The Recovery of the 
 Ancient Orient 
 
 Robert William Rogers 
 
 Dfl? 
 
Where'er we tread 'tis haunted, holy ground, 
 No earth of thine is lost in vulgar mould. 
 
 Byron. 
 
 The grand object of all traveling is to see 
 the shores of the Mediterranean. 
 
 Johnson. 
 
 Here thou behold'st 
 
 Assyria, and her empire's ancient bounds, 
 Araxes and the Caspian lake; thence on 
 As far as Indus east, Euphrates west, 
 And oft beyond; to south the Persian bay, 
 And, inaccessible, the Arabian drouth: 
 Here, Nineveh, of length within her wall 
 Several days' journey, built by Ninus old, 
 Of that first golden monarchy the seat, 
 And seat of Salmanassar, whose success 
 Israel in long captivity still mourns; 
 There Babylon, the wonder of all tongues, 
 As ancient, but rebuilt by him who twice 
 Judah and all thy father David's house 
 Led captive, and Jerusalem laid waste, 
 Till Cyrus set them free. 
 
 Milton 
 
THE RECOVERY 
 
 OF THE 
 
 ANCIENT ORIENT 
 
 BY 
 ROBERT WILLIAM ROGERS 
 
 Ph.D. (Leipzig), Litt.D., LL.D./F.R.G.S. 
 
 Professor in Drew Theological Seminary 
 
 NEW YORK: EATON & MAINS 
 CINCINNATI: JENNINGS & GRAHAM 
 
Copyright, 1912, by 
 ROBERT W. ROGERS 
 
To 
 S. B. C. 
 
 AND 
 
 E. M, C. 
 
 LAKE GENEVA 
 JULY 
 1911 
 
 261^50 
 
FOREWORD 
 
 On June 17, 1912, 1 had the pleasure 
 of delivering the annual Phi Beta 
 Kappa address at Allegheny College, 
 Meadville, Pennsylvania, which I now 
 have the temerity to commit to type. 
 I shall not blame this boldness upon 
 any of the kind and generous hosts 
 who politely commended this course, 
 but assume the responsibility alone, 
 and thank them only that they in- 
 vited me in the first instance, and then 
 so kindly heard me. I have not re- 
 written the words in such a form as 
 sober art demands. They stand as 
 they first were spoken. Here are all 
 the innocent little arts and tricks of 
 the man who speaks to the ears of 
 men, and would fain induce them to 
 listen even upon a warm summer's 
 evening. Let the reader remember 
 this, take the little book in the spirit 
 of its purpose, and destroy it not with 
 harsh criticism, lest I threaten him 
 with the words of Hazlitt, which are 
 these: "Those who would proscribe 
 whatever falls short of a given stand- 
 7 
 
S FOREWORD 
 
 ard of imaginary perfection, do so 
 not from a higher capacity of taste or 
 range of intellect than others, but 
 to destroy, to 'crib and cabin in/ all 
 enjoyments and opinions but their 
 
 own." 
 
 ROBERT W. ROGERS. 
 
 Madison, New Jersey, 
 July 17, 1912. 
 
THE RECOVERY OF THE 
 ANCIENT ORIENT 
 
 MEMBERS OF THE ANCIENT AND 
 URBANE SOCIETY OF PHI BETA KAPPA, 
 LADIES AND GENTLEMEN: 
 
 By your kind and flattering invita- 
 tion am I come, and by my own 
 choice am I to speak of the only sub- 
 ject to which I may claim to have 
 right of public utterance. The field 
 of human knowledge has sensibly wid- 
 ened since those large days in 1776, 
 when some of our forebears fought 
 to found a new commonwealth, while 
 others, even amid rumors of war in 
 the distracted colonies, dared to meet 
 and found a learned society. 1 They 
 were men who might hope to compass 
 the field of learning a ; s none may dare 
 in these days, least of all one whose 
 whole life has been given to a field 
 circumscribed within narrow limits. 
 
 When our society was founded the 
 word "Orient/' or the "East," meant 
 simply the lands about the eastern 
 Mediterranean, and the extent of the 
 
 9 
 
10 THE RECOVERY OF 
 
 territory both westward and eastward 
 was vague indeed. In our day the 
 word "East" has swept its wide- 
 flowing net to inclose far distant 
 China, Japan, and the islands of the 
 Pacific from icy Saghalien to fragrant 
 Singapore. But, strange to say, as 
 the term has widened eastward it has 
 lost westward. I scarce venture to 
 say what our founders would have 
 set as the western limits of the East, 
 but I do remember that when Alex- 
 ander Kinglake made his famous visit 
 to the East he began his story with 
 Belgrade. "I had come, as it were," 
 so he says, "to the end of this wheel- 
 going Europe, and now my eyes would 
 see the splendor and havoc of the 
 East." 5 But Belgrade is not in the 
 East for us; nay, I venture to go 
 farther and say that Constantinople 
 is not in the East. Her shining 
 minarets, most beautiful expression of 
 the aspiration of Eastern peoples, nev- 
 ertheless stand upon European soil. 
 They are in the Levant, if you will, but 
 they are not in the East. Where, then, 
 do you ask, does the East begin; and 
 I fear the answer must be that I do 
 not know. I can tell you quickly 
 
THE ANCIENT ORIENT 11 
 
 enough that Egypt is in the East; 
 there is no disputing a geographical 
 and ethnological fact so patent, and 
 no desire to dispute it. Phoenicia, 
 Palestine, Philistia these are in the 
 East; so are Babylonia and Assyria, 
 Elam, Media, Persia; these all are in 
 the East. But when you seek to de- 
 fine its western limits one can only 
 say that they are vague, uncertain, 
 disputable. Somewhere across Asia 
 Minor runs an imaginary line that 
 bounds the East. It is not, I venture 
 to fancy, along its western seaboard, 
 where the sea is a deeper blue than 
 anywhere else that I know, save only 
 perhaps (and I insist on the perhaps) 
 off the coast of Dalmatia. No, west- 
 ern Asia Minor had too much Western 
 civilization, too deep and too rich a 
 contact with the Greeks, to be quite 
 Oriental in any proper sense. Even 
 Lydia was Western at the same time 
 that it was also Eastern, and perhaps 
 the river Halys, where Cyrus halted 
 his columns, may serve as a con- 
 venient boundary of the East toward 
 the West. 
 
 If that be the western limit of the 
 Orient in the restricted sense which I 
 
12 THE RECOVERY OF 
 
 now attach to the word,what is its east- 
 ern limit? It does not include China 
 and Japan, with their island territories, 
 nor vast Siberia; no, nor Turkestan, 
 with its buried memorials of forgotten 
 civilizations. I should say that where 
 Persia's dominions touch Turkestan, 
 there ends the Orient. 
 
 From Asia Minor to Persia, and far 
 southward to the upper cataracts of 
 the Nile most interesting river in the 
 world this is the territory which I 
 call the Orient, my Orient, not because 
 of any special property right, but be- 
 cause of the interest, the inspiration, 
 the delight it has afforded me by its 
 many-colored sights and scenes, when 
 I have wandered over its plains and 
 mountains and deserts; and yet more 
 by the history and literature which it 
 has made and sent over land and sea 
 even unto this America, distant from 
 it both in space and time. 
 
 What a glamour, a spell, a wizard 
 touch this Orient possesses for every 
 cultivated man! In its gentler as- 
 pects beautiful in a certain over- 
 powering brilliance, bathed in a 
 sunlight too intense for human eyes 
 during much of the year; in its fiercer 
 
THE ANCIENT ORIENT 13 
 
 and more terrible manifestations 
 deadly in heat, shimmering in great 
 waves over trackless deserts; in archi- 
 tecture, massive, solid, enduring the 
 crash of ages,teaching even the consum- 
 mate skill of the Greeks the beginnings 
 of constructive engineering, decorative 
 beauty, and imposing mass; in poetry, 
 rising from passionate lyrics of human 
 love, through ballads of war and plaints 
 of pain, even into agonized searchings 
 after the solution of the problem of 
 suffering and of the mysteries of life 
 after death; in prose, writing little 
 labels for wine jars, 3 making simple 
 records of purchase, sale, exchange/ 
 lifting up panegyrics over battles 
 fought and won, boastings of kings 
 and conquerors, 5 governors and des- 
 pots, nay, even writing laws 6 by which 
 divers peoples were ruled in justice, 
 equity, and mercy; in music, beating 
 rude drums, screaming in wild de- 
 liriums, discovering the rhythms of 
 the march and the dance; fashioning 
 zithers and timbrels and searching out 
 one medium after another until the 
 harp was made, whose solemn beating 
 should make melody more and more 
 beautiful over all the Western world 
 
14 THE RECOVERY OF 
 
 even to that green island in the dark 
 Atlantic, where sounded the most 
 famous of all harps 
 
 The harp that once through Tara's halls 
 
 The soul of music shed, 
 Now hangs as mute on Tara's walls 
 
 As if that soul were fled. 7 
 
 Who offers apology for his enthusiasm 
 over the Orient, modern or ancient? 
 The spell of thousands of years is with 
 us still; nay, is stronger than ever, 
 more insistent, more filled with in- 
 struction, with power to quicken emo- 
 tion and enkindle life. This Orient 
 lost for centuries the larger part of its 
 influence. During much of the Middle 
 Age there was little interest in any 
 part of it save in Palestine. The 
 Church, indeed, did her best 8 to keep 
 alive the memory of the historical 
 writers, the poets, the wise men, the 
 writers of letters and of apocalypses in 
 her sacred books, but for most of the 
 Orient forgetfulness dominated the 
 minds of men. 
 
 When the Renaissance burst upon 
 Europe, it was, first of all, a new birth 
 of interest and enthusiasm for the 
 
THE ANCIENT ORIENT 15 
 
 overpowering and exhaustless riches of 
 Greece and Rome that first enthralled 
 the minds of men. Petrarch, 9 father 
 of humanism, "first effective propa- 
 gator of humanism in the world at 
 large/ ' in his letter to Homer wrote, 
 sadly, "I have not been so fortunate as 
 to learn Greek." But soon afterward, 
 when the Calabrian Barlaam came to 
 Italy, Petrarch became his pupil, 
 though in a little while compelled to 
 utter the plaint: "I had thrown my- 
 self into the work with eager hope and 
 keen desire. But the strangeness of 
 the foreign tongue, and the early de- 
 parture of my teacher, baffled my 
 purpose." Wherein he failed, Bo- 
 caccio, 10 under his inspiration, meas- 
 urably succeeded, and prepared the 
 way for Manuel Chrysoloras, first real 
 teacher of Greek in Italy, beginner of 
 a new and better day. As this tide of 
 learning swept over the Alps it was 
 Erasmus 11 who conducted it into wider 
 channels. When his apostolate of 
 knowledge began he could only say 
 that among his good Netherlander a 
 knowledge of Greek was "the next 
 thing to heresy," but he added, "I 
 did my best to deliver the rising 
 
16 THE RECOVERY OF 
 
 generation from this slough of igno- 
 rance, and to inspire them with a taste 
 for better studies. " Interested pro- 
 foundly in practical morals, inspired 
 by an aggressive religious faith, he 
 edited the first printed Greek Testa- 
 ment, and eagerly urged its translation 
 into the great new modern languages 
 with which Europe was then covered. 
 "I long," he said, "that the husband- 
 man should sing them to himself as 
 he follows the plow, that the weaver 
 should hum them to the tune of his 
 shuttle, that the traveler should be- 
 guile with them the weariness of his 
 journey." 
 
 When the Greek Testament began 
 thus to pass from hand to hand it was 
 inevitable that its words should point 
 backward, as well as forward, and its 
 cry sound in the ears of men to open 
 also the pages of the Old Testament 
 and "con its strident and panting 
 vocables." 12 The beginnings of the 
 study of Hebrew in western Europe 
 were made by Johann Reuchlin, 13 who 
 had studied Greek at Paris, at Basel, 
 and at Rome, only to turn aside from 
 it in 1492, thenceforward to give all 
 his life to Hebrew. To this dear old 
 
THE ANCIENT ORIENT 17 
 
 tongue he had come from Greek, 
 through the New Testament, and also, 
 strange as it may seem, from Neo- 
 Platonism backward into the Cabbala. 
 The Church was willing that he should 
 study the Old Testament in Hebrew, 
 within such limitations as from time 
 to time might be deemed necessary by 
 her hierarchy, but she was speedily 
 aroused to a great dread of the Cab- 
 bala and, indeed, of all other forms of 
 Hebrew learning. In 1509 Johann 
 Pfefferkorn most aromatic of names 
 a converted Jew, sought from the 
 Emperor Maximilian a mandate for 
 the suppression of all Hebrew books 
 except copies of the Old Testament. 
 Reuchlin opposed this stupid narrow- 
 ness, and was promptly branded as a 
 heretic and traitor by the energetic 
 Pfefferkorn. Reuchlin was finally tried 
 before an ecclesiastical court at Mainz, 
 and acquitted, and the decision was 
 confirmed by the Pope in 1516. It 
 is well to remember that not all 
 heresy trials issue in convictions. But, 
 lest some of^us rejoice overmuch, it 
 may perhaps be well to admit that, 
 on an appeal of the Dominicans, Rome 
 reversed the decision in 1520. Reuch- 
 
18 THE RECOVERY OF 
 
 lin, however, paid no attention to the 
 decree against him, and it fell into 
 abeyance, and has only recently come 
 to light again. He is the true father 
 of those who still attempt to teach 
 Hebrew to an unwilling world, for his 
 book, De Rudimentis Hebraicis, a 
 grammar and lexicon combined, based, 
 indeed, upon Kimchi, yet original in 
 large measure, became Europe's first 
 textbook in Oriental languages. 
 Reuchlin was more than a patient, 
 laborious scholar; he was an inspiring 
 teacher, surrounded speedily wherever 
 he went by eager pupils. One of these 
 was a grandson of his own sister, 
 whose uneuphonious name, Philip 
 Schwartzerd, he turned into the Greek 
 form, Philip Melanchthon, and set 
 the precocious boy upon the delec- 
 table road of learning. In the making 
 of Germany's great teacher and 
 Luther's friend and supporter the 
 world may all too readily give so great 
 glory to Reuchlin as to forget his 
 just fame as the founder of Oriental 
 studies in northern Europe, rival even 
 of Erasmus in breadth and depth of 
 scholarship. 
 With Reuchlin begins the recovery 
 
THE ANCIENT ORIENT 19 
 
 of the Ancient Orient, and the im- 
 petus which he gave lasts to this 
 hour. It is well to remind ourselves 
 that the wellspring of the mighty 
 stream of learning that encompasses 
 and overflows the whole of the nearer 
 East took its rise in the study of the 
 Old Testament, and it may be added 
 with equal justice that much of the 
 later enthusiasm for excavation in 
 Babylonia and Assyria sprang from the 
 same source. 
 
 And now I must sketch such picture 
 as I may of the scenes of bustle and 
 confusion as men dug up forgotten 
 cities, and laid bare to astonished 
 eyes their palaces and temples, and 
 of the less important scenes set in 
 quiet libraries and yet more quiet 
 private studies, where men sat through 
 long hours of day and night patiently 
 deciphering unknown tongues, or criti- 
 cally examining well-known biblical 
 books to search out their origins in 
 ancient documents. My enterprise is 
 difficult, indeed, for it is nothing less 
 than 
 
 Turning the accomplishment of many years 
 Into an hourglass, 14 
 
20 THE RECOVERY OF 
 
 as Shakespeare says, and I must seek 
 to do it not with 
 
 the rattling tongue 
 Of saucy and audacious eloquence, 15 
 
 but eager, rather, to make my simple 
 little stream both shallow and deep 
 like the river described by Gregory 
 the Great, " wherein the lamb may 
 find a footing and the elephant float 
 at large. 7 ' 18 The proper limits of 
 time will permit me to tell only three 
 stories concerning the recovery of the 
 Ancient Orient, to paint three little 
 pictures, vignettes of patient labor and 
 of tireless industry. The first of them 
 has its place in the great valley of the 
 Nile, in Egypt, the second in the val- 
 leys of the Rhine, in Germany, and 
 of the Thames in England, and the 
 third in the vast and lonely valleys 
 of the Euphrates and the Tigris. 
 
 Egypt is the paradise of the archae- 
 ologist, for her incomparable climate 
 has preserved memorials of the past, 
 both small and great, which must 
 have perished if less favored lands had 
 concealed them. Travelers from dear 
 old father Herodotus onward trav- 
 
THE ANCIENT ORIENT 21 
 
 ersed portions of her valley, and car- 
 ried away memories of her fertility 
 and sometimes little tokens of her 
 artistic handicrafts a scarab or a 
 string of beads. These men were not 
 archaeologists, and it would be diffi- 
 cult to say when a traveler becomes an 
 antiquarian or an archaeologist. In 
 1683, however, a traveler brought to 
 England and presented to the Ash- 
 molean Museum, Oxford, a valuable 
 stele from the ruins of Memphis, 
 fashioned in the period of the Old 
 Kingdom. There can be no doubt 
 that he was an archaeologist. This 
 little piece of treasure trove was the 
 harbinger of the hundreds of thou- 
 sands of objects of Egyptian skill, 
 inscribed or uninscribed, which now 
 fill the museums of the entire civilized 
 world. 
 
 The most important of them hardly 
 began to be made accessible until 
 Napoleon made his great military 
 expedition into Egypt in 1798. He 
 was bent, indeed, upon a scheme of 
 conquest prodigious in conception, but 
 he was agitated also by "the desire to 
 wrest the secrets of learning from the 
 mysterious East/' which "seems al- 
 
2 THE RECOVERY OF 
 
 ways to have spurred on his keenly 
 inquisitive nature. " 17 He carried with 
 him translations of Thucydides, Plu- 
 tarch, Tacitus, and Livy, that he 
 might inform his mind concerning the 
 ancient world; and the authors them- 
 selves were typical of the knowledge 
 of antiquity then possessed by France. 
 He was, indeed, sailing to an unknown 
 shore, but his ship was happily named 
 U Orient, and upon it was a commis- 
 sion of savants whose business it was 
 to study the ancient land now to be 
 conquered. Their labors filled the 
 superb volumes of the Description de 
 I'Egypte, 18 and laid the foundations 
 upon which future generations were 
 to build, while the richest treasure 
 trove was the Rosetta stone, inscribed 
 with three versions hieroglyphic, de- 
 motic, and Greek of a decree of the 
 Egyptian priests in honor of Ptolemy 
 V 19 (Epiphanes, B. C. 205-182), and 
 his wife, Cleopatra. At the capitula- 
 tion of Alexandria, in 1801, this ob- 
 ject was ceded to the British govern- 
 ment, and by regular stages passed to 
 the British Museum. 20 It was an 
 Englishman, Thomas Young, a cele- 
 brated physicist, who first essayed, by 
 
THE ANCIENT ORIENT 23 
 
 its use, to decipher Egyptian. Im- 
 portant as his efforts were, they were 
 soon surpassed by the brilliant French 
 linguist, J. F. Champollion, 21 who, in 
 1818, was able to transcribe the de- 
 motic names of Ptolemy and Cleo- 
 patra into hieroglyphics, and within 
 four years had identified the name 
 of Alexander in a cartouche, and se- 
 cured no less than fourteen alphabetic 
 signs. With these he attacked some 
 drawings which had been brought 
 from Egypt and read the names 
 Rameses and Thotmes, thus proving 
 beyond reasonable dispute that his 
 researches had really taken the inner 
 citadel of the language. The kings of 
 Egypt would now live again, for 
 speech was restored to their silent 
 records. From that wonderful day, 
 the fourteenth of September, 1822, 
 the progress of decipherment was 
 steady. Richard Lepsius in Germany, 
 Samuel Birch in England, and Eman- 
 uel de Rouge in France took up the 
 great task, and their successors down 
 to Adolf Erman, of Berlin, in our 
 own day, have made for us dictionaries 
 and grammars until we proceed with 
 some of the sureness with which the 
 
24 THE RECOVERY OF 
 
 interpreter of Greek and Latin in- 
 scriptions labors, though even yet we 
 can hardly claim to read Egyptian as 
 we read the classical authors. 
 
 Contemporaneously with the proc- 
 esses of decipherment has gone the 
 assembling of materials to be read. 
 In the years 1842-1845 Richard Lep- 
 sius, under the patronage of the Prus- 
 sian government, explored Egypt and 
 Nubia as far as Khartum, and brought 
 back copies and squeezes of hundreds 
 of inscriptions which were soon to be 
 read. 22 After him Mariette became 
 director of the "Service of Antiquities/ 7 
 and began the collection of archae- 
 ological objects, and the preservation 
 of such as could not be moved from 
 their sites. A museum of Egyptian 
 antiquities founded first at Bulak, and 
 thence removed to a deserted palace 
 at Gizeh, is now splendidly housed in 
 a great building at Kasr-en-Nil, and 
 under the wise administration of Mas- 
 pero has risen to preeminent rank 
 among all its competitors, housing col- 
 lections which are the wonder and 
 admiration of every cultivated man 
 whose joy it is to see them. From the 
 unsurpassed riches of Egypt many 
 
THE ANCIENT ORIENT 25 
 
 other museums in Berlin, Paris, and 
 London have been filled with objects 
 of surpassing beauty or of skillful 
 adaptation to varied practical uses. 
 A few universities sadly few have 
 established professorships of Egyptol- 
 ogy, and patient scholars have re- 
 stored to our thought the hopes and 
 aspirations, as well as the achieve- 
 ments, of the gifted people who lived 
 in the valley of the Nile. 
 
 There is no more romantic story in 
 the brilliant annals of the progress of 
 human knowledge than this story 
 which I have thus inadequately por- 
 trayed. It began with the conquests 
 of the greatest military genius the 
 world has ever known. The physical 
 power which he wielded over Egypt 
 has passed to other hands, but this 
 great contribution to human knowl- 
 edge has survived the wreck of all his 
 fortunes. Well may we remember 
 Bonaparte's noble words to the magis- 
 trates of the Ligurian Republic: "The 
 true conquests, the only conquests 
 which cost no regrets, are those 
 achieved over ignorance/ 723 
 
 I have said enough, within the limi- 
 tations which are now properly upon 
 
26 THE RECOVERY OF 
 
 me, of Egypt. I turn to the recovery 
 of Israel, and especially to the recov- 
 ery from her wonderful literature of 
 the true story of her history, and a 
 more fruitful interpretation of her 
 heritage to all the ages. 
 
 We have seen that Johann Reuchlin 
 in the period of the Renaissance be- 
 came the founder of a new school of 
 Hebrew and Oriental study. Over the 
 names of hundreds of his successors I 
 must pass without a word of comment, 
 as I search for that which is imme- 
 diately significant, and at the same 
 time of wide-reaching importance. 
 Many of these made contributions to 
 our knowledge of Israel's literature, 
 or history, or antiquities; some of 
 them were men of daring invention 
 and of great power; some failed to 
 set out upon new lines only because 
 the time was not yet come. But 
 whatever the cause, centuries passed 
 and the Old Testament continued to 
 be studied with much the same tools 
 and with much the same result. But 
 now behold the beginnings of a new 
 epoch, the discovery of new methods 
 of research, the reconstruction of our 
 view of Israel's history and literature. 
 
THE ANCIENT ORIENT 27 
 
 To see this we must turn our eyes 
 from the broad Nile to the narrow 
 stream of a simple pastoral river in 
 Germany, the river Leine. There in 
 the city of Gottingen lived from 1803 
 to 1874, save only for the sad years of 
 exile, 1837-1848, Georg Heinrich Au- 
 gust Ewald as a student and as a 
 professor. There he began his career 
 as an investigator by the study of the 
 meters of Arabic poetry, but passed 
 speedily over to Hebrew, writing a 
 grammar in which he laid the foun- 
 dations of the historico-comparative 
 method in Semitic philology. With 
 this sound grammatical foundation he 
 moved over into more distinctively 
 literary study, and in 1840-1841 ap- 
 peared his great work on the prophets 
 (Die Propheteri), the second edition of 
 which was published so recently as 
 1867. In 1859 he finished his History 
 of the People of Israel. Into that one 
 supreme effort the greatest Orientalist 
 of his day, the greatest living Hebrew 
 grammarian, had poured the whole 
 fruitage of his life. Well might Dean 
 Stanley declare that it was "as power- 
 ful in its general conception as it is 
 saturated with learning down to its 
 
28 THE RECOVERY OF 
 
 minutest details." The book was, in- 
 deed, based upon a defective criticism 
 of its sources, but it rested upon 
 sound and often brilliant exegesis. 
 
 While Ewald was busy at Gottingen, 
 the University of Halle had a dis- 
 tinguished Old Testament expert in 
 Hermann Hupfeld, who in 1853 pub- 
 lished a great work, The Sources of 
 Genesis and the Mode of their Combi- 
 nation Investigated Anew. It would be 
 difficult to exaggerate the influence 
 of that book. By the labors of his 
 predecessors the world of learning was 
 beginning to be familiar with the 
 Jehovist, the Elohist, and the Deu- 
 teronomist, who were believed to 
 have written the original documents 
 from which the Pentateuch was com- 
 posed. But the explanation of the 
 manner in which they were united 
 to form the present book of Genesis 
 was a subject of much dispute. The 
 two regnant theories had been known 
 as the fragmentary and the supple- 
 mentary. Ewald had smitten the 
 former theory with all his tremendous 
 learning and energy, and it displayed 
 few signs of life afterward. And now 
 Hupfeld, having rediscovered in Gen- 
 
THE ANCIENT ORIENT 29 
 
 esis a source then called the second 
 Elohist, which Ilgen had previously 
 found, proceeded to show that each 
 of these three sources in Genesis was 
 formerly a separate work. That dem- 
 onstration made an end of the supple- 
 mentary theory and the ground was 
 cleared for a larger generalization, for 
 a newer and better theory which Hup- 
 feld was not able to produce. He had 
 done his work in a fine spirit. His faith 
 in the supernatural was deep and 
 strong, for the older rationalism to 
 which he was born he had left far 
 behind, yet he did not escape perse- 
 cution. In 1865 he was reported to 
 the Prussian government as "an ir- 
 reverent critic of the divine revela- 
 tion"; but it is pleasant to remember 
 that the entire theological faculty at 
 Halle supported him, including the 
 saintly Tholuck. In the very next 
 year he passed to his reward. 
 
 And now my story approaches its 
 climax. While Hupfeld was lecturing 
 and writing at Halle, in the simple 
 little valley of the Saale, Edward 
 Reuss was professor of Old Testament 
 Theology at Strassburg, then a city of 
 France, in the noble valley of the 
 
30 THE RECOVERY OF 
 
 Rhine, fairest river of Europe. Reuss 
 had thought long and diligently upon 
 the Old Testament and had arrived 
 at conclusions so different from all 
 that his predecessors had announced 
 that he dared not publish them. But 
 he set them forth to his students from 
 time to time, and in that wonderful 
 lecture room they were heard by two 
 young men, Karl Heihrich Graf and 
 August Kayser, who gave to them a 
 publicity which their author had not 
 dared. The conclusion that Reuss 
 planted in his students' minds came to 
 him, so he said, almost as an intuition. 
 It was startling enough, surely, though 
 he stated it in simple words: "The 
 prophets are earlier than the law, 
 and the Psalms are later than both." 24 
 In 1865 Graf published a book en- 
 titled The Historical Books of the Old 
 Testament: Two historico-critical Inves- 
 tigations. That book has revolution- 
 ized the discussions of the Old Testa- 
 ment, partly because the way before 
 it had been admirably prepared by 
 the work of John William Colenso, 
 Anglican Bishop of Natal, the first 
 volume of whose great book on the 
 Pentateuch and Joshua, Critically Ex- 
 
THE ANCIENT ORIENT 31 
 
 amined, had appeared in 1862, with 
 a second edition following in the next 
 year. This book made clear to many 
 minds that the old views of the Mo- 
 saic authorship of the Pentateuch and 
 its unassailable historical accuracy in 
 small as well as in great were alike 
 untenable. 25 For this service to learn- 
 ing he was quite naturally accused of 
 heresy, tried, convicted and formally 
 deposed by the Bishop of Cape Town, 
 but on an appeal to the Privy Council 
 was restored, and, having labored long 
 and successfully for the spiritual eman- 
 cipation of the Zulus, and not less 
 successfully in biblical criticism, he 
 died (in 1883) upon his mission field, 
 leaving an imperishable name. 
 
 Neither Graf nor Colenso could have 
 successfully carried this great cause 
 but for the exposition, extension, and 
 defense of their theses by two men so 
 extraordinary in learning, in insight, 
 and in power of generalization as 
 Abraham Kuenen and Julius Well- 
 hausen. These two men made the 
 new era. 
 
 In 1869 there appeared in Leiden 
 Kuenen's Religion of Israel (Godsdienst 
 van Israel) , which came to a second edi- 
 
32 THE RECOVERY OF 
 
 tion in 1887. Accused of a dangerous 
 naturalism, though his attitude was 
 rather psychological, Kuenen's contri- 
 bution to a proper appraisement of Is- 
 rael's religion, when compared with that 
 of her neighbors, made a new road into 
 the heart of antiquity. Meanwhile, be- 
 tween these two editions of Kuenen's 
 monumental work, in the year 1876 
 there had begun a series of papers by 
 Julius Wellhausen on the Composition 
 of the Hexateuch, published together in 
 1885 and in an enlarged form in 1889. 
 Then in 1878 Wellhausen published 
 his Prolegomena zur Geschichte Israels, 
 a second edition of which was issued 
 in 1883. In these books the develop- 
 ment hypothesis of Vatke was coura- 
 geously applied to the whole Old 
 Testament history; the documents 
 were analyzed with a thoroughness 
 never attempted before, while every 
 feature of the religious life and cere- 
 monial was studied in its several 
 relations to the history. There is 
 nothing that I can say which could 
 possibly exaggerate the importance of 
 these works of Kuenen and Well- 
 hausen. Whether you agree with 
 them or not, in whole or in part, 
 
THE ANCIENT ORIENT 33 
 
 matters little indeed, but to g<T~on 
 with Old Testament research without 
 taking heed to them is absolutely im- 
 possible. They have filled the whole 
 world with a new discussion. No 
 commentary can be opened without 
 finding some allusion, direct or in- 
 direct, to the position which they set 
 forth and defended. Their fundamen- 
 tal thesis is simple enough. They 
 accepted the results which their pre- 
 decessors had achieved in separating 
 the first six books of the Old Testa- 
 ment into four great original docu- 
 ments known as the Jehovistic or 
 Judaistic, the Elohistic or Ephraimis- 
 tic, the Deuteronomist, and the Priest- 
 Code, and they sought to prove that 
 they had been produced in the order 
 J., E., D., P., and that the last, the 
 Priest-Code, was composed during the 
 Babylonian exile. The view of Is- 
 rael's history which this rearrangement 
 of the sources compels is indeed far 
 different from that which the priests 
 of Jerusalem had taken when the 
 Books of Chronicles were written, and 
 it is small wonder that it awakened 
 doubt in many quarters, stern oppo- 
 sition in others, and heated repudia- 
 
34 THE RECOVERY OF 
 
 tion in still others. That it has made 
 enormous and astounding headway 
 against all opposition none can deny. 
 It has found acceptance of its main 
 conclusions nearly all over the world, 
 and the opposition to it is now more 
 an opposition to details, such as to 
 the date which it assigns to certain 
 documents, than to its fundamental 
 contentions. There still remains, in- 
 deed, a respectable body of scholars, 
 adherents of the new astral theories 
 of Babylonian religion, who find more 
 fundamental objections. Whether it 
 will overcome all opposition remains to 
 be seen, and I shall not venture upon 
 specific prediction; but it may be re- 
 garded as certain, I think, that its 
 mark upon the study of the Old Tes- 
 tament is permanent. No matter 
 how much the theory may be changed 
 by later research, we shall never again 
 go back to the view of the Old Testa- 
 ment which it displaced. Perhaps I 
 ought also to say that the Old Testa- 
 ment, in its real significance, in its 
 own very self, has not suffered one 
 whit in the process. It is better and 
 truer and richer than ever. The 
 theories which have been built about 
 
THE ANCIENT ORIENT 35 
 
 it and over its essential truths have 
 indeed suffered, and may suffer more. 
 Your ideas and mine have suffered or 
 experienced change a process most 
 wholesome, and proof of our life, for 
 life is change. Theology by the 
 achievement and by the acceptance of 
 these new results has proved itself 
 worthy of holding its place with all 
 the great sciences which have broad- 
 ened man's view of the world, cleared 
 his cities of desolating pestilences, and 
 helped his creatures to a better life. 
 The real message of the Old Testament 
 is in no more danger from the ex- 
 plorations of the most rigid and search- 
 ing criticism than is God's universe 
 from the investigations of astronomy 
 or geology. Old Testament Criticism 
 has had its share in the recovery of 
 the Ancient Orient. 26 
 
 I must now turn to my third story, 
 the story of the recovery of Baby- 
 lonia and Assyria. In romance it is 
 not behind the story of Egypt's re- 
 covery; in surprises it far surpasses itj 
 in the extent of its results and in the 
 wide extent of their influence it excels 
 it much. No such rich plunder of 
 written documents in inscription and 
 
36 THE RECOVERY OF 
 
 tablet and monument ever before 
 came out of the earth. I must speak 
 of it with some restraint, lest my en- 
 thusiasm put you too much upon 
 your guard and prevent even the 
 proper acceptance of my story. 
 
 In the year B. C. 607 or 606 the 
 city of Nineveh was destroyed and 
 deserted, the walls of its palaces top- 
 pled in, and the unburned bricks of 
 which they were partly composed dis- 
 solved into formless masses under the 
 rains, while the sands of the desert 
 drifted over them and turned them 
 into big mounds. The very site of 
 the city was forgotten so completely 
 that a cultivated Greek led his re- 
 treating ten thousand by the mounds 
 and never knew that beneath them 
 lay the remains of antiquity's most 
 powerful city. In similar fashion 
 Babylon, with all its splendor, was re- 
 duced to heaps and mounds, standing 
 in solemn silence by the slow-flowing 
 course of the Euphrates. From these 
 mounds must be excavated the records 
 of their civilization and these be de- 
 ciphered before we should be able to 
 recover a picture of their life, an 
 appreciation of their culture, or a 
 
THE ANCIENT ORIENT 37 
 
 knowledge of their contributions to 
 civilization. 
 
 It fell to the lot of an Englishman 
 to begin that great work of excavation 
 which was to restore to modern knowl- 
 edge the ancient civilization of Baby- 
 lonia and Assyria. It was on Decem- 
 ber 10, 1811, that Claudius James 
 Rich saw for the first time the great 
 mounds that marked ancient Baby- 
 lon's grave. Here is what he had to 
 say of his first impressions: "From 
 the accounts of modern travelers I 
 had expected to find on the site of 
 Babylon more, and less, than I ac- 
 tually did. Less, because I could have 
 formed no conception of the pro- 
 digious extent of the whole ruins, or 
 of the size, solidity, and perfect state 
 of some of the particular parts of them; 
 and more, because I thought that I 
 should have distinguished some traces, 
 however imperfect, of many of the 
 principal structures of Babylon. I 
 imagined I should have said: 'Here 
 were the walls, and such must have 
 been the extent of the area. There 
 stood the palace, and this most as- 
 suredly was the tower of Belus.' I 
 was completely deceived; instead of a 
 
38 THE RECOVERY OF 
 
 few insulated mounds, I found the 
 whole face of the country covered with 
 the vestiges of building; in some places 
 consisting of brick walls surprisingly 
 fresh, in others merely of a vast suc- 
 cession of mounds of rubbish of such 
 indeterminate figures, variety, and 
 extent as to involve the person 
 who should have formed any the- 
 ory in inextricable confusion and 
 contradiction/ 727 
 
 He did not attempt excavations, but 
 secured from the natives tablets writ- 
 ten in the cuneiform character, which 
 neither he nor indeed anyone could 
 read, but which were later to become 
 intelligible to men. Nine years later 
 he entered the city of Mosul, on the 
 banks of the Tigris, and spent four 
 months in sketching and planning the 
 great mounds which he considered 
 formed the remains of the city of 
 Nineveh. The beginning was made, 
 but it was long before actual excava- 
 tions were begun, and the honor of 
 undertaking them fell to France and 
 not to England. 
 
 On May 25, 1842 a fateful day in 
 the history of Assyriological research 
 Paul Emil Botta entered upon his 
 
THE ANCIENT ORIENT 39 
 
 duties as vice-consul of France at 
 Mosul. Soon afterward he began ex- 
 cavations upon one of the great 
 mounds of Nineveh, but met with 
 only very moderate success. He then 
 dispatched some of his workmen to try 
 the mound of Khorsabad, fourteen 
 miles away. \ The resolve was fortunate, 
 and in three days word was brought to 
 him at Mosul that antiquities and in- 
 scriptions had already been found. He 
 went to the scene and there beheld a 
 sight which thrilled him. Before his 
 astonished eyes was an excavation 
 which had laid bare the marble floor 
 of one part of some great room and 
 on its surface lay fragments of marble 
 sculptures, calcined by fire, and num- 
 bers of well-preserved inscriptions. He 
 knew that the discovery was impor- 
 tant, but he did not know that he had 
 lighted upon the remains of a vast and 
 imposing palace erected by one of the 
 greatest kings who had ever ruled in 
 Assyria, Sargon II (B. C. 721-705), 
 conqueror of Samaria, destroyer of the 
 northern kingdom of Israel. Cheered 
 by this, Botta pushed on with dogged 
 persistence until he had laid bare 
 much of the palace, and drawn from 
 
40 THE RECOVERY OF 
 
 their concealment scores of inscrip- 
 tions, chiefly upon stone, and monu- 
 mental in character. The results far 
 exceeded his fondest dreams, and the 
 materials thus retrieved and sent off 
 to Paris laid the foundations of one of 
 the great Assyrian collections of the 
 world, in the museum of the Louvre. 
 In 1845 Austin Henry Layard, an 
 Englishman, followed Botta and suc- 
 ceeded on the mounds at Nineveh 
 where Botta had been least fortunate. 
 He and his disciple, Hormuzd Rassam, 
 uncovered the buried library of Ashur- 
 banipal (B. C. 668-625), last of the 
 great Assyrian kings, and poured into 
 the British Museum a flood of thou- 
 sands of clay books, in which were to 
 be found examples of almost every 
 phase of literature known to the an- 
 cient world. 
 
 This was but the beginning of exca- 
 vations. Others followed in quick 
 succession, and France, England, 
 America, and Germany vied with each 
 other in an honorable search for the 
 memorials of an ancient civilization. 
 It was the French who were first 
 (1852) in the field with brilliantly suc- 
 cessful excavations at Khorsabad and 
 
THE ANCIENT ORIENT 41 
 
 at the site of ancient Babylon, whose 
 results were, unfortunately, lost by 
 the overturning of the raft in the 
 Tigris, though happily not until they 
 had been critically examined and par- 
 tially copied by Jules Oppert clarum 
 et venerabile nomen who thus early 
 gave promise of the distinguished ca- 
 reer which was to come. Long after 
 (1877-1881) the French were again 
 successful in the person of M. Ernest 
 de Sarzec, who brought out of one 
 mound in southern Babylonia the re- 
 mains of a fine temple whose outer 
 walls were one hundred and seventy- 
 five feet long and one hundred feet 
 broad, and from whose inner cells and 
 rooms came statues and inscriptions 
 fashioned by the great Sumerian peo- 
 ple, whose culture had preceded the 
 Semitic in the great valley. 
 
 Between these last two expeditions 
 the English people were well repre- 
 sented in explorations by William 
 Kennet Loftus, J. E. Taylor, who first 
 struck a spade into the mound cover- 
 ing Ur of the Chaldees, and by George 
 Smith, who, doubly famous in de- 
 cipherment and in excavation, finally 
 laid down his life at Aleppo (August 
 
42 THE RECOVERY OF 
 
 19, 1876), faithful in the pursuit of 
 knowledge to the last. 
 
 Incited by the example of the older 
 peoples, America joined the company 
 in 1889, and John P. Peters, J. H. 
 Haynes, and H. V. Hilprecht laid bare 
 a large part of the ancient city of 
 Nippur, 28 at whose famous temple men 
 had worshiped when written history 
 was still in its youth. As these all had 
 done their share, it was fitting that 
 the youngest of the great empires, 
 Germany, should also manifest her 
 interest. Even while I speak, at As- 
 shur, oldest city of the Assyrian world 
 empire, and at Babylon, seat of the 
 most ancient culture, the Germans are 
 at work with the same devotion to a 
 precision in things small and great 
 which has given them the world's 
 leadership in science. 29 
 
 Here now were the stores of written 
 records, and they were just as silent as 
 though buried, until the key to set 
 free their speech was found. This was 
 a task requiring patience, persist- 
 ence, and a certain almost uncanny 
 genius in the "showing of dark sen- 
 tences and dissolving of doubts." 
 Let me show in a few sentences 
 
THE ANCIENT ORIENT 43 
 
 only what these qualities brought to 
 fruition. 
 
 In 1765 Carsten Niebuhr brought 
 from the table land of Persia, where 
 once had stood the city of Persepolis, 
 made beautiful and imposing by 
 Darius the Great (B. C. 521-485), a 
 series of trilingual inscriptions all 
 written in the wedge-shaped or cunei- 
 form characters, but each somewhat 
 different in form. In 1802 George 
 Friedrich Grotefend, a master in the 
 Gymnasium at Frankf ort-on-the-Main, 
 set himself definitely to the apparently 
 hopeless task of comparing three un- 
 known languages in order to the solu- 
 tion of one, and its reading. & The 
 first of each group of these was an- 
 cient Persian, and by the archaeologi- 
 cal method of comparison Grotefend 
 picked out the signs which spelled the 
 great names Darius, Xerxes, and Cyrus 
 and the key was found! Even while 
 he was thus patiently at work, Sir 
 Henry Rawlinson, in far-away Persia, 
 was climbing the perilous rocks at 
 Behistun to copy a large inscription of 
 Darius, also in three languages, which 
 he forthwith began to decipher, using 
 precisely the same method as Grote- 
 
44 THE RECOVERY OF 
 
 fend. It was these two men, partly 
 independently and partly by mutual 
 assistance, who gave men the ability 
 once more to read Persian. The sec- 
 ond language in each group was Su- 
 sian, and the third Babylonian. The 
 last yielded first to the decipherment, 
 and the glory of it fell to Edward 
 Hincks, a country clergyman in a tiny 
 fishing village in Ireland. To him also 
 and to Jules Oppert in Paris was it 
 given to lay the foundations of Assy- 
 rian grammar, which were later to 
 find full exposition at the skillful hand 
 of Friedrich Delitzsch, 30 general di- 
 rector of the German excavations of 
 which I was speaking but a few 
 minutes ago, and founder of a school 
 of Assyriologists, whose labors abound 
 and to whom belongs in large measure 
 the present leadership of the science. 
 Excavation had produced the material 
 and decipherment had made its read- 
 ing possible. 31 
 
 Almost in the very beginnings of 
 the newborn science of Assyriology 
 points of contact with Israel devel- 
 oped. George Smith, at work in the 
 British Museum, found upon Assyrian 
 tablets the names of Hebrew kings, 
 
THE ANCIENT ORIENT 45 
 
 and in a short time followed that up 
 by finding the Babylonian story of the 
 flood, which bore such marked resem- 
 blance to the narrative in Genesis that 
 none could doubt that some relation- 
 ship existed between them. There 
 began a discussion which continues 
 with almost unabated intensity and 
 interest until this present moment. 
 
 Soon thereafter the early decipherers 
 produced out of the mass of Assyrian 
 documents inscriptions of Shalmaneser 
 III, king of Assyria, an account of one 
 of his campaigns into the West, in 
 which he claimed a great victory over 
 Bir-idri (Ben-Hadad) of Damascus, 
 with his allies, and names as one of 
 them Ahab, king of Israel. 32 That one 
 discovery related the history of Israel 
 to the wider history of the ancient 
 Oriental world, and gave men their 
 first real opportunity to grasp its sig- 
 nificance as a history among histories. 
 And when, a little later, religious texts 
 from Babylonian mounds began to 
 appear, it slowly dawned upon the 
 minds of thinking men that the re- 
 ligion of Israel was likewise a religion 
 among religions, and that the problem 
 of its investigation had become enor- 
 
46 THE RECOVERY OF 
 
 mously complicated, at the same time 
 that it became far more interesting. 38 
 
 While these investigations were in 
 progress the tide of exploration rose 
 higher. New Assyrian collections were 
 formed in Berlin and in Philadelphia, 
 and their assembled objects mounted 
 into the tens of thousands, while 
 scores of smaller collections were scat- 
 tered over the world from Upsala in 
 Sweden to Buenos Aires in Argentina. 
 Assyriology was divided into special- 
 ties. One man gave most of his time 
 to grammar, another to lexicography; 
 one to historical, another to religious 
 texts. The language of Nineveh and 
 of Babylon disclosed relationships with 
 Arabic on the one side and with He- 
 brew on the other. The comparative 
 grammar of the Semitic languages 
 began to be written. Comparative re- 
 ligion was almost overwhelmed with 
 facts demanding a new synthesis. The 
 ancient Oriental world was recovered 
 in so far that it was now possible to 
 view its details of life and thought in 
 the light of its whole history, political, 
 social, and economic. 
 
 My story is told; my little pictures 
 are drawn. Suffer me but a moment 
 
THE ANCIENT ORIENT 47 
 
 while I make a bold claim. I have 
 spoken of the recovery of Egypt, of 
 Israel, of Babylonia. These are but 
 typical instances. I have said naught 
 of Phoenicia, of the Hittites, of Persia, 
 of Chaldea, of Armenia. I am bold 
 to say that in the realm of history and 
 of letters, these are the most remark- 
 able achievements of the human mind 
 during the last century. Even though 
 they have brought to us no art, and no 
 letters equal to those of Greece or of 
 Rome, they have set in new and clearer 
 relationships the classical literature of 
 religion, which is Hebrew, and this 
 is not less precious to us than the 
 best that 
 
 Athens, the eye of Greece, mother of arts 
 And eloquence, 34 
 
 has bequeathed to us. Our minds 
 have been broadened by the process, 
 we see further into the mysteries of 
 human life; we are richer than our 
 fathers; and glorious as all this is, 
 before us lies the promise of yet more 
 fruitful days, for the end of the re- 
 covery of the Ancient Orient is not 
 with us, but with the generations still 
 unborn. 
 
NOTES 
 
 I HAVE ventured to write these notes in 
 explanation of matters that could not be 
 covered in an hour's address, hoping that 
 some might find an empty hour for their 
 perusal, and count it not ill spent if aught of 
 interest or of value be secured, or perhaps a 
 misunderstanding prevented, or, better than 
 either, a door to larger learning be opened. 
 They are not very numerous, nor very lengthy, 
 remembering the wisdom of Willibald Alexis: 
 "Viele Antworten und Wegweiser sind schlim- 
 mer als keine." 
 
 1 The society was organized at the ancient 
 college of William and Mary, Williamsburg, 
 Virginia, December 5, 1776, by five students 
 John Heath, Richard Booker, Thomas 
 Smith, Armistead Smith, and John Jones. It 
 was then little more than a social club, but 
 rose to serve a higher cause in days of greater 
 national prosperity. 
 
 2 Alexander William Kinglake, Eothen, or 
 Traces of Travel, brought home from the 
 East (New York, 1864), p. 2. The journey 
 was made in 1835, and the charming book 
 first published in 1844. There are few more 
 sensitive and delightful books of travel. 
 
 3 In the excavations on the site of Samaria 
 conducted by representatives of Harvard Uni- 
 versity there were found seventy-five ostraca 
 inscribed in the Phoenician character in the 
 
 48 
 
THE ANCIENT ORIENT 49 
 
 period of Ahab, king of Israel, and containing 
 such legends as this: "In the tenth year. 
 From Abiezer to Shemarjau. A jar of old 
 wine for Asa. From the hill." D. G. Lyon, 
 Hebrew Ostraca from Samaria. Harvard Theo- 
 logical Review, January, 1911, p. 136f. 
 
 4 Many thousands of the inscribed clay 
 tablets excavated in the mounds that cover 
 the ancient cities of Babylonia and Assyria 
 deal with such business records as these. The 
 contribution which they make to our knowl- 
 edge of ancient life may be studied in C. H. 
 W. Johns, Babylonian and Assyrian Laws, 
 Contracts and Letters. New York, 1904. A. H. 
 Sayce, Babylonians and Assyrians, Life and 
 Customs. New York, 1899. 
 
 5 A large part of the historical literature of 
 the Babylonians and Assyrians consists of 
 boasts of conquests, many of which must have 
 been exaggerated. A curious instance of this 
 is found in the accounts of the first campaign 
 of Shalmaneser III (B. C. 859-825) against 
 the West. He fought with a body of raw 
 levies from Hamath, Damascus, and Israel, 
 who were assisted by allies from Cilicia and 
 Cappadocia, from Phoenicia, Arabia, and 
 Ammon. Of these famous victories he has 
 left us four separate accounts. Tho first 
 claims that he slew 14,000 of his enemies, the 
 second makes their loss 20,500, the third 
 places it at 25,000, and the fourth increases it 
 to 29, 000. See the original texts translated 
 in Rogers, Cuneiform Parallels to the Old 
 Testament, New York, 1912, p. 289f. 
 
 e The famous law code of the Oriental world 
 
50 THE RECOVERY OF 
 
 is the Code of Hammurapi, king of Babylon 
 about B. C. 2000. See the entire code trans- 
 lated in Rogers, Cuneiform Parallels, p. 398f. 
 
 7 Thomas Moore. 
 
 8 In the mass of material now continually 
 printed concerning the Old and New Testa- 
 ments we are sometimes moved to forget that 
 all learning is not new. Our bibliographies, 
 even in books that have some claim to scien- 
 tific quality, are largely restricted to books of 
 recent date, and most readers are led to the 
 belief that before our advent on the scene 
 little was done for biblical learning. There 
 could scarcely be a greater fallacy. For 
 months at a time during a number of years 
 I have had the pleasure of sitting daily at 
 work in the Duke Humphrey's library of 
 the Bodleian at Oxford. Before me stood 
 great lines of folios from the fifteenth to the 
 seventeenth centuries, commentaries for the 
 most part upon the Old and New Testaments. 
 Much, indeed, of their contents is now anti- 
 quated, but it is not too much to say that 
 many new discoveries published in University 
 theses would be found safely reposing within 
 their unopened pages. It would help the 
 modesty of some of us to read the books of 
 our predecessors. The greater repositories of 
 biography and bibliography bristle with names, 
 now generally unknown, of men who kept the 
 torch alight in other days. The number of 
 them would surprise most of those who would 
 turn over the pages of the twelve volumes of the 
 New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious 
 Knowledge, New York, 1908-1912, and yet 
 
THE ANCIENT ORIENT 51 
 
 more would be found in the twenty-two vol- 
 umes of the Realencyklopddie fur protestantische 
 Theologie und Kirche, Leipzig, 1896-1909. 
 
 9 Francesco Petrarcha (1304-1374), whose 
 ear for melody caused him to change the 
 uneuphonious family name Petracco, in which 
 he was born, and whose rich taste made him 
 the first collector of manuscripts, coins, and 
 inscriptions, was nobly endowed for his high 
 mission. Well has Voigt (Die Wiederbelebung 
 des Classischen Alterthums, i, p. 23) said that 
 his "name shines as a star of the first magni- 
 tude in the literary and intellectual history 
 of the world, and would not be less if he had 
 never written a verse in the Tuscan 
 language." 
 
 10 Giovanni Boccacio (1313-1375), unlike his 
 friend Petrarch, is more famous for his own 
 contribution to literature (the Decameron) 
 than for his devotion to the recovery of the 
 ancients. From him Chaucer, Spenser, and 
 Shakespeare borrowed stories. 
 
 11 Desiderius Erasmus (1466-1536), "the 
 first 'man of letters' who had appeared in 
 Europe since the fall of the Roman empire." 
 "Of Erasmus's works the Greek Testament is 
 the most memorable. It has no title to be 
 considered as a work of learning or scholar- 
 ship, yet its influence upon opinion was pro- 
 found and durable. It contributed more to 
 the liberation of the human mind from the 
 thraldom of the clergy than all the uproar 
 and rage of Luther's many pamphlets" 
 (Allen). 
 
 12 The uncomplimentary phrase comes from 
 
52 THE RECOVERY OF 
 
 Jerome's account of his Hebrew studies: "I 
 intrusted myself to the teaching of a certain 
 brother who had been converted from Ju- 
 daism, that, after the keen intellect of Quin- 
 tilian, the rivers of Cicero, the dignity of 
 Fronto, the gentleness of Pliny, I might 
 learn the Hebrew alphabet and con its strident 
 and panting vocables. My conscience and 
 that of those who lived with me is witness of 
 all the labor I spent on that study, the diffi- 
 culty I endured, how often I despaired, how 
 often I threw up the study, and in my zeal 
 took it up again; and I thank God that, from 
 the bitter seed, I cull the sweet fruit of 
 literature." 
 
 13 Johann Reuchlin (1455-1522), German 
 humanist, devout and faithful Catholic, Au- 
 gustinian monk in his later years, "a name 
 only second to that of his younger contem- 
 porary Erasmus" (Robertson Smith). 
 
 14 King Henry V, Chorus to Act I. 
 
 15 Midsummer Night's Dream, Act V, Scene 1. 
 
 16 The quaint phrase comes from Gregory's 
 letter to a friend who had urged him to under- 
 take his first great literary work, Expositio in 
 beatum Job sen moralium libri XXV, which 
 he used to call his Moralia, a book that served 
 as a compendium of Ethics in the Middle 
 Ages. Though based on a false exegesis and 
 full of fantastic examples of allegorical inter- 
 pretation, it, nevertheless, contains nuggets of 
 gold, and well deserved to be translated into 
 English by a modern Hebraist and Saint 
 (E. B. Pusey, Lives of the Fathers, London, 
 1838). 
 
THE ANCIENT ORIENT 53 
 
 17 John Holland Rose, The Life of Napo- 
 leon I, London, 1902, i, p. 182. 
 
 18 The full title of this monumental work, 
 which first acquainted Europe with Egypt, is 
 Description de VEgypte, ou recueil des obser- 
 vations qui out ete faites en Egypte pendant 
 r expedition de I'armee franf aise (37 volumes, 
 Paris, 1820-1830). 
 
 19 J. P. Mahaffy, The Empire of the Ptole- 
 mies London, 1895. Chapter VIII, with an 
 Appendix containing the Greek text of the 
 Rosetta Stone. 
 
 20 The Rosetta Stone is now exhibited in the 
 Egyptian Gallery, No 24, British Museum. 
 A good picture of it may be seen in C. J. Ball, 
 Light from the East, London, 1899, p. 254, 
 and a very exact reproduction in E. A. W. 
 Budge, The Mummy, Chapters on Egyptian 
 Funeral Archceology, Cambridge, 1893, p. 108. 
 In the same volume is a most interesting ac- 
 count of the process of decipherment, with 
 excellent bibliographical material. 
 
 21 Hartleben, Champollion sein Leben und 
 sein Werk, Berlin, 1906. 
 
 .. M C. R. Lepsius, Denkmaler aus Agypten und 
 Athiopien, Berlin, 1849-1859. 
 
 23 J. H. Rose, The Life of Napoleon I, Lon- 
 don, 1902, i, p. 196. 
 
 24 This thesis came first to Reuss in 1833. 
 It is interesting to note how long a time 
 elapsed before it secured publicity. Compare 
 K. Budde und H. J. Holtzmann, Eduard 
 Reuss 9 Briefwechsel mit seinem Schuler und 
 Freunde K. H. Graf, 1904. 
 
54 THE RECOVERY OF 
 
 25 Cplenso had an eminent predecessor in 
 the view which he felt himself required to 
 take concerning the historical character of 
 the Pentateuch. This was Wilhelm Martin 
 Leberecht De Wette, whose great book on 
 Introduction had appeared soon after the 
 opening of the century (Beitrage zur Einleitung 
 in das Alte Testament, I, Historisch-kritische 
 Untersuchung uber die Bucher der Chronik, 
 Halle, 1806; II. Kritik der mosaischen Ge- 
 schichte, Halle, 1807). De Wette perceived 
 clearly that these books contained rather 
 "epic-poetic memories of a people concerning 
 its past" than history, but his book made, of 
 course, no popular impression in England, and 
 Colenso's work came like a thunder clap out of 
 the clear sky. 
 
 26 The acceptance of these results in Great 
 Britain was slow, and in America yet slower. 
 The first great contest in the former came 
 in the person of William Robertson Smith, 
 who for promulgating them in his article 
 "The Bible" in the ninth edition of the En- 
 cyclopedia Britannica was removed from his 
 professorship in the Free Church College, 
 Aberdeen. The story of that strange con- 
 troversy in the Presbytery, Synod, and Gen- 
 eral Assembly of the Free Church of Scotland 
 has only now been fully told (John Sutherland 
 Black and George Chrystal, The Life of 
 William Robertson Smith, London, 1912), and 
 a sad story it is of a real intellectual victory 
 on Smith's part, ending, nevertheless, in a 
 verdict of expediency against him. Robertson 
 Smith triumphed in the end through a larger 
 
THE ANCIENT ORIENT 55 
 
 victory in public opinion and in a course of 
 lectures (W. Robertson Smith, The Old Tes- 
 tament in the Jewish Church, 2nd edition, 
 London and Edinburgh, 1892) prepared the 
 minds of men for a wider view of the Scrip- 
 tures. The complete change from open hos- 
 tility and inhospitable dread of biblical 
 criticism to general acceptance owes most to 
 the tactful, learned, and skillful labors of 
 Professor Samuel Holies Driver, of the Uni- 
 versity of Oxford, who in sermons, lectures, 
 popular papers, and in a book of great erudi- 
 tion (S. R. Driver, Introduction to the Literature 
 of the Old Testament, New York, 1891-1911, 
 numerous editions) has wrought a great and 
 beneficent revolution. In America the pio- 
 neers were Charles Augustus Briggs, Henry 
 Preserved Smith, and Francis Brown in the 
 Presbyterian Church, and Milton S. Terry and 
 Hinckley G. Mitchell in the Methodist Epis- 
 copal Church. Briggs, Smith, and Mitchell 
 suffered ecclesiastical penalties for their labors, 
 as had Robertson Smith before them. 
 
 27 Fundgraben des Orients, bearbeitet durch 
 eine Gesellschaft von Liebhabern, Wien, 1813, 
 p. 129. The narrative of Rich is comprised 
 in pages 129-162, and also pages 197-200. 
 The former are reprinted by his widow, 
 Narrative of a Journey to the Site of Babylon 
 in 1821, now first published, etc., London, 
 1839. 
 
 28 John P. Peters, Nippur, New York, 1897. 
 
 29 Extended accounts of these and other 
 excavations may be found in Robert W. 
 Rogers, History of Babylonia and Assyria, 
 
56 THE RECOVERY OF 
 
 New York 1900, Vol. I, and in Hermann V. 
 Hilprecht, Explorations in Bible Lands during 
 the Nineteenth Century, Philadelphia, 1903. 
 
 80 Friedrich Delitzsch, born September 3, 
 1850, son of Franz Delitzsch, the eminent 
 Hebraist and Old Testament commentator, 
 began his career at Leipzig, where his dis- 
 tinguished father was professor, and after- 
 ward was professor of Assyriology in Breslau. 
 He is now professor in Berlin, and director of 
 the Museum of the Antiquities of Western 
 Asia. His Assyrian Grammar, Dictionary, and 
 Chrestomathy are the standard books of in- 
 struction in the science, and his pupils are 
 everywhere, among them Professors Heinrich 
 Zimmern in Leipzig, Peter Jensen in Marburg, 
 David Gordon Lyon in Cambridge, Robert 
 Francis Harper in Chicago, Carl Bezold in 
 Heidelberg, Paul Haupt in Baltimore, F. H. 
 Weissbach in Leipzig, and many others, 
 among whom also the present writer is happy 
 to be enumerated, and glad to pay this small 
 tribute to a kind and generous teacher. 
 
 81 A larger account of the whole process of 
 decipherment, with illustrative plates of the 
 inscriptions will be found in Robert W. 
 Rogers, History of Babylonia and Assyria, 
 New York, 1900, Vol. I, and in Arthur John 
 Booth, The Discovery and Decipherment of the 
 Trilingual Cuneiform Inscriptions, London, 
 1902. 
 
 82 This famous inscription is translated in 
 Robert W. Rogers, Cuneiform Parallels to the 
 Old Testament, New York, 1912, pp. 294ff. 
 
 38 The bearing of these discoveries upon the 
 
THE ANCIENT ORIENT 57 
 
 religion of the Hebrew people is discussed in 
 Robert W. Rogers, The Religion of Babylonia 
 and Assyria, especially in its Relations to 
 Israel, New York, 1908. 
 
 34 John Milton, Paradise Regained, iv, 240, 
 241. 
 
BOOKS BY 
 PROFESSOR ROBERT W. ROGERS 
 
 HISTORY OF BABYLONIA AND ASSYRIA. 
 Seventh Edition. Two volumes, large 
 octavo, bound in cloth, gilt tops. Price, 
 $500. 
 
 I have long been acquainted with Professor R. W. 
 Rogers' History of Babylonia and Assyria. I have 
 used it perpetually and recommend it as the best 
 available book on the subject. The clear style of 
 exposition, the full acquaintance with facts, combined 
 with a sound and sober view of historical canons of 
 evidence, render it a first rate type of history. 
 C. H. W. JOHNS, Master of Saint Catherine's College, 
 Cambridge; Lecturer on Assyriology, University of 
 Cambridge and at King's College, University of 
 London. 
 
 The History of Babylonia and Assyria by Professor 
 Robert William Rogers puts the entire body of his- 
 torical readers under obligation to its author. . . . 
 Rawlinson is to-day only a step less outdated than 
 Rollin. These records of 3,500 years of the race, or 
 twice the Christian era, lie scattered in hundreds of 
 publications, a great library of deciphered inscrip- 
 tions, not easily grasped even by professional students. 
 Professor Rogers has done the inestimable service of 
 collating this vast mass. ... In a work to 
 which for years to come the general reader and the 
 student will turn he has marshaled in order the suc- 
 cession of the races, dynasties, kings, and the events 
 of their reigns. ... A constant and personal 
 reference to original authorities marks all this work, 
 which places its author among the few who have 
 made this vast field accessible to the general public. 
 American scholarship has a new achievement of the 
 first usefulness in these volumes. TALCOTT WILLIAMS, 
 LL.D., Dean, Columbia University, New York. 
 58 
 
THE ANCIENT ORIENT 59 
 
 THE RELIGION OF BABYLONIA AND ASSYRIA, 
 ESPECIALLY IN ITS RELATIONS TO ISRAEL. 
 Five lectures delivered at Harvard Uni- 
 versity. Beautifully illustrated. Large 
 octavo, bound in red cloth, gilt top, 
 library style. Price, $2.00, net. 
 
 Brief yet first-hand accounts of the ancient religions 
 with which Israel in the course of its history was 
 brought into relation have been among the pressing 
 needs of students of the Old Testament. So far as 
 one of the most important of these religions is con- 
 cerned, the need is most admirably met by Professor 
 Rogers' Religion of Babylonia and Assyria. The 
 accurate knowledge of the scholar is set forth with 
 the skill that is the fruit of wide and varied experience 
 as a teacher both in America and England. Professor 
 Rogers had already done good service to the cause of 
 learning by his History of Babylonia and Assyria. 
 The new volume, owing to its briefer treatment and 
 more special subject, should meet the needs of a 
 larger circle of readers, who will thus be enabled by 
 comparison to gain a more intelligent appreciation 
 of the Jewish Religion and of the Old Testament 
 Scriptures. G. BUCHANAN GRAY, Litt.D., D.D., Pro- 
 fessor of Hebrew and Old Testament Exegesis, Mans- 
 field College, Oxford. Author of a Commentary on 
 Numbers; Hebrew Proper Names; The Divine Discipline 
 of Israