give a real history of the succeeding 
 thirty years. I cannot give you anything like a complete 
 survey of present conditions. If I had the knowledge and 
 ability to do so, the time would not permit. I must con- 
 tent myself with taking up this thing here and that thing 
 
30 Thirty Years of Oriental Studies 
 
 there, with a view to suggesting some of the things which 
 seem to me to have been particularly fertile in results in 
 the Semitic field in the past thirty years, or which may 
 serve to show what has been accomplished in particular 
 lines, and by doing so suggest the great progress which 
 has been made in our knowledge in the Semitic field in 
 general, and ultimately its contribution to the great sea 
 of universal knowledge. 
 
 I wish that it might have been possible for me, in prep- 
 aration for this paper, to conduct with universities, colleges 
 and institutions of all sorts a correspondence similar to 
 that which I undertook in 1883 and in 1886, so as to present 
 to you a view of the facilities for work, and of the colleges 
 and universities which offer courses in Semi tics at present; 
 as also to name museums and universities which have 
 gathered collections of value; and to enumerate the ex- 
 plorations and excavations which have been conducted 
 in that period, and to give something of their results. 
 The progress in all these directions has been very great. 
 
 The student who would equip himself as a Semitic 
 specialist does not now need to cross the ocean, but can 
 obtain in general in every branch of Semitics, in a number 
 of institutions in this country, at least as good instruction 
 as in any institution abroad. He may also find here li- 
 braries and museums containing not only material for 
 practical training, but also material for original research, 
 sufficient to demand the services of more men than are at 
 present available for the work. In contrast with 1888, 
 we have now in this country an abundance of Semitic 
 scholars standing in the front rank in equipment and in 
 achievement, equal to the best on the other side; and even 
 in exploration and excavation our achievements in the 
 Semitic field in the last thirty years have fallen little, 
 if at all, below the best results achieved by others. In 
 
Thirty Years' Progress in Semitics 31 
 
 fact, the progress of the last thirty years in this country 
 in all branches of Semitics, has been enormous. 
 
 Babylonian Exploration 
 
 So far, I have dealt only with Semitic study in this 
 country. I am quite aware that my theme expresses no 
 such limitation, but I thought that I could best illuminate 
 the subject assigned to me, if indeed it be given me to 
 throw light upon it at all, by dwelling particularly on 
 those things of which I have knowledge, hoping that they 
 may illustrate the larger field. Let me, then, commence 
 with the expedition on which I was despatched in 1888. 
 
 At that time Assyrian-Babylonian exploration was at 
 a low ebb, and interest everywhere seemed to have been 
 lost. England had practically gone out of the field of 
 excavation, contenting herself, almost exclusively, with 
 buying such antiquities as were brought to London, dug 
 up by the illicit and destructive enterprise of Arabs. Ger- 
 many had gone to Babylonia and come out again, appar- 
 ently for good, after the brief expedition of Moritz and 
 Koldewey to Serghul and el-Hibbah, which produced such 
 insignificant results. France seemed to be growing weary. 
 It was understood that de Sarzec's campaign of 1888 
 would be his last; and indeed, at the end of that campaign, 
 work stopped at Tello for a considerable period. At that 
 time no discoveries of importance had been made for 
 many years, nor had anything of great interest been found 
 among the objects contained in the museums of England 
 and France. There was still an immense amount of 
 material in those museums, which was in process of study 
 and publication, but the interest which had been raised 
 to white heat by the earlier discoveries of Layard, Botta 
 and others, and by George Smith's later discovery of the 
 flood tablet in Ashurbanipal's library, had subsided, and 
 
32 Thirty Years of Oriental Studies 
 
 low Sunday had ensued. I have often called attentiona 
 to the curious coincidence that, when we were discovering 
 the antiquities of Sargon, his actual inscriptions, in Baby- 
 lonia, a distinguished Berlin Assyriologist was publishing 
 a work in which he proved Sargon to be a myth, and in 
 which Babylonian chronology was reduced to the same 
 sorry pass as that of the Bible in the hands of its critics. 
 We knew nothing, in fact, at that time, or almost nothing, 
 about early Babylonia. 
 
 I think that, without boasting, we may claim that the 
 University of Pennsylvania Expedition and its excavations 
 at Nippur aroused such interest as to open a new era in 
 the history of exploration. We have, I believe, every 
 reason to be proud of our own results, in themselves con- 
 sidered. I think it is literally true that we jumped the 
 history of Babylonia back 2000 years. The amount of 
 material for study resulting from that expedition was 
 very large, the publications resulting therefrom have given 
 Philadelphia a position of eminence, and both collections 
 and publications have made it a gathering place of Semitic 
 students. But even more, we have reason to be proud of 
 the effect of our expedition in reviving interest in first-hand 
 exploration and research. 
 
 The French resumed their work at Tello, under de Sarzec, 
 after whose death it was continued by Captain Gros. 
 The Germans came back to Babylonia and undertook 
 their peculiarly diligent, conscientious and persistent ex- 
 cavations, first of Babylon and then of Ashur, with results 
 not so great in the matter of inscribed remains as those of 
 our expedition or the older English and French expedi- 
 tions, but of the highest value for the reconstruction of 
 the culture, art and religion of the Babylon of Nebuchad- 
 rezzar, and of the history of the ancient Assyrian capital 
 and with it of Assyria itself. Indeed, their work set a 
 
Thirty Years' Progress in Semitics 33 
 
 new standard in Babylonian excavation. Even more 
 remarkable, while not literally in a Semitic field, yet in 
 its effect on Semitics, both for its methods and results, 
 was the work of deMorgan at Susa, including the famous 
 discovery in 1902 of the stele of Hammurapi. The numer- 
 ous publications of all these expeditions — our own, the 
 German, and the French — ^have created a new library 
 of Assyriology. 
 
 But, while we began this revival of Babylonian excava- 
 tion, it must be added in honesty that we Americans have 
 not prosecuted our work in Babylonia as faithfully as 
 either the Germans or the French. Like the English, 
 we have rather dropped out of the field of excavation. 
 Off and on our excavations at Nippur were conducted until 
 1900. After that, for the University of Chicago Dr. 
 Banks did a work at Bismya, which unfortunately was 
 brief, ending in disaster not only for his own expedition, 
 but to some extent for American expeditions in Babylonia 
 in general. Since the beginning of this century the work 
 of Babylonian excavation has been carried on by France 
 and Germany. 
 
 I regret to say that one result of our success in Babylonia 
 has been unfortunate. The illicit excavations of the Arabs 
 have greatly increased in later years, and the number of 
 objects brought to Europe and to this country as the result 
 of such digging has been enormous. It is these illicit 
 excavations, it is true, which have rendered possible some 
 of the collections of antiquities now existing in this country, 
 such as the valuable collection in New Haven, the Morgan 
 collection, and others, and the publications of those col- 
 lections have been extremely valuable in the Babylonian 
 field. Such collections are made, however, at enormous 
 ultimate cost. The objects found have, as a rule, no pedi- 
 gree or provenance. Material which would be of the first 
 
34 Thirty Years of Oriental Studies 
 
 importance in explaining them is destroyed in obtaining 
 them. All that is brought away by the Arabs is inscribed 
 objects, and of those a very large part is destroyed in the 
 operation of excavating. All architectural remains, the 
 pottery and sherds, and fragments of all sorts, which are 
 often of very great value from the archaeological stand- 
 point, are destroyed, and much more. The Arabs do not 
 understand the value of such objects, which only a trained 
 archaeologist would be likely to preserve and make tell 
 their story. I deplore the method which allows destruc- 
 tion of this description, feeling that in the end the results 
 obtained have been obtained at too great a price. 
 
 In 1888, thirty years ago, I endeavored to make some 
 arrangement with the great European museums by which 
 we could apply in the Turkish Empire, through common 
 consent, a method similar to that pursued in Egypt and 
 in Greece, and I believe that, could we have done so, we 
 could have fostered scientific exploration, the money now 
 used in the purchase of these antiquities, and much more 
 besides, being put into expeditions. By proper combina- 
 tion we could have excavated many more antiquities than 
 are now purchased, at a much lower price than that at 
 present paid, preserved vast treasures of antiquities, now 
 destroyed, and served many more centers with valuable 
 and more useful collections. I proposed to London, Paris 
 and Berlin that we should all refuse to purchase collec- 
 tions from the Arabs or their dealers, put our money into 
 excavations, and support one another and the Turkish 
 authorities in suppressing illicit digging. Sir Henry Raw- 
 linson heartily approved of my scheme, but the authorities 
 of the British Museum turned it down. Paris was polite 
 but evasive. Berlin approved, and would cooperate with 
 France and America, but not with England, because "it 
 could not be trusted." So our beautiful scheme fell 
 
Thirty Years' Progress in Semitics 35 
 
 through; and perforce we bought all the Babylonian an- 
 tiquities in sight, and helped to promote illicit digging 
 by sharing in its profits. 
 
 One result of Babylonian exploration and of the kindred 
 excavations of the Susian region in Persia has been the 
 discovery of immense quantities of non-Semitic remains, 
 Sumerian and Elamite. While these do not properly 
 belong in the field of Semitics, it is Semitic students who 
 have deciphered and interpreted them. Moreover, cul- 
 turally and from the point of view of religion they are so 
 closely related, to Semitic Babylonia and Assyria, that to 
 all intents and purposes they may be regarded as a section 
 of Semitics. It is since 1888, in these last thirty years, 
 that we have acquired practically all our knowledge re- 
 garding the earlier Babylonian period, both Semitic and 
 Sumerian. As I have already stated, at the time when, 
 at Nippur, we were excavating this early material, one 
 of the most distinguished German scholars in Berlin was 
 denying the existence of Sargon, and at that time we, in 
 fact, knew nothing of the whole earlier Babylonian civiliza- 
 tion and cult. Now the amount of material from the 
 second, third and fourth millenniums before the Christian 
 era, excavated and translated, is enormous, and we are 
 able to present a pretty fair picture of the history, religion 
 and civilization of Babylonia in those times, and a reason- 
 ably intelligible explanation of their relation to the later 
 civilization in the West, although much is still in dispute 
 or doubt. 
 
 Palestinian Exploration 
 
 The only other part of the Semitic world in which exca- 
 vations have been conducted during these last thirty years 
 is Palestine. Numerous discoveries, it is true, have been 
 made of Arabian inscriptions as the result of the explora- 
 
36 Thirty Years of Oriental Studies 
 
 tions of Doughty, Glaser and others, a few Aramaean 
 inscriptions have been found, chiefly by a happy chance, 
 as well as several Aramaean documents, and there has been 
 a considerable advance in the study of Aramaean dialects, 
 and in the publication of Aramaean material, but what 
 has been done in Arabian or Aramaean seems insignificant 
 in comparison with the results obtained during the last 
 thirty years, as a result of actual excavations in Baby- 
 lonia. From Ethiopia we have little or nothing during 
 our period ; and in none of these Semitic regions have any 
 excavations been conducted. 
 
 Excavations in Palestine commenced or recommenced 
 very shortly after the commencement of our excavations 
 in Babylonia. At the outset, in the 6o's and 70's, the 
 Palestine Exploration Fund had excavated in Jerusalem. 
 From that time until 1888 it confined itself to topography 
 and surface research. In 1888 it decided to resume exca- 
 vations, and applied for a firman, which was not issued 
 until 1890. It was in the spring of that year that it re- 
 sumed excavations, with Flinders Petrie's brief and bril- 
 liant scraping of Tel Hesy, the ancient Lachish. It was 
 on my return from a trip through Palestine, in the autumn 
 of 1890, that I met Dr. Frederick Bliss in the Lebanon. 
 I remember that he stood out on the road waiting for my 
 stage to descend the mountain, then joined me on the box 
 and accompanied me for a space to tell me of his appoint- 
 ment to conduct excavations in Palestine, and to make 
 arrangements with me for a conference as to sites, work 
 to be done, etc. Petrie's preliminary work at Lachish„ 
 as also the limitations of the firman, obliged him to com- 
 mence at Lachish, but he hoped to undertake other work later. 
 I submitted to the Palestine Exploration Fund at Bliss's 
 request a report on available sites for excavation, and 
 especially I strongly urged the excavation of Samaria» 
 
Thirty Years' Progress in Semitics 2)7 
 
 which was not in fact undertaken until later, and then 
 by Harvard University. Bliss commenced his excavations 
 at Tel Hesy in 1891, and from that date until the com- 
 mencement of the war, the Palestine Exploration Fund 
 conducted excavations almost continuously, following Tel 
 Hesy by the Jerusalem wall excavation, and that by the 
 excavations at tels Zacharieh, Jedudieh, es Safi, and Sanda- 
 hannah, all under Bliss. Then came Gezer, a five-year 
 work under MacAlister, the most extensive and elaborate 
 of all its excavations; and Ain Shems (Beth Shemesh) 
 under Mackenzie. During the latter part of the same 
 period, Sellin, for the Austrians, excavated at Jericho, 
 and at Taanach on the Esdraelon plain; and the Germans, 
 under Schumacher, excavated at Mutesellim or Megiddo. 
 The Germans very wisely coordinated all their work in 
 the near east, Egypt, Palestine and Assyria- Babylonia, 
 under one central organization, the Deutsche Orient- 
 Gesellschaft, whose frequent bulletins were a valuable 
 innovation in archaeological investigation. Harvard Uni- 
 versity excavated at Samaria; and finally a somewhat 
 mysterious English Expedition worked on the Temple 
 Hill and Ophel at Jerusalem. Almost all of these excava- 
 tions in Palestine were scientifically conducted and sci- 
 entifically published, the most elaborate and important 
 publication, as also the most complete excavation, being 
 that of Gezer by MacAlister, in three great volumes, in 
 addition to the quarterly reports published in the Journal 
 of the P. E. Fund, and a popular volume or two. 
 
 In proportion to the extent of territory involved and 
 the number of sites, excavations in Palestine in the last 
 thirty years have been very numerous, and they have also 
 been supported by a very considerable amount of surface 
 exploration of every sort, and by very extensive publica- 
 tion, in journals and reports special and general, and in 
 
38 Thirty Years of Oriental Studies 
 
 books of every kind, historical, artistic and archaeological, 
 social, naturalistic, religious, and racial. The output has 
 been enormous, and there are few countries that have 
 been so well surveyed, mapped, and written up as Palestine. 
 It must be confessed, however,that the results of the exca- 
 vations of the last thirty years in Palestine have been 
 disappointing. No first class discoveries have been made; 
 no large amount of objects of archaeological interest has 
 been discovered ; constructions have not been of importance, 
 while of inscribed objects almost none have been found. 
 The discoveries made have, on the whole, illuminated the 
 pre-Hebrew (Canaanite) and post-Hebrew (Greek and 
 Roman) periods, rather than the Hebrew-Jewish period, 
 in which the world is especially interested. As in Baby- 
 lonia, so here, only in a more marked degree and with 
 more fatal consequences, the scientific excavations con- 
 ducted in Palestine have resulted in the destruction of 
 antiquities by illicit digging. The whole population in 
 many places seems to have devoted itself to the search 
 for "antiques." Visiting the neighborhood of Tel Sanda- 
 hannah, I found that the natives had discovered the ne- 
 cropolis of Marissa. For a space of a mile or two the region 
 was like one huge rabbit warren ; and the illicit discoveries 
 of their diggings far exceeded in extent and importance 
 the discoveries of Bliss's expedition, but unfortunntely 
 90% of what they discovered had been destroyed or robbed 
 of its value. The destruction of antiquities wrought in 
 Palestine through the ages, but more particularly in these 
 last thirty years, is appalling. In view of this evident 
 destruction, and of the paucity of the material discovered 
 in excavations, one is inclined to ask whether excavation 
 in Palestine is likely ever to recover anything of great 
 value, especially for that most important Hebrew-Jewish 
 period. 
 
Thirty Years' Progress in Semitics 39 
 
 With a strange perversity thus far, such major discov- 
 eries as have been made have been the result, not of exca- 
 vation, but of chance, like the Moabite stone, found in 
 the 6o's, the Siloah inscription of the 8o's, and Clermont 
 Ganneau's discovery of the inscription of the Temple 
 barrier; and all these antedate our thirty years. 
 
 Some of the most important discoveries throwing light 
 on the history, culture, and religion of Palestine come 
 from without. Such are the historical references in the 
 annals of the Assyrian kings, the Flood tablet, and the 
 laws of Hammurapi, found in Assyria and Babylonia, 
 the first two discovered before, the last within our 30 
 years; and the discovery of Merneptah's Israelite inscrip- 
 tion in Egypt, which, like the discovery of all Egyptian 
 material bearing directly on Palestine, falls within our 
 period. 
 
 It was at the meeting of the Society of Biblical Litera- 
 ture and Exegesis at Haverford College on June 6 and 7, 
 1888, that I presented a paper in which I showed from 
 Jeremiah XXXII, that in the first part of the seventh 
 century B. C. the Jews were writing contracts on clay 
 tablets with envelopes, and burying them in the ground 
 in jars, and that the use of clay tablets for writing material 
 prevailed in Palestine up to that time. Hence I argued 
 that we had every reason to expect that, if excavations 
 could be conducted in Palestine, we should recover inscrip- 
 tions on clay tablets similar to those which had been found 
 in Babylonia, and that these would throw great light on 
 Hebrew history and religion. In that same year, the 
 discovery in Egypt of the Tel el Amarna tablets opened 
 a new page in the history of Palestine, a preface to the 
 story of the Hebrews. As a result. Bliss, MacAlister, 
 and others who excavated in Palestine expected to dis- 
 cover clay tablets, in which expectation all have, up to 
 
40 Thirty Years of Oriental Studies 
 
 the present, been almost entirely disappointed, only a 
 few such tablets, and those of small importance, having 
 been unearthed : one by Bliss at Tel Hesy, three by Selliri 
 at Taanach, all belonging to the same pre-Israelite period 
 as the Tel el Amarna tablets from Egypt, and one tablet 
 by MacAlister at Gezer, which was Assyrian and not 
 Babylonian. With the evidence which the Bible affords 
 of the use by the Hebrews until 700 B. C. of clay tablets 
 for writing material, why have we as yet found no tablets? 
 Are we likely to do so? 
 
 It was in Egypt again that the remarkable discoveries 
 of Aramaic Jewish papyri were made, at Elephantine or 
 Jeb, which have thrown valuable light on the latter end 
 of Hebrew history, the period after the Exile, and more 
 especially on the religious ideas of that period, and which 
 are also most important linguistically for the study of 
 Aramaic. This was, in fact, the most important Aramaic 
 find made during the last 30 years. The Princeton Expedi- 
 tion, which explored all northern and middle Syria, did, 
 in fact, bring back some Aramaic inscriptions, but as the 
 work of this Expedition was surface exploration, not 
 excavation, the great bulk of its results belongs to the 
 Graeco-Roman period. 
 
 Palestinian Institute 
 
 In his presidential address before the Society of Biblical 
 Literature and Exegesis in June, 1895, Professor J. H. 
 Thayer, of Harvard, proposed the establishment of a 
 School for Oriental Study and Research in Palestine. It 
 was five years, however, before, after many conferences 
 and meetings of committees, such a school was actually 
 established, in connection with the American Institute of 
 Archaeology, and Prof. C. C. Torrey, of Yale, sent to Jeru- 
 salem as its first director. The main object of this school 
 
Thirty Years' Progress in Semitics 41 
 
 was to enable properly qualified persons to prosecute 
 biblical, linguistic, archaeological, historical, and other 
 kindred studies and researches under more favorable con- 
 ditions than can be secured at a distance from the Holy 
 Land. Incidentally, as a part of its practical work and 
 as a school for students, so far as finances allowed, it was 
 itself to excavate and conduct explorations and research 
 of various sorts. In fact it was to do for Oriental work 
 in Semitic lands what the American School of Classical 
 Studies in Athens had done for Greek scholarship. Very 
 inadequately supported, the School at Jerusalem has had 
 a hard struggle in these years, and, nevertheless, it has 
 done a valuable work in training men for professorial 
 positions in our institutions at home, giving them a living 
 knowledge of the country and its problems, teaching the 
 spirit of the land, training up a body of men familiar with 
 the country, and by that familiarity more capable of 
 interpreting its literature. The outlook for the future is 
 encouraging. After these many years of struggle the 
 School has at last received from Dr. and Mrs. Nies a gift 
 which will enable it to erect a proper building. With 
 this equipment it is hoped that means may be provided 
 after the war to conduct the work of our Institute in Jeru- 
 salem as it should be conducted. 
 
 It has always seemed strange to me that it is so hard to 
 raise money for Palestine. There are quantities of Christ- 
 ians and Jews in the churches and in the synagogues, 
 men and women with large means, who have a very peculiar 
 interest in Palestine, and yet, while it has been possible 
 to raise great sums of money for exploration and excavation 
 in Egypt, Babylonia, Asia Minor, Greece, and elsewhere, 
 it has been almost impossible to raise money for similar 
 work in Palestine. The excavations and explorations 
 conducted there have always lacked equipment. Why 
 
42 Thirty Years of Oriental Studies 
 
 this should be so, I do not know. The result is, as already- 
 stated, that so far as antiquities are concerned, the situa- 
 tion in Palestine is really parlous. I have spoken of the 
 great destruction of antiquities in Babylonia by illicit 
 diggers, but the amount of material there is so very great 
 and the architectural and other remains relatively so in- 
 significant, that this destruction is not a calamity of the 
 same nature as the destruction of antiquities in Palestine. 
 When Dr. Thiersch and I entered the painted tombs of 
 Marissa, we found that the finest paintings on the walls 
 had been defaced by the barbarous and fanatical Arabs 
 who discovered them. Figures had been broken to pieces 
 and, in general, objects found had been destroyed or broken 
 up, with the exception of a very few things which the Arabs 
 thought would have a money value — glass vases, pottery 
 jars, lamps, gold leaf, and possibly beads and jewels. 
 Hundreds of graves had been opened in that immediate 
 neighborhood and rifled. In almost all cases the objects 
 found were destroyed. What is true of the neighborhood 
 of Beit Jibrin is true in general of the whole country. 
 The objects which the Arabs conceive to be of importance 
 and on which they can realize money are very few. The 
 graves themselves are completely ruined, and as antiquities 
 are relatively few in number in Palestine, there is great 
 danger that when we are able to conduct systematic and 
 thorough explorations we shall find that almost all the 
 material has been hopelessly destroyed. Under these 
 conditions it is of prime importance that we should have 
 on the spot men who can visit places where objects are 
 found, put themselves in touch with the natives, and both 
 secure information and prevent destruction of objects 
 found, as far as possible, until the time when some such 
 system can be introduced in Palestine as has been intro- 
 duced 'in Greece and in Egypt. 
 
Thirty Years' Progress in Semitics 43 
 
 We were the first to establish such a School of Research 
 at Jerusalem. The Germans soon followed us. The 
 French, through the Dominican Fathers, have also founded 
 the College of St. Stephen, which has done a valuable 
 work of careful and conscientious research in Palestine, 
 as well as of training students; and now the English are 
 proposing to establish a similar school. 
 
 Study of Religions 
 
 It was in December, 1891, that a group of fifteen persons 
 issued a circular letter inviting a conference in the Council 
 Chamber of the Historical Society of Philadelphia, for 
 the purpose of instituting popular courses in the history 
 of religions, somewhat after the style of the Hibbert lec- 
 tures in England, to be delivered annually in various cities 
 by the best scholars of Europe and of this country. It 
 was Semitic scholars in this country who originated this 
 scheme, and the Semitic scholars were entrusted with the 
 development of this work; and I think I may add that it 
 was especially a Semitic scholar in this city of Philadelphia 
 (Dr. Jastrow*) on whom the brunt of the work fell. Tech- 
 nically, the study of religions is not confined to Semitics. 
 Practically, it was due to the rather aggressive attitude 
 of Semitic scholars in this country, and particularly at 
 the University of Pennsylvania, that this work was under- 
 taken which has redounded to the benefit of the scientific 
 study of religions in general, and, of course, of the scientific 
 study of Semitic religions. This movement brought into 
 the colleges of this country a new discipline of the very 
 greatest value to scholarship and to culture, the compara- 
 tive study of the religions of the world, and that com- 
 parative study is rendering possible a new understanding 
 of all religions, including the Semitic religions. 
 
 * Member of the Oriental Club of Philadelphia. 
 
44 Thirty Years of Oriental Sttidies 
 
 I think that, without personal vanity — for while I was 
 formerly connected with the University of Pennsylvania, 
 I am so no longer, while I was a Philadelphian I am so no 
 longer, and while I was one of the founders of this Club 
 -and am still a member I have for long not been active in 
 its work or in its labors — I think I may say without sus- 
 picion of personal vanity or boasting that the city of 
 Philadelphia has played a very singular part in all these 
 developments in Semitics to which I have so far referred, 
 and this Club, which, thirty years ago, gathered together 
 the Oriental students in and about Philadelphia, has been 
 an extremely important factor in the work of bringing 
 Philadelphia and the University of Pennsylvania to the 
 very front in this whole movement, so that today in its 
 collections, and in the body of men who are gathered here 
 for Semitic study and research, the University of Penn- 
 sylvania occupies a most enviable position — indeed, I 
 think I may say safely the leading position in Semitic 
 study in this country, and the same is true with regard 
 to the comparative history of religion. I do not believe 
 that there is another university in the world which could 
 have produced the volume on Religions Past and Present, 
 published by members of the staff of the University of 
 Pennsylvania this year and edited by Prof. James A. 
 Montgomery. * 
 
 I do not wish to imply that it is this Oriental Club of 
 Philadelphia, or the University of Pennsylvania, or the 
 Babylonian Expedition, separately or combined, which 
 have produced the remarkable change which has taken 
 place in the field of Semitic study in the last thirty years, 
 but that separately and combined they have played a 
 very special part in producing a great change, particularly 
 
 * Member of the Oriental Club of Philadelphia. 
 
Thirty Years' Progress in Semitics 45 
 
 in this country. Thirty years ago, when this Club was 
 founded, in close touch with the University, and when the 
 University sent out the Babylonian Expedition, a move- 
 ment had just started, of which these agencies, by their 
 action at that psychological movement, became an in- 
 spiring element. 
 
 Publication 
 
 So far, I have been speaking in general of excavation,, 
 exploration, museums, and the organization of study and 
 research. As I turn from the consideration of these things 
 and look over my book-shelves, I am led to realize three 
 things, the very large output in the Semitic field in the 
 latter years, the vast advance in the scientific value of 
 that output, and the increasing proportion of works in 
 English and especially by Americans. My books of daily 
 use are practically entirely products of the last thirty years, 
 or, if they bear names of an earlier date, they have been 
 revised out of all resemblance to the original work. My 
 dictionary of Hebrew bears the title Gesenius, but it is 
 written in English, the work of a group of scholars of whom 
 Francis Brown was the head. If I wish to study some 
 book of the Old Testament, I turn by preference to a 
 commentary of the International Series, also in English, 
 still in process of publication, and in which Americans 
 play an equal part with English and German scholars. 
 
 Whereas, thirty years ago, both as a Bible scholar and 
 as a Semitic Orientalist, I was obliged to turn to German 
 encyclopaedias and Handbucher, today my shelves contaia 
 abundant encyclopaedias written and composed in English, 
 covering all branches and departments of Semitic learning. 
 Of these, the greater part, such as Cheyne's Encyclopaedia 
 Biblica, Hastings' longer and shorter Bible Dictionaries,. 
 and his Encyclopaedia of Religions are British, but contain 
 
46 Thirty Years of Oriental Studies 
 
 much material from American scholars. They one and 
 all are incomparably superior to anything in existence 
 thirty years ago in any language. In fact all such books 
 in existence when this Club was founded have been scrapped 
 long since. The importance which Semitic studies have 
 assumed in the latter years is made strikingly evident, 
 moreover, by the space given to Semitic topics in the last 
 edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, so that, with this 
 in his possession, the ordinary Semitic student may almost 
 dispense with other encyclopaedias. ^ A very fair portion 
 of these articles, be it observed, was written by Americans. 
 American in its inception is the Jewish Encyclopaedia, 
 which represents especially something to which I have 
 not heretofore referred, the development in this country 
 during the last thirty years of a really scientific Jewish 
 scholarship. 
 
 Turning to recent books, I find that those in English, 
 many of them by American scholars, stand fairly in the 
 front. But time and space will not permit me to run 
 over my library and name even en passant some of the 
 books of these latter years which have seemed to me of 
 special value. In this country, however, we are at a great 
 disadvantage in the publication of technical works and 
 journals, owing to the lack of printing facilities and to 
 the great expense of publication. To some extent this is 
 being remedied by the establishment of university presses, 
 but much remains to be done to put technical Semitic 
 publication in America on a plane with that in England 
 or France, not to speak of Germany. 
 
 I have referred to the scientific advance that has been 
 made since 1888, for at that time we were only beginning 
 a scientific study of Semitic linguistics. Indeed, I doubt 
 
 ' To a lesser extent this is true also of other Encyclopaedias, such as 
 the Americana and the Catholic, to mention two of American origin. 
 
Thirty Years' Progress in Semitics 47 
 
 whether we can yet say that we have placed Semitic 
 linguistics, or Semitics in general on a thoroughly scientific 
 basis, comparable, for instance, with the status of Indo- 
 European studies, especially in the Greek and Latin fields. 
 At least, however, Semitic scholars as we know them are 
 not quite so wild and lawless as they were before 1888, 
 and partly, I think, that is due to the increasing part which 
 we have taken in training scholars in that field. While 
 myself a student of two German universities, Berlin and 
 Leipzig, and an admirer of the great scientific achieve- 
 ments of German scholarship, I must own that in my own 
 department I found in the German system much that was 
 unsound. Rewards seemed to go to the men who could 
 put forth some new theory and defend it with the ingenuity 
 and technical skill with which a lawyer prepares his brief. 
 Young men were tempted and trained not to seek and find 
 the truth, but to propound and defend a theorem. On that 
 depended their advancement. The result was a lack of 
 sincerity, which seriously affected the value of their work. 
 
 Conclusion 
 
 Enough of this. I shall ask Dr. Jastrow, out of his 
 great kindness and knowledge, to add certain supplemental 
 material with bibliographical references. And in con- 
 clusion let me say, as when I read my original paper or 
 made my original remarks before the Oriental Club of 
 Philadelphia thirty years ago tonight, I saw as the result 
 of our impending expedition to Babylonia great possi- 
 bilities opening for Semitic study and research — so now, 
 half hidden in the shadow, half revealed by the light of 
 this great war, I see much vaster possibilities opening 
 out before the men of the next thirty years. 
 
DISCUSSION OF DR. PETERS* PAPER 
 
 By the Rev. Robert W. Rogers, A. M., Ph. D., LL. D., 
 
 D. D., LiTT. D., F. R. G. S., who was present at 
 
 the first meeting of the Club 
 
 I have listened with the greatest delight to this most 
 comprehensive and most interesting paper. Dr. Peters 
 has so thoroughly reaped that there are not even glean- 
 ings visible to my eyes. It is indeed barely possible that 
 even I, had I seen his paper in advance, might have dis- 
 covered somewhere a hidden fact which he has missed, 
 but I doubt it. We have, indeed, surveyed under his 
 skillful direction a panorama of light, life, and color, and 
 I cannot withhold the expression of a lively admiration. 
 Failing to add to the survey, let me prospect very briefly 
 concerning the future, as we are now vividly reminded of 
 a wonderful thirty years. I might begin with the personal 
 observation that, though I had been privately studying 
 Assyrian for some time. Dr. Peters was my first teacher, 
 in a summer school here in this dear city of my birth. I 
 hope he is not ashamed of that connection — ^with the re- 
 sults of it in my hands, I mean. I was young in those 
 days, full of enthusiasm, and not likely to be surprised 
 by any progress, however brilliant, in our chosen studies. 
 Then I entered joyfully into what seemed a promising 
 hope that colleges might more and more offer to ministerial 
 candidates opportunity for the study of the elements of 
 Hebrew, so that those who entered Theological Seminaries 
 might come prepared for real exegetical study. To this 
 hope. Dr. Peters also apparently yielded. I do not wish 
 this evening to give any blur to the splendid optimism 
 which his paper expressed; but I am bound to say that 
 experience has not justified the hope, and that the outlook 
 
 48 
 
Discussion of Dr. Peters' Paper 49 
 
 for our studies is by no means so bright as it was thirty 
 years ago. It is indeed true that a few colleges offered 
 the courses which our enthusiasm had desired and that 
 some students were thus brought forward. Much of this 
 was accomplished through the driving force of William 
 R. Harper, supreme among teachers in his day. The 
 gain thus achieved has unhappily been sadly offset by the 
 tremendous change recently begun and now in full course 
 in the Protestant Theological Seminaries. One after 
 another, among them even some of the greatest, has 
 ceased making Hebrew a required study. Wherever that 
 has been done, the numbers who pursue it drop off, sud- 
 denly in some instances, slowly in others, but in all cases 
 to a considerable extent; and in at least a few, the study 
 of Hebrew has practically ceased. I pass over the con- 
 sequences of this as affecting biblical studies, and call 
 very earnestly to your attention the influence of this upon 
 all Semitic studies. Hebrew is the gateway to them all. 
 He who would study Arabic or Assyrian, or indeed any 
 other language in the group, speedily finds that scientific 
 grammars in every one presuppose a knowledge of Hebrew. 
 Further than that, recruits to these, our studies, have 
 always come from students of Hebrew. Whence, I ask 
 you, are the future students of these languages to be de- 
 rived, if there are to be no students of Hebrew in these 
 Seminaries? This is no idle question. We need a new 
 Harper to reawaken the slumbering enthusiasm, to con- 
 vince the hesitant that Hebrew is not difficult but easy, 
 to arouse afresh a determination to begin Hebrew and 
 have a try at its advantages. I tell you now that if no 
 way be found to accomplish this, the record of the next 
 thirty years will be far less splendid than that of the last, 
 so brilliantly here portrayed this happy evening by a 
 distinguished founder and member of this Club. 
 
SUPPLEMENTARY ACCOUNT OF 
 
 THIRTY YEARS' PROGRESS 
 
 IN SEMITIC STUDIES, AND 
 
 DISCUSSION OF DR. 
 
 PETERS' PAPER 
 
 By Prof. Morris Jastrow, Jr., Ph. D., LL. D., who was 
 present at the first meeting of the Club 
 
 Dr. Peters' admirable survey of the progress of Semitic 
 Studies during the past thirty years unrolls a picture of 
 steady activity. He has done well to lay the chief em- 
 phasis on archaeology and excavations, for Semitic studies, 
 like Egyptian and classical studies, have moved largely 
 under the sign of the spade since the closing decades of 
 the 19th century. Excavations in Eastern lands, like 
 those in Italy and Greece, have afforded a new outlook 
 on ancient civilizations. Our horizon both of space and 
 of time has been enlarged, and the stimulus has been 
 felt in all the divisions and subdivisions of Semitic re- 
 search: not least in the domain of Old Testament investi- 
 gations. We have passed during the past decades from 
 textual criticism and the analysis of sources to a deeper 
 penetration into the meaning of the movements that dom- 
 inate Hebrew history, and that found their temporary 
 culmination in the commingling of Hebrew and Greek 
 culture through the rise of Christianity. Such works as 
 Robertson Smith's profound study of the Religion of the 
 Semites, followed some twenty years later by G. A. Bar- 
 ton's* Semitic Origins (1902), Benzinger's Hebrdische 
 
 * Member of the Oriental Club of Philadelphia. 
 
 50 
 
Supplementary Account of Thirty Years' Progress 51 
 
 Archaologie (1899), Sir George Adam Smith's Historical 
 Geography of Palestine (1894), Hermann Gunkel's Schopfung 
 und Chaos (1895), Hugo Gressmann's Ursprung der israe- 
 litischen-jiidischen Eschatologie {igo5),sind the same author's 
 brilliant and significant Mose und seine Zeit (striking out 
 along new lines), R. H. Charles' Hebrew, Jewish and Christ- 
 ian Eschatology (1899), C. H. Toy's Judaism and Christi- 
 anity (1890), L. B. Paton's Early History of Syria and 
 Palestine (1901), S. I. Curtiss' Primitive Semitic Religion 
 Today (1902), R. W. Rogers'* Cuneiform Parallels to the 
 Old Testament (1912), W. F. Bade's Old Testament in the 
 Light of Today (19 15), to which I may be permitted to 
 add my Hebrew and Babylonian Traditions (1914), illus- 
 trate both the trend of researches made possible through 
 the results of excavations and distinctively archaeological 
 investigations, and the entirely new problems suggested 
 through the unearthing of the remarkable remains of 
 ancient civilizations in Mesopotamia, Palestine, Asia 
 Minor and Egypt. It will not seem invidious further to 
 single out of the mass of scholarly productions during 
 recent years Dr. Peters'* Religion of the Hebrews (1914), 
 which combines, in a happy way, critical method with a 
 sympathetic utilization of the new settings for the evolution 
 of religious thought among the Hebrews, obtained through 
 the clarification of the political and social relations of the 
 Hebrews to the nations around, and more particularly 
 to the two dominating civilizations of early antiquity — 
 Egypt and Babylonia. Dr. Peters has referred to such 
 large undertakings during the past thirty years as Hastings' 
 Dictionary of the Bible, the Encyclopaedia BibUca and the 
 International Critical Commentary, in which American 
 scholars have taken a prominent part; and to these there 
 should be added Professor Paul Haupt's* critical edition 
 
 *Meinber of the Oriental Club cf Philadelphia. 
 
52 Thirty Years oj Oriental Studies 
 
 of The Sacred Books of the Old Testament (Hebrew text 
 and English translation), which, although not completed, 
 yet covers a large part of the field. Besides its special 
 feature, the distinguishing of sources by means of colors, 
 it utilizes largely in the illustrative notes the results of 
 archaeological discoveries. 
 
 In the domain of Arabic studies, the last three decades 
 have witnessed the publication of a large number of Arabic 
 authors — historians, geographers, philosophers, poets and 
 theologians, in editions prepared by European and Amer- 
 ican scholars, among whom De Goeje, William Wright, 
 D. H. Miiller, Julius Wellhausen, Ignaz Goldziher, Hartwig 
 Derenbourg, Barbier de Maynard, Ignazio Guidi, D. S. 
 Margoliouth, R. A. Nicholson, and J. R. Jewett may 
 be singled out. Of expeditions in Arabic lands, apart 
 from those in Southern Arabia by Hal6vy and Glaser, 
 and the one under the auspices of the Vienna Academy, 
 the Princeton Expedition to Syria, and the one to Petraea 
 and surrounding districts, organized through the energy 
 and the munificence of an American scholar, the late 
 Prof. Rudolf E. Brunnow, stand forth prominently. The 
 three volumes issued by Prof. Brunnow and his associates, 
 under the title of Provincia Arabia (1904-09), are a noble 
 monument to the scientific devotion and vast learning 
 of one whose career was cut short by domestic sorrow, 
 which brought him also to an early grave. 
 
 Of larger and more general interest is the progress made 
 in the study of Mohammedanism during the past decades, 
 in which it is gratifying to note the share taken by such 
 American scholars as D. B. Macdonald, C. C. Torrey, 
 R. J. H. Gottheil, William Popper, W. H. Worrell and 
 Hugo Sprengling. Through the American Committee for 
 Lectures on the History of Religions, to whose activity 
 Dr. Peters has made a reference, we had the privilege of 
 
Supplementary Account of Thirty Years' Progress 53 
 
 bringing to this country the leading authority on present- 
 day Mohammedanism in the person of Professor C. Snouck 
 Hurgronje, of the University of Leiden, who enjoys the 
 unique distinction of having spent a longer time in Mecca — 
 the sacred center of Mohammedanism — than any other 
 European. His great work on Mekka, issued in 1888, 
 marks a point of departure for Mohammedan studies. 
 By virtue of its detailed description of the sacred city, 
 its various quarters, the organization of the Hadj or "pil- 
 grimage," as well as by the utilization of hitherto unknown 
 sources for the study of the history of Mecca, Professor 
 Snouck Hurgronje's publication takes its place as a stand- 
 ard work that will retain that rank for many generations 
 to come — perhaps for all time. The course of lectures 
 on Mohammedanism delivered by him before leading 
 universities and other institutions in this country and 
 subsequently published by the American Committee, 
 represents in summary form the present-day knowledge 
 of the origin and general aspects of the religion which, 
 thirteen hundred years after the death of its founder, 
 dominates the lives of some 240 million adherents scat- 
 tered throughout the near and the far East. 
 
 Besides the various well-known contributions to the 
 study of the Koran and of Mohammedanism by Theodor 
 Noldeke, the prince and Nestor of Semitists, still active 
 at the advanced age of 82, the admirable works of Well- 
 hausen, Reste Arabischen Heidenthums, and of Ignaz Gold- 
 ziher, Muhammedanische Studien (1889-90) and Vorlesungen 
 aber den Islam (1910), and D. S. Margouliouth's Moham- 
 med and the Rise of Islam (1905) and Early Development 
 of Mohammedanism (1914) call for mention even in the 
 briefest kind of bibliography of Islamic researches, while 
 T. W. Arnold's Preaching of Islam (new edition issued in 
 1913) contains a wealth of reliable material illustrative 
 
54 Thirty Years of Oriental Studies 
 
 of the spread of Islam through Eastern lands. The monu- 
 mental work of Caetani, Annali d' Islam, is the most com- 
 plete collection of sources for the study of the religion, 
 indispensable to every student and illuminated by most 
 suggestive discussions of the material thus laboriously 
 gathered. Lastly, the Encyclopaedia of Islam, an inter- 
 national undertaking issued in English, French and Ger- 
 man, under the general editorship of Professor Th. Houtsma, 
 stands out as a landmark of Arabic and Mohammedan 
 studies which aims to make accessible the vast material 
 that has engaged the activities of scholars since Eduard 
 Pococke in the 17th century laid the foundations for the 
 science of Arabic philology and of Arabic antiquities, 
 foundations which, a century later, led to the new impulse 
 given to Arabic studies by the great Silvestre de Sacy 
 in France and by the latter 's pupil, Heinrich Leberecht 
 Fleischer, in Germany. In the domain of Syria and 
 Ethiopia, the activity of the past thirty years has pro- 
 duced chiefly text editions. The great Syriac Dictionary 
 by R. Payne Smith (i 868-1903) is perhaps the largest single 
 achievement in the field of Syriac, followed by smaller 
 lexicons by Brockelmann (1895) and Maclean (1901), and 
 Mrs. D. S. Margoliouth, the daughter of Payne Smith 
 (1903). The great Ethiopic scholar, August Dillmann, to 
 whom we owe the standard Ethiopic Grammar and Dic- 
 tionary, as well as the edition of the Ethiopic Octateuch, 
 passed away in 1894. Since his day, a second edition of 
 the grammar was issued by Carl Bezold (1899), while 
 the name of Franz Pastorius stands out as the most active 
 investigator of Ethiopic philosophy and of the modern 
 Abyssinian dialects — ^Amharic and Tigrina. 
 
 Within the past thirty years, Egyptian has been brought 
 within the field of Semitic studies through the growing 
 recognition of the Semitic elements in Egyptian, which, 
 
Supplementary Account of Thirty Years' Progress 55 
 
 first established in a scientific manner by Adolf Erman 
 (since the death of Gaston Maspero in 1916, the leading 
 Egyptologist of the day), has been advanced largely through 
 the work of an American scholar, Aaron Ember, of the 
 Johns Hopkins University. It is only fair to add, how- 
 ever, that Ember's enthusiasm has carried him beyond 
 the bounds recognized by the majority of Egyptologists 
 as capable of enduring the critical test. The discovery 
 and publication of the pyramid texts by Maspero served 
 to place the study of Egyptian grammar on a surer basis, 
 which found its expression in Erman 's Egyptian Grammar, 
 published in 1894 (3rd edition, 191 1). A vast collection 
 of Egyptian lexicography was undertaken under the 
 leadership of the same Erman and his pupils of the so- 
 called Berlin School of Egyptology, and it is gratifying 
 to note the prominent part taken in this work by an Amer- 
 ican scholar, James Henry Breasted, of the University of 
 Chicago, who, through his translation of the Ancient 
 Records of Egypt (five volumes, 1906), and his standard 
 History of Egypt (1905; 2nd edition, 1911), has gained a 
 rank among the foremost Egyptologists of the day. Nor 
 should mention be omitted of Breasted 's Ancient Times 
 (1916), which, though issued as a text-book for high schools 
 and colleges, enjoys the distinction of being the best com- 
 pendium of the entire domain of ancient history in any 
 language. By the side of Breasted 's work, the unre- 
 mitting activity of W. Max Miiller,* settled in Philadelphia 
 since 1888, has resulted in a great advance, chiefly in the 
 domain of Egyptian archaeology and of the religion of 
 Egypt. Under the auspices of the Carnegie Institute, 
 Dr. Miiller made two prolonged trips to study the monu- 
 ments and remains of Egypt, the results of which are 
 
 * Former member of the Oriental Club of Philadelphia. 
 
56 Thirty Years of Oriental Studies 
 
 embodied in two volumes issued by the Institute under 
 the title of Egyptological Researches (1906-1910). In 
 addition to his Asien und Europa (1893), a collection and 
 discussion of the geographical material found on Egyptian 
 monuments bearing on Asia and Europe, which is still 
 the standard work on the subject, Dr. Miiller has just 
 issued his "Egyptian Religion" as a volume in the splendid 
 series, The Mythology of All Races, edited by Louis H. 
 Gray. This work, the result of a life-long study, contains 
 many new viewpoints which will necessitate a reconsidera- 
 tion of opinions currently held regarding the unfolding 
 of religious thought among the ancient Egyptians. The 
 past thirty years has witnessed the stupendous work done 
 by the Egypt Exploration Fund at various sites, chiefly 
 by Flinders Petrie, Eduard Naville, and W. L. Grififith, 
 followed by the activities of the German Orient Society, 
 the leading figure in which has been L. Bouchardt. The 
 individual excavations of Theodore Davis in Egypt, and 
 the work done by Dr. G. Reisner under the auspices of 
 the Hearst Expedition of the University of California 
 and of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, together with 
 the work done under the auspices of the Metropolitan 
 Museum of New York and by the Eckley B. Coxe* Expedi- 
 tion under the auspices of the Museum of the University 
 of Pennsylvania, illustrate the large share taken by this 
 country in the recovery of the lost tale of the great civiliza- 
 tions that flourished for several millenniums in the valley 
 of the Nile. 
 
 Though Hittite studies do not fall within the Semitic 
 field, yet because of the close relationship of the history of 
 Asia Minor to movements among Semites, a word should 
 be said of the remarkable activity during the past thirty 
 
 * Member of the Oriental Club of Philadelphia until his death in 19 17. 
 
Supplementary Account of Thirty Years' Progress 57 
 
 years in researches among the remains of the Hittite 
 civilization, which at one time covered a considerable 
 portion of Asia Minor. The explorations of Texier and 
 Chantre, followed by the researches of Hirschfeld, Humann, 
 Puchstein, and Perrot, and the more recent excavations 
 of Winckler at Bhogaz-Keui, under the auspices of the 
 German Orient Society, of Hogarth and Woolley* at Car- 
 chemisch, and of von Luschan at Sendscherli (revealing 
 strong influences of Hittite art in northern Syria), to which 
 is to be added the Cornell Expedition to Asia Minor under 
 the leadership of the late Professor J. R. Sterrett, have 
 revealed to the astonishment of the scholarly world the 
 extent and significance of Hittite settlements that carry 
 us back to the second millennium before the Christian 
 era. Contrasting Wright's Empire of the Hittites, which, 
 published in 1884, summarized all that we knew at that 
 time, with John Garstang's splendid survey of the entire 
 subject in his Land of the Hittites, issued in 1910, and 
 Eduard Meyer's Reich und Kultur der Chetiter, in 1914, 
 one can gain an idea of the immense progress made chiefly 
 during the past three decades. We now know that the 
 Hittites, by their control of the highways across Asia 
 Minor, were the great menace to the two leading civiliza- 
 tions of antiquity, to Egypt on the one side, and to Baby- 
 lonia-Assyria on the other, and that the history of these 
 civilizations is closely entwined in their relations to the 
 centers of power established at various times by Hittite 
 groups in northern, central, and southern Asia Minor. 
 Old Testament records are likewise illuminated by these 
 researches among the Hittites, who, at an early date, 
 passed far into southern Palestine. Through the discovery 
 of thousands of cuneiform tablets written in the Hittite 
 
 *Former member of the Oriental Club of Philadelphia. 
 
58 Thirty Years oj Oriental Sttulies 
 
 language, the key to the decipherment of the hieroglyphic 
 script on Hittite monuments has at last been discovered. 
 But for the war, which has interrupted scientific work as 
 well as international scientific relations, we should by this 
 time be in a position actually to read and understand the 
 contents of the inscriptions. As it is, a distinct advance 
 has been made through the definite determination of the 
 Hittite language as belonging to the Indo-European group. 
 This result has been established by an Austrian scholar, 
 Friedrich Hrozny (19 16), on the basis of remarkable poly- 
 glot vocabularies in Hittite, Sumerian and Babylonian 
 among the cuneiform tablets found at Boghaz-Keui, one 
 of the great centers of Hittite power in the second millen- 
 nium before this era. 
 
 In the field of Semitic Epigraphy, considerable progress 
 has been made during the last thirty years. The great 
 Corpus Inscriptionum Semiticarum of the French Acad^mie 
 des inscriptions et belles lettres, the inception of which 
 was due largely to Ernest Renan, has been brought to a 
 temporary close. Its three series — Phoenician, Aramaic, 
 and South Arabic — comprising upwards of twelve volumes, 
 have placed the study of Phoenician, Aramaic, and Himy- 
 aritic inscriptions on a solid basis. It is again gratifying 
 to note that by the side of Lidzbarski and Littmann* in 
 Europe, American scholars like C. C. Torrey and J. A. 
 Montgomery* have taken a prominent share in the work 
 of the past decades, and have made most important con- 
 tributions. 
 
 Nor should we omit to mention the activity, during" 
 the past thirty years, in the field of Rabbinical and 
 later Jewish Literature, which constitutes an important 
 
 * Former member of the Oriental Club of Philadelphia. 
 * Member of the Oriental Club of Philadelphia. 
 
Supplementary Account of Thirty Years' Progress 59 
 
 division of Semitic studies. A high order of scholar- 
 ship has always been emphasized by the Jewish theo- 
 logical seminaries of Europe and of this country in the 
 training of ministers. Largely through the influence of 
 these institutions, much scholarly work has been done 
 in the form of critical editions of portions of the Talmud 
 and of the large Midrashic (or homiletical) and philosophical 
 literature of the Jews, in the appearance of scholarly 
 works dealing with the history of the Jews, as well as in 
 numerous monographs, giving the results of minute in- 
 vestigations on special points. On the faculties of the 
 two large Jewish seminaries in this country — the Hebrew 
 Union College in Cincinnati and the Jewish Theological 
 Seminary in New York — are to be found some of the most 
 distinguished Jewish scholars of the day. Through the 
 late Solomon Schechter (1847-1915), who came to this 
 country in 1901 to take the presidency of the New York 
 institution, a fresh impetus was given to productive Jewish 
 scholarship in this country. Dr. Schechter's several vol- 
 umes of studies in Judaism and Rabbinical Theology 
 have helped also to make the large realm of Rabbinical 
 and Jewish Literature more accessible to the general public. 
 I may be permitted to refer also, as an indication of prog- 
 ress in this field, to the Talmud Dictionary of my father, 
 the late Marcus Jastrow* (completed just before his death 
 in 1903), which was the first of the kind in English and 
 on which he spent thirty years of his life. The founding 
 of Dropsie College in this city in 1907, through the munifi- 
 cent bequest of Moses A. Dropsie, for the specific purpose 
 of creating a center of advanced Jewish scholarship, may 
 be instanced as another token of the share taken by 
 this country in the progress signalled during the past 
 
 ♦Member of the Oriental Club of Philadelphia. 
 
6o Thirty Years of Oriental Studies 
 
 decades. The Dropsie College has begun a series of 
 publications, embodying the researches done by those 
 connected with the institution. Under the auspices of 
 this college there is now issued the Jewish Quarterly Review, 
 originally published in England (1889-1909) under the 
 editorship of Claude G. Montefiore and Israel Abrahams, 
 and transferred to this country in 1910, and now edited 
 by Cyrus Adler.* The Review takes rank with the Revue 
 des etudes juives, issued in Paris by the Soci6t6 des Etudes 
 juives, and with the Monatschrift fiir die Geschichte und 
 Wissenschaft des Judenthums, founded in 1852 and edited 
 by the great Jewish historian, Heinrich Gratz, from 1854 
 to his death in 1891. 
 
 Dr. Peters* has outlined the course of excavations in 
 Babylonian and Assyrian mounds during the past thirty 
 years, and it is perhaps hardly necessary to emphasize 
 the vast amount of scholarly work that has been done, 
 chiefly in Germany, England, France, and this country, 
 in utilizing the material brought to light by the various 
 expeditions. To Friedrich Delitzsch, now of the Uni- 
 versity of Berlin, belongs the distinction of having created 
 the first school of Assyriology. To him we owe the first 
 substantial Assyrian Grammar (issued in 1889) and Dic- 
 tionary, not to speak of his Assyrische Lesestucke, still the 
 indispensable handbook for beginning Assyrian, as is 
 attested by the five editions of the work. He has been 
 the teacher of most of the Assyriologists of the present 
 day, and through his pupils, Paul Haupt* and D. G. Lyon, 
 the young science was brought to this country. 
 
 In conjunction with Haupt, Delitzsch founded the 
 Assyriologische Bibliothek, which embraces at present 23 
 stately volumes of important texts, for the greater part 
 
 ♦Member of the Oriental Club of Philadelphia. 
 
Supplementary Account of Thirty Years' Progress 6r 
 
 edited by pupils of Delitzsch. A special Journal of As- 
 syriology was established by another pupil, Carl Bezold^ 
 of the University of Heidelberg, and is now in its 32nd 
 volume. Delitzsch and Haupt also established, in 1890,. 
 the Beitrage zur Assyriologie, for larger articles and mono- 
 graphs on special points. The great center for the publi- 
 cation of cuneiform texts has, however, been at all times 
 the British Museum, which, during the past decades, has 
 followed its earlier series of five volumes (1861-1884) of 
 Miscellaneous Inscriptions of Western Asia by a second 
 one, begun in 1896 and numbering up to the present 34 
 volumes, under the general title of Cuneiform Texts from 
 Babylonian Tablets, etc., in the British Museum. Next to 
 this great corpus, we have the 13 volumes of texts issued 
 by the West Asiatic section of the Berlin Museum, and 
 the 29 volumes of the German Orient Society, containing 
 both texts and elaborate investigations. In France, 
 Francis Thureau-Dangin and Vincent Scheil have been 
 the leading scholars through whose activity the rich mate- 
 rial in the Louvre Museum has been made accessible, 
 while to another French scholar, Charles Virolleaud, we 
 owe the most elaborate publication of the astrological 
 material found in the mounds. France has two journals 
 devoted especially to Assyriology, the Revue d' assyriologie, 
 founded in 1884, now edited by Thureau-Dangin and 
 Scheil, and Babyloniaca, founded in 1906, and edited by 
 Virolleaud with the collaboration of Stephen Langdon, 
 while the Recueil des travaux relatifs d, la philologie et l' 
 archSologie Sgyptiennes et assyriennes, founded in 187a 
 by Maspero, and edited by him until his death in 1916, 
 contains many Assyriological articles, chiefly by Scheil. 
 It is through Thureau-Dangin likewise that the study 
 of Sumerian, so inextricably bound up with Assyriology, 
 has been placed on a scientific basis. His solid work. 
 
62 Thirty Years of Oriental Studies 
 
 following upon the pioneer efforts of Arthur Amiaud, 
 another French scholar whose early demise was a serious 
 loss to science, and of Peter Jensen and Heinrich Zimmern 
 in Germany, made possible the Sumerian Grammar and 
 the Sumerian Glossary published a few years ago by De- 
 litzsch. While Sumerian texts still present great diffi- 
 culties, we are no longer obliged to grope in the dark as 
 was the case till ten years ago. Mention should be made 
 of the valuable contributions to our knowledge of the 
 grammatical structure of the language and to our inter- 
 pretation of Sumerian texts by Dr. Arno Poebel, for a 
 number of years connected with the University of Penn- 
 sylvania, and by Professor G. A. Barton,* of Bryn Mawr 
 College, one of the most productive of American Oriental- 
 ists, whose range of activity is as remarkable as the depth 
 of his learning in several fields of Semitic research. In 
 England, A. H. Sayce, L. W. King, T. G. Pinches, C. H. W. 
 Johns, and C. W. Ball have been the chief workers during 
 the past three decades; and they have recently been joined 
 by Stephen Langdon, born in this country, but now at- 
 tached to the University of Oxford. The Nippur expedi- 
 tion of the University of Pennsylvania, the inception of 
 which was due to Dr. Peters,* gave a fresh stimulus to 
 the study of Assyriology in this country. The many 
 volumes of texts issued by the Museum of the University 
 of Pennsylvania represent the most notable contribution 
 as yet made to the science by American scholarship. Ad- 
 ditional centers for the study of Assyriology have arisen 
 at Chicago and more recently at Yale. The work at 
 Chicago will always be connected with the memory of 
 R. F. Harper (a pupil of Delitzsch), whose monument 
 is formed by the fourteen volumes (1892-1914) of Assyrian 
 
 * Member of the Oriental Club of Philadelphia. 
 
Supplementary Account of Thirty Years' Progress 63 
 
 o.nd Babylonian Letters in the British Museum collection, 
 issued by him. Harper's activity is continued by I. M. 
 Price (another pupil of Delitzsch) and D. D. Luckenbill, 
 and by their pupils. 
 
 The establishment of a special chair of Assyriology at 
 Yale in 1910, through the munificence of J. P. Morgan, 
 may be said to inaugurate the latest epoch in the history 
 of the science in this country. It is due to the remarkable 
 energy and scholarly activity of the incumbent of that 
 chair. Professor A. T. Clay,* who received his training, at 
 the University of Pennsylvania, with which institution 
 he was for many years connected, that Yale now has 
 become the most active center of Assyriology in this coun- 
 try, with a splendid collection of over 10,000 unpublished 
 tablets. Professor Clay has established a genuine Amer- 
 ican school of Assyriology, training pupils to edit cuneiform 
 texts in the model manner of which he is the conspicuous 
 example. Two series of volumes have been established 
 by him at Yale University, one for the publication of 
 texts, and the other for Assyriological researches. Pro- 
 fessor Clay has also projected a series of volumes to con- 
 tain transliterations and translations into English of all 
 the important Babylonian, Assyrian and Sumerian texts. 
 He has secured for this large undertaking the cooperation 
 of practically all the Assyriologists and Sumerologists of 
 this country. The project is the largest of the kind as 
 yet mapped out in the domain of Assyriology, and if suc- 
 cessfully carried out will go far towards establishing the 
 permanent rank of the United States as a great center of 
 Assyriological research. Another project on which an 
 American Assyriologist, Dr. W. Muss-Arnolt, of the 
 Boston Public Library, is engaged, is the issue of a revised 
 
 "Member of the Oriental Club of Philadelphia. 
 
64 Thirty Years of Oriental Studies 
 
 edition of his Assyrian Dictionary, which, since its publi- 
 cation in 1905, has maintained its position as the best and 
 most complete compilation of the vast lexicographical 
 material found in the cuneiform inscriptions. It is ex- 
 pected that in this work of gathering the new material 
 that has been added during the past decades, Dr. Muss- 
 Arnolt will be able also to secure the cooperation of his 
 fellow- American Assyriologists. 
 
 A survey of progress in Semitic studies in this country 
 would be incomplete without a tribute to such pioneers 
 as Professor C. H. Toy, of Harvard University, happily 
 still with us, and to Wm. Hayes Ward and Francis Brown, 
 who have recently passed away. Professor Toy's con- 
 tributions, particularly in the domain of the Old Testa- 
 ment and of Semitic religions, were the first to secure for 
 American scholarship in the field of Semitics the rank 
 which the labors of William Dwight Whitney obtained 
 for American contributions to Sanskrit and Comparative 
 Philology. Dr. Ward produced, as the consummation of 
 his life-work, the standard collection and investigation of 
 Seal Cylinders of Western Asia, published in 1910 by the 
 Carnegie Institute, while the name of Francis Brown 
 will always be associated with the production of the stand- 
 ard Hebrew Lexicon, in the preparation of which he had 
 the lion's share. Completed in 1906, after many years 
 of unremitting labor, the lexicon stands out as perhaps 
 on the whole the most important contribution of American 
 scholarship in the domain of Semitic philology. 
 
 And now, in conclusion, some remarks as to the outlook 
 for the future of Semitic studies in this country. While 
 the increased share taken by American scholarship in the 
 field both of Semitics and of Indology during the past 
 
Supplementary Account of Thirty Years' Progress 65 
 
 thirty years is most gratifying, there is one aspect of thie 
 situation which calls for serious reflection. Professor 
 Rogers* has borne testimony out of the abundance of his 
 experience, to the decline in the study of Hebrew at the 
 Seminaries, and Professor Hopkins* to the discouraging 
 outlook for Sanskrit studies through the decline in the 
 study of Greek at our colleges. Without Hebrew as a 
 basis for Semitic studies, and without Greek as the stim- 
 ulus to pass on to Sanskrit and Comparative Philology, 
 where are we to look for the recruits to be trained to con- 
 tinue the activities of the present generation of Orientalists? 
 What, one wonders, will be the record during the next 
 thirty years? Will there be an Oriental Club to celebrate 
 its sixtieth anniversary? It is not an agreeable task to 
 strike a pessimistic note at this noteworthy gathering 
 devoted to recounting the activities that have made the 
 history of the group of men who have come together 
 monthly for almost a generation such an interesting recital, 
 but we must face a situation that becomes serious in the 
 light of the lack of encouragement given to historical and 
 philological research at our universities. I am not so 
 sure that the decline in the study of Greek and of Hebrew 
 is not the result of the failure of our American universities 
 to keep pace with the progress of Semitic and Indological 
 research ; and by failure I mean that while there is scarcely 
 a European university, if indeed any, in which Sanskrit 
 and Semitic studies are not represented by special chairs, 
 the number of American Universities to provide for these 
 subjects is disappointingly small. The general and popular 
 interest in the important and fascinating result of studies 
 in these fields has grown, and indeed to a remarkable 
 extent, in this country; but this has been due to the energy 
 
 ♦Member of the Oriental Club of Philadelphia. 
 
66 Thirty Years of Oriental Studies 
 
 and enthusiasm of a small band of scholars, some of whom 
 have been obliged to carry on their favorite studies as an 
 avocation rather than as a vocation. Many have earned 
 their livelihood through other means, at an expenditure 
 of time that might have been turned to greater advantage 
 if it could have been added to the hours of leisure snatched 
 for carrying on historical and philological studies. Even 
 Prof. Whitney had to teach German and French at Yale 
 for many years, while carrying on his important researches 
 in Sanskrit. Fifty years ago, to be sure, there were no 
 chairs for Semitics and for Sanskrit at any of our univer- 
 sities. The movement for higher research begins with 
 the foundation of the Johns Hopkins University in 1876. 
 The memory of its first President, Daniel C. Gilman, 
 should be kept enshrined in the hearts of all who are de- 
 voted to pure research, for it was the high standard set 
 by him in choosing the men to constitute the faculty 
 of the institution, which marked a new departure in higher 
 education in this country, leading in time to the formation 
 of graduate schools at our leading universities. Chairs 
 for Semitic Languages and for Sanskrit and Comparative 
 Philology formed part of the equipment of Johns Hopkins 
 from the outset. Since then, provisions for these disciplines 
 have been made at Yale, Harvard, Columbia, the Univer- 
 sity of Pennsylvania, Cornell, Chicago, and at the Uni- 
 versities of Michigan, of California, and of Wisconsin, 
 though it will hardly be maintained that the provision 
 is adequate at all these institutions; and these are a mere 
 handful compared with the total number of universities 
 scattered throughout this great country. It is a distinct 
 sign of discouragement, that in the case of new foundations, 
 like Clark University and the Rice Institute, the historical 
 and philological disciplines have received scant recogni- 
 tion, while Semitics and Indology have been entirely 
 
Supplementary Account of Thirty Years' Progress 67 
 
 ignored. The preponderance of the natural sciences in 
 this country at the present time, is such that even among 
 educated persons those who devote their careers to the 
 old "Humanities" are looked upon as "back numbers," left 
 over from a passing generation, while those who choose 
 such outlandish subjects as Assyrian or Arabic or Sanskrit 
 or Persian are regarded in the light of intellectual freaks. 
 The list of publications of the Carnegie Institute, founded 
 for the preservation of research, may be taken as an index 
 of the scant attention paid to subjects that lie outside of 
 Biology, Astronomy, Physics, Chemistry and Botany. 
 Some encouragement is given to American history, occa- 
 sionally a grant is made for some piece of research in the 
 field of Archaeology, or of Epigraphy, or of Philology; 
 but even this is done as the result of considerable pressure 
 — ^as a kind of sop to those who have protested against 
 the one-sidedness of the scientific activities of the Institute. 
 We have a National Academy of Sciences, in part under 
 government patronage, membership in which is rightly 
 coveted as a distinction equal to an election to a European 
 Academy; but while European Academies accord a proper 
 place to those whose activity lies in history, philology 
 and archaeology, our American Academy is practically 
 restricted to the representatives of the Natural Sciences. 
 One may, by a careful scrutiny, occasionally detect one 
 who is not a natural scientist in that distinguished body. 
 One suspects that he got in by accident, and, at all events, 
 he must feel profoundly lonely. 
 
 William Dwight Whitney, the pioneer of Sanskrit studies 
 in this country, was a member; but after his death no 
 attempt was made, so far as I know, to elect another 
 philologist in his place. The membership has been in- 
 creased from time to time, until it now numbers some two 
 hundred members; but the Historical and Philological 
 
68 Thirty Years of Oriental Sttidies 
 
 Sciences are still conspicuous by their non-representation. 
 Occasionally one hears of a movement to establish a section 
 for these subjects, as in the case of Continental academies, 
 but the rumor soon dies away, and so we continue to 
 present the spectacle, that must appear strange to our 
 European colleagues, of a National Academy which prac- 
 tically ignores the existence of such realms of research 
 as History, Philology, Philosophy, Archaeology, and the 
 historical study of Religions. 
 
 Under these circumstances it is perhaps not surprising 
 that our universities, which naturally move under the in- 
 fluences prevailing in current life, should not have responded 
 to the activity of scholars in the fields of Semitics and of 
 Sanskrit, by establishing chairs for subjects which are 
 important even though they appear to lack the direct bear- 
 ings on the problems of modern existence, possessed by 
 Economics, Chemistry, Physics, and Mechanics, and to a 
 more limited extent by Biology, Botany, Zoology and Psy- 
 chology. Whatever the cause, the fact stands out that it 
 is chiefly in Eastern universities that we find departments 
 for Oriental studies. In the Middle West, Chicago Uni- 
 versity alone has made adequate provision. Even in the 
 East there are no active departments of Semitics and 
 Sanskrit outside of Harvard, Yale, Columbia, the Univer- 
 sity of Pennsylvania, and Johns Hopkins. Chairs of 
 Egyptian are found merely at the University of Chicago 
 and the University of Pennsylvania. At Cornell, at the 
 University of Michigem, at the University of Wisconsin, 
 and at the University of California there is one incumbent 
 to cover the entire field of Semitics, while Sanskrit is not 
 represented at any of these institutions, except at Cali- 
 fornia. At the University of Illinois, we now have a 
 chair for ancient history filled by an Orientalist, but there 
 is no proper provision for the various other branches of 
 
Supplementary Account of Thirty Years' Progress 69 
 
 Oriental study. More significant is the fact that during 
 the past decade no additional chairs either for Semitics 
 or for Sanskrit have been established at our Universities, 
 and very few during the past two decades. 
 
 It is idle to expect students to take up these studies, 
 if there is such a poor outlook for finding any university 
 position in which to carve out one's career. Indeed it is 
 wrong to encourage students to take up advanced work in 
 Semitics and in Sanskrit under prevailing conditions, unless 
 the student has means of his own, or can look forward to 
 some post which will insure him a living and at the same 
 time leave him leisure to continue his researches. There 
 are many tragic instances during the past decade, of stu- 
 dents who have fitted themselves to work in Oriental 
 fields and have then been obliged to give up their plans 
 and turn to other subjects which promised the means of 
 a livelihood, with a consequent loss to Oriental scholar- 
 ship. 
 
 The condition thus confronting us is a serious one, and 
 there is little satisfaction in indulging in a panegyric of 
 past achievements, if we must at the same time contem- 
 plate the possibility that the next thirty years will witness 
 a decided decline in Oriental scholarship in this country. 
 It is clearly the duty of American Orientalists to bestir 
 themselves, and in conjunction with their colleagues who 
 represent the study of the classics and classical antiquities, 
 to inaugurate a more aggressive policy to secure greater 
 recognition at our universities for subjects of such vital 
 importance for the general advancement of human knowl- 
 edge. It is not sufficient to have established such excellent 
 media for the publication of papers in the domain of Ori- 
 ental studies, as the Journal of the American Oriental 
 Society, the American Journal of Semitic Languages (pub- 
 lished by the University of Chicago), and the Journal of 
 
70 Thirty Years of Oriental Studies 
 
 Biblical Literature. These journals, as well as the annual 
 meetings of such representative bodies as the American 
 Oriental Society, the Society of Biblical Literature, the 
 American Institute of Archaeology, and the American 
 Philological Association, should be utilized as a means of 
 propaganda of a dignified and yet aggressive character, 
 to bring Oriental studies to the larger attention of uni-- 
 versity authorities. Classical scholars are now roused to 
 the need of such propaganda. The remarkable classical 
 conference at Princeton in June, 1917,* and the organization 
 of local societies for the encouragement of Liberal Studies, 
 are indications of the missionary zeal that has seized hold 
 of those who realize the serious danger to the entire in- 
 tellectual life of the country involved in the decline of 
 the study of the classics. 
 
 Supplementary to papers of a technical character at 
 the meetings of the scientific societies, there should be 
 included in the program papers of a more general interest, 
 setting forth the value of some new discoveries made, the 
 relationship of Oriental researches to modern political and 
 social problems, the bearings of Oriental civilizations on 
 Western culture, the part taken by Oriental researches in 
 the general advancement of human knowledge, and the 
 like. The needs of Oriental research should likewise be 
 brought forward at these meetings: plans for excavations, 
 publication projects, and the popularization of the results 
 of investigations. Finally, the Orientalists of this country, 
 either as a body or through their scientific unions, should 
 
 • See the publication of the addresses on this occasion, together with 
 the testimony of several hundred representatives of all professions and 
 vocations to the value of the classics, in the volume entitled The Value 
 of the Classics (Princeton, 1917), edited by Dean West, of Princeton 
 University, to whose initiative and energy the very successful Princeton 
 conference was due. 
 
Supplementary Account of Thirty Years' Progress 71 
 
 from time to time issue direct appeals to Trustees or 
 Regents of universities at which Oriental studies are not 
 provided for or inadequately provided for, setting forth 
 the desirability of establishing or enlarging the depart- 
 ments in question, in order to promote research as one of 
 the important functions of our universities, and to train 
 the scholars of the next generation. In a word, Semitists 
 and Indologists must abandon their present position of 
 academic aloofness, and justify the faith that is in them, 
 by the endeavor to show to the outside world the value 
 and importance of the studies in which they are engaged. 
 We may perhaps take courage from the feeling that is 
 being engendered by the present gigantic conflict, that 
 one of its lessons will be the futility of a civilization wrapped 
 up in the promotion of merely material aims. If progress 
 means solely the application of science to practical needs, 
 then we must be willing to accept also, as one of the results 
 of such a conception of progress, the utilization of scientific 
 discoveries for the perfection of weapons of warfare, which 
 has made the present war the most destructive and the 
 most appalling in the history of man. But the union 
 at the present time of practically the entire civilized world 
 in the tremendous struggle for the preservation of such 
 purely ideal possessions as liberty and democracy, comes 
 as a stern but welcome reminder to us that human destiny 
 is to be worked out through other means than merely 
 the promotion of the practical and directly useful sciences. 
 In a recent number of the Century Magazine (June 1918), 
 Sir Gilbert Murray points out with unsurpassed eloquence, 
 that the things which, after ajl, count for most in this 
 world lie outside of the province of the natural sciences, 
 that literature, the study of the "Humanities", and the 
 cultivation of pure research represent contributions making 
 for the real progress of man along the path mapped out 
 
72 Thirty Years of Oriental Studies 
 
 for him by his intellectual endowments and by the posses- 
 sion of impulses that prompt him to sacrifice what is 
 dearest to him — aye, life itself — ^for the attainment of 
 ideal ends. If the hopes voiced by many distinguished 
 thinkers, and in various ways, that the war will lead to a 
 renaissance in which the historical and philological sciences 
 will again be accorded the place which they merit — ^if 
 these longing hopes be fulfilled, then we may also look 
 for more encouragement for Semitic and Sanskrit studies 
 on the part of our American universities. It rests largely 
 with those to whom the destinies of our higher institutions 
 of learning are confided, whether we are to look forward to 
 a record of progress during the next thirty years that will 
 be as gratifying as is the record of the three decades that 
 have passed since the foundation of this useful and delight- 
 ful Oriental Club. 
 
THIRTY YEARS OF INDO-EUROPEAN 
 STUDIES 
 
 By Prof. E. Washburn Hopkins, Ph. D., LL. D., who 
 was present at the first meeting of the Club 
 
 In the Proceedings of the American Oriental Society 
 at Boston, May, 1888, it is recorded that Mr. Benjamin S. 
 Lyman "gave an interesting account of the formation of 
 a local Oriental Club at Philadelphia, organized by a 
 meeting called by Messrs. Trumbull, Lyman, Peters, 
 Jastrow, Jr., Hilprecht, Hopkins, Williams, and Culin." 
 As the only one of that group representing Indo-European 
 philology, I have been asked to give an account of the 
 progress of Aryan studies since that date. 
 
 The fact that at that same meeting of the Oriental 
 Society were reported the deaths of August Friedrich 
 Pott and of Heinrich Leberecht Fleischer, who were among 
 the first four members of the German Oriental Society, 
 is significant, and may serve as a point of departure for 
 the present survey. It was the close of the first great 
 period of Indo-European studies. The "oldest book in 
 the world," as Max Miiller loved to call the Rig Veda, 
 had been printed in its first edition, but not yet in its 
 second; the Babylonian and Oriental Record had published 
 its first volume the yea;" before; in that year also had just 
 appeared Ferdinand de Saussaye's Memoire sur le systhme 
 primitif des voyelles; Brugmann's Grundriss had just been 
 started; and in the year of the Boston meeting and the 
 Club's foundation came out Victor Henry's Precis de 
 grammaire comparee. Delbriick's Syntax was not yet in 
 print; it was still three years before the first volume of 
 the Harvard Oriental Series was to appear, and two years 
 
 73 
 
74 Thirty Years of Oriental Sttcdies 
 
 before Gildersleeve was to publish his Essays and Studies, 
 and Goodwin his revised Syntax of the Moods and Tenses 
 of the Greek Verb. At that Boston meeting, Dr. Oilman 
 sent to the Society "a copy of the new edition of the Di- 
 dache," and an account of the murderous assault committed 
 upon the Patriarch of Jerusalem, to whom the world owes 
 the reproduction of the manuscript, and Professor Mills 
 reported his final arrangements for a complete edition of 
 the Zoroastrian Gathas; while Prof. Jewett presented to 
 the Society "a plan for the establishment of a School of 
 Biblical Archaeology and Philology at Beirut." It was 
 a stimulating period, an era of revision, readjustment, 
 in part of rejection, of old views, of new enterprises planned, 
 new ideas suggested. The Dawn and the Dawn Myth 
 were already fading; but we all felt that a bright day was 
 to follow. 
 
 The hopes of thirty years ago have not been disappointed. 
 Much has been accomplished. If results have not been 
 so brilliant as was then expected, it is partly because great 
 discoveries cannot continue forever. Yet our generation, 
 if we may count thirty years as such, has not been without 
 its happy surprises. Sir M. Aurel Stein's discoveries in 
 Khotan and Turfan have been of the greatest archaeological 
 importance. The Manichaean and Nestorian documents 
 found in the Caves of the Thousand Buddhas and other 
 "sand-buried ruins" throw a new light on the intercourse 
 between worshippers of different creeds, a light little sus- 
 pected when our Club was founded. Not less memorable 
 was Winckler's Hittite inscription from Boghaz Keui, 
 with its puzzling list of Vedic gods apparently still (or 
 already) worshipped in Armenia. Our own Dr. Spooner 
 has more lately attempted to bring into close connection 
 the Buddhistic and Zoroastrian religions on the basis of 
 archaeological discoveries near Benares, and his work may 
 
Thirty Years of Indo-European Studies 75 
 
 yet provide us with a clearer view of the relations between 
 the later Vedic and early Persian religions. Nor need 
 one hesitate to compare the results of Indie archaeology 
 in general during the last three decades with those of the 
 previous era, not to speak of the Linguistic Survey of India 
 (begun in 1903), which has been carried through under 
 the able hand of Sir George Grierson and has made prob- 
 able the idea that different rings of Aryans lie about the 
 final invaders from the Northwest. Only recently has 
 it become known, thanks to archaeological work, that 
 Greek worshippers of Hindu gods were known in India 
 before the Christian era. 
 
 A series of publications in the field of Indo-European 
 philology belongs to the era under review. In 1888 ap- 
 peared the first volume of the Grundriss der romanischen 
 Philologie. Paul's corresponding Grundriss der german- 
 ischen Philologie started in 1891. In this year also ap- 
 peared the first volume of the Indogermanische Forschungen. 
 Two years later came the first part of Kluge's Etymologisches 
 Worterbuch der deutschen Sprache. These are all works 
 of prime importance. Not less so is the invaluable col- 
 lection of material published in the Archiv fur Religions- 
 wissenschaft, which began in 1898. This decade was in 
 fact one of nascent Journals and Reviews, all filling a well- 
 recognized want, whether in linguistics or in comparative 
 religion. In the latter regard the able journal Man (1901) 
 is not to be overlooked, since, with its anthropological 
 reviews, it has always contained much of interest to the 
 student of religion. Its older contemporary. The American 
 Journal of Anthropology, began the year we celebrate 
 (1888). Hastings' Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics, a 
 monumental work now almost completed, was first launched 
 in 1908; it is an epitome of the prevailingly ethical and 
 religious trend of philologie studies in the opening years 
 
76 . Thirty Years of Oriental Studies 
 
 of the present century. Students in general have done 
 far more in this field than in that of linguistics, which 
 occupied the attention of philologists almost exclusively 
 at an earlier period. Naturally: for it was only on the 
 basis of linguistic study that philology in the older and 
 wider sense could be established. Thus in Indie philology 
 the last decades cannot show so many first editions of 
 texts, but they show much more incisive study of texts 
 already published. 
 
 America, however, has not failed to keep up the great 
 tradition, even in philology of the sort which made the 
 last century famous. The Harvard Oriental Series has 
 published a long list of texts, beginning with the Jataka 
 Mala in 1 89 1. As a voice from the other shore after long 
 waiting, though the years were profitably spent, was 
 heard also in 1905 the echo of Whitney's last words in 
 his translation of the Atharva Veda, which came out in 
 this series, so well edited by Professor Lanman. In the 
 same series have appeared many valuable texts, trans- 
 lations, and such collections of material as embody the 
 fruit of Warren's long years of labor. Buddhism in Trans- 
 lations, which groups original documents in coordinate 
 chapters, and gives, or gave (for this volume appeared 
 in 1896), for the first time a birds-eye view of Buddhistic 
 doctrine. One of these volumes furnishes, also for the 
 first time, the text of a Prakrit play in correct form. It 
 is not too much to say that there is no series outside of 
 America which has done work so important. Nor is it 
 the only series in this country. Columbia also, though 
 without the financial backing which made possible the 
 material success of the Harvard series, has issued several 
 important texts under the editorship of Professor Jackson, 
 such as the Sanskrit Poems of Mayura by Mr. Quackenbos; 
 Jndo-Iranian Philology, by Mr. Gray; and the Itivuttaka, 
 
Thirty Years of Indo-European Studies 77 
 
 cr Sayings of Buddha, by Mr. Moore: a series which began 
 in 1901. 
 
 This Columbia series is younger by a decade than that 
 of Harvard, and, of course, less extensive; but it differs 
 from the Harvard series also in drawing for its workers 
 wholly on "local talent." All its writers are New Yorkers, 
 while the Harvard series has been taken for the most 
 part from the workshops of European Sanskritists. We 
 may, as Americans, well be proud of both series, in one 
 case because we have been enabled to secure for an Amer- 
 ican enterprise so many distinguished foreigners, and in 
 the other because we have been able to do without them. 
 It is in both cases gratifying to know that the good work 
 thus far done is but a beginning, and that only ephemeral 
 conditions have of late impeded it. 
 
 But American scholars have also been called upon to 
 do work in the special fields of their activity outside of 
 geographical boundaries. This work is especially con- 
 spicuous in the two great Grundrisse devoted to Indie 
 and to Iranic philology. In the latter, the volume on 
 religion was written by Jackson; in the former, that on 
 the Atharva Veda by Bloomfield, and that on Epic Mythol- 
 ogy by myself. To an American scholar. Dr. Gray, was 
 entrusted also the sub-editorship of the great encyclopedia 
 of religion and ethics already referred to, to which con- 
 tributions have been made by many of our countrymen. 
 Perhaps in no other field has the progress of three decades 
 been more obvious than in the advance shown in respect 
 of Zoroastrianism. Jackson's Zoroaster, in 1899, summed 
 up the knowledge of the day on the basis of texts previously 
 €dited by Geldner and by Darmesteter. The latter scholar 
 started a new train of conjecture and investigation in his 
 revolutionary view of the relation of Christianity to Zoro- 
 astrianism {Essays, published in 1895); Soederblom pub- 
 
78 Thirty Years of Oriental Studies 
 
 lished La vie future d'apris le mazdeisme in 1901, and 
 Les fravashis, introductory to this, in 1899; and Moulton 
 his Early Zoroastrianism in 1913. Another important 
 work here is Clemen's Primitive Christianity and Its Non- 
 Jewish Sources (1912), while the whole subject of Mithraism 
 has been built up anew by Cumont, whose Monuments 
 was published in 1893. It is not too much to say that 
 without the work of the last thirty years we should, in 
 the light of what we actually know, be deplorably ignorant 
 of this whole subject. 
 
 In Indian religion the foundation of our knowledge 
 had been laid long before our Club was organized; but 
 it is still surprising how much has been added to that 
 foundation in the last decades. Oldenberg's Religion des 
 Veda (1894), Crooike's Popular Religion and Folk-lore (1896), 
 and Oltramare's L'histoire des idees theosophiques (1907) 
 are but an indication of the works we were without in 
 1888. Deussen's translation of the Sixty Upanishads did 
 not appear till 1897, three years after his Allgemeine Ge- 
 schichte der Philosophie, a work indispensable to all students 
 of Hindu thought, and this was still ten years earlier than 
 the appearance of Winternitz's Geschichte der indischen 
 Litteratur (1908), the first satisfactory work on the subject, 
 though Macdonell's History of Sanskrit Literature was an 
 excellent general summary, which filled a long-felt want 
 in 1900. Like the Grundrisse, these works were not so 
 much vehicles of new ideas as collections of facts long 
 scattered, not yet systematized, presented with clarity 
 and subjected to critical judgment. 
 
 Yet in one instance a momentous attempt was made 
 in the first decade of those here reviewed, to change com- 
 pletely the received opinion of Sanskritists. For a genera- 
 tion the date of the oldest literature had been accepted 
 as about the twelfth century B. C. Ludwig, indeed, had 
 
Thirty Years of Indo-European Studies 79 
 
 tried to fix the time of the Rig Veda by allusions to alleged 
 eclipses; but his failure was recognized by others, and was 
 pointed out very plainly by Whitney in 1885. Then 
 suddenly, in 1893, two scholars, one a German and one a 
 Hindu, working separately along the same general lines, 
 came to the same startling decision, namely, that the 
 Vedic period goes back to the fifth millennium before 
 Christ. The very fact that two scholars had independently 
 arrived at the same conclusion naturally made it seem 
 more probable. Many were really carried away by this 
 new view, and for a brief space it seemed as if Vedic lit- 
 erature might vie in antiquity with that of Babylon and 
 that of Egypt. But one of the last articles Whitney 
 ever wrote was his trenchant disposal of all such claims 
 on the basis of the loose and general astronomical state- 
 ments which were its only Vedic support. The "new 
 date" disappeared almost as soon as his authoritative 
 criticism was printed (in the Proceedings of the American 
 Oriental Society for March, 1894), and no one now talks 
 of the fifth millennium in connection with the Rig Veda. 
 Such a review as this of Whitney is not to be reckoned as 
 disconnected with progress. The restraint exercised in 
 judgment, the refusal to be led away by so tempting a 
 theory as that of Jacobi and Tilak, these are as essential 
 to progress as direct contributions to knowledge, the 
 guiding hand that does not permit the steed of progress 
 to leap the fence but keeps it to the road! 
 
 In Buddhism, the best work ever written on the subject, 
 Bouddhisme, by L. de la Valine Poussin, was not published 
 till 1909. The two decades before this were rich in Ma- 
 hayana material. Works on both schools began now to 
 appear from year to year. Of these, the Outlines of Ma- 
 hayana Buddhism by Suzuki in 1907, and Mrs. Rhys 
 Davids's Buddhist Psychology in 1914, may serve as sped- 
 
8o Thirty Years oj Oriental Studies 
 
 men publications, alongside of the more popular Buddhist 
 India of Rhys Davids (1903). Vincent Smith's various 
 histories, including those of Asoka and of Akbar, also 
 should be mentioned here (1901 to 191 7). 
 
 But the Club will doubtless desire to know more par- 
 ticularly what mark has been left on these decades by 
 itself and its American coadjutors, the other Oriental 
 clubs and societies of America. It is from the fraternal 
 union fostered by such assemblies that it has been possible 
 to erect several monuments in the field of Oriental religions. 
 Thus we may really "point with pride" to the output of 
 the American Lectures Series, which, without such encour- 
 agement and support as come from associations of this 
 sort, would scarcely have been able to publish the volumes 
 which have appeared in the last few years from the pens 
 of Jastrow,* Cumont, Knox, etc., among which is Bloom- 
 field's suggestive work on Vedic Religion (1908), which, 
 like the same author's Hymns of the Atharva Veda (1897) 
 falls within the present purview. Of American scholars, 
 Bloomfield has confined himself most closely to the Vedas, 
 and besides the works already mentioned, has published 
 the magnificent volume entitled A Vedic Concordance 
 (1906) in the Harvard Oriental Series. The Columbia 
 Series has confined itself more particularly to the works 
 of the classic age. At Yale, the contributions in Sanskrit 
 have been devoted mainly to the epics (1901, 1915), besides 
 a general history of the Religions of India (1895) — these 
 volumes by myself — and to the Brahmana material pub- 
 lished by Oertel in the Journal of the American Oriental 
 Society.] Between us we have done considerable work 
 
 * Member of the Oriental Club of Philadelphia. 
 
 t The first systematic study of epic Realien was presented to the 
 Oriental Society in the year in which our Club was founded {Position 
 of the Ruling Caste). Oertel's contributions to the Jaimimya Brah- 
 mana began in 1892. 
 
Thirty Years of Indo-European Studies 8i 
 
 in this way along all the main lines of Indie thought. Nor 
 has the grammatical side of the language been neglected, 
 though successive editions of Whitney's grammar have 
 obviated the necessity of producing a new grammar, and 
 Sanskritists have not yet arrived at that impoverishment 
 of material which leads to the creation of a grammar 
 merely for the sake of rearrangement of old matter. In 
 the last thirty years the most radical grammatical changes 
 have been in syntactical analysis, and in this regard the 
 venerable grammar of Whitney may soon need improve- 
 ment. Much the same may be said of grammatical work 
 abroad. A slowly appearing Altindische Grammatik (be- 
 gun in 1896 by Wackernagel) still lacks completion, and 
 Delbrueck's Syntax still satisfies most Indo-European 
 scholars. But a leaven is working, which, in the next 
 thirty years, may modify some solidified notions in minds 
 more plastic than those long imbued with received opinion. 
 It is to the scholars of the next three decades, therefore, 
 that we confidently turn, to carry on not only the work 
 we older men have tried to do, but to carry on some of 
 it better. It is pleasant to know that there is already a 
 considerable group of them who have won their spurs 
 and shown their mettle, if that metaphor be not too mixed. 
 The recent publication of Religions Past and Present is 
 an earnest of what some of these have done and are pre- 
 pared to do. Edgerton and Kent, members of this Club 
 at the University of Pennsylvania, Barret at Trinity, 
 who has already done excellent work in the Atharva Veda, 
 Ryder in California, who began on the Ribhus and has 
 thus far got to the Goblins, Petersen in Kansas, whose 
 syntactical studies are sanely revolutionary, the younger 
 men who have already been mentioned in connection with 
 the Columbia Series, also Ogden and Burlingame, the 
 latter a member of this Club, and now at Yale, whose books 
 
S2 Thirty Years of Oriental Studies 
 
 on Buddhist Parables and the Dhammapada are soon to 
 appear — all these, to mention only those best known to 
 me, are well able to take up the load, and let us hope it 
 Tvill be for more than thirty years. 
 
 The outlook as to scholars is bright; there are many 
 more, already proved workers, than there were thirty 
 years ago. This is in itself as encouraging as it is sur- 
 prising. Thirty years ago there was much more reason 
 for studying Sanskrit than there is today. For a very 
 simple reason: classical scholars had learned that Sanskrit 
 illumined Greek and Latin forms; but they could learn 
 more only by attending Sanskrit courses. Nowadays a 
 small library of handbooks teaches the little the Latinist 
 €ver wanted to know. The number of those taking San- 
 skrit or Iranian for the sake of the literature was always 
 negligible. Thus Sanskrit and comparative philology have 
 ever been mated as if by natural affinity. Why else should 
 one study or teach Sanskrit except as ancillary to lin- 
 guistics? It is not likely that this attitude will change. 
 Scholars who study Sanskrit for the sake of knowing the 
 Vedas, epics, dramas, legal literature, lyric poetry, etc., 
 will always be rare. I once had a student come to me 
 from another institution after studying Sanskrit for a 
 year, who did not even know that India had epics or dramas. 
 The drift into Sanskrit or Avestan will always be, as it 
 has been in the past, an effect of a cross-current from the 
 classical stream. Thirty years ago teachers were glad 
 to have their bright students go in this direction; they 
 were urged to take Sanskrit as a minor. But now that 
 the classical stream itself is drying up, the teacher is more 
 apt to say, "Stick to your Greek or Latin; do not waste 
 time over Oriental culture; take archaeology instead of 
 Sanskrit," thus conserving for allied work the few who still 
 -wander in the Elysian Fields. 
 
Thirty Years of Indo-European Studies 83 
 
 There is also another factor, practical but imperative. 
 The ardent young scholar says, "I should like to devote 
 myself to Sanskrit; but is there any opening for me there? 
 rhave to earn my living." The professor conscientiously 
 replies, "Very little chance to get a position in Sanskrit; 
 you had better stick to Greek or, since there will soon be 
 little Greek to teach, to Latin, and take Sanskrit for your 
 avocation if it still delights you." Three decades ago it 
 "was expected that every university worthy of the name 
 would soon have a chair of Sanskrit and Comparative 
 Philology. This expectation has not been fulfilled. Nor 
 is this to be wondered at. When the Dean of a theological 
 school sees no use in his students' knowing Hebrew and 
 urges them to take Political Economy instead, when the 
 college Dean advises his students to forsake classics and 
 study natural science, it is not strange that would-be 
 benefactors, who come asking to which department they 
 can most advantageously give, are shunted away from all 
 courses purely cultural, courses which, as such, are regarded 
 as superfluous, if not detrimental. 
 
 But to those to whom the opening of new worlds of 
 thought means anything, to those who regard productive 
 labor on new fields of culture as legitimate and desirable, 
 the progress in our thirty years cannot fail to appeal. 
 Nor is it obscure why now, more than in the past, such 
 studies as we have been pursuing should receive support, 
 not only from within collegiate circles, but, since those 
 circles themselves are either lukewarm or, as in the case 
 of the Classics, hedged about with their own troubles, 
 from without, from those whose liberality is broad enough 
 to see that purely cultural courses, even those involving 
 a culture so far removed as that of the Orient, are not 
 without their lasting gain to the community. As the 
 bricks of Babylonia have built for us a new world, so the 
 
84 Thirty Years of Oriental Studies 
 
 texts of India and Persia have guided us into a region 
 that but for them would have been still a mere desert 
 of the forgotten past. That this desert has been made 
 to bloom again is due largely to just such enlightened 
 liberality, which has made possible the production of the 
 many works brought out in the last three decades. It 
 is to the continued effort of such broad-minded helpers 
 of labor as well as to the devotion of the laborers them- 
 selves that we must look for the results of the next thirty 
 years. It is gratifying to know that here in Philadelphia, 
 where the support of Semitic studies has already brought 
 to city and university a world-wide reputation, the pursuit 
 of Indo-Iranian also is encouraged, and that this encour- 
 agement has, too, borne good fruit, as the volume already 
 mentioned has shown and the forthcoming volumes of 
 Edgerton* in the Harvard Series will more especially 
 demonstrate. Such encouragement may provide a financial 
 pou sto for work; but it should also provide what is just 
 as essential — time. Those who have nothing to do save 
 work in their own field can hardly realize what it means 
 to have but hourly scraps of the day for their special 
 province of labor. Having had this experience for four- 
 teen years before I was able to breathe freely and say at 
 last "Now for Sanskrit," I feel that deep sympathy is 
 due to those scholars who manage to produce something 
 in such distracting circumstances. It is impossible often, 
 even with the best good will on the part of governing 
 boards, to provide complete leisure for the specialist; he 
 must be thankful for what he can get. But in so far as 
 the young scholar shows that he has it in him to be fruit- 
 ful, he should be given opportunity to grow and mature 
 and bear a still richer harvest. 
 
 * Member of the Oriental Club of Philadelphia. 
 
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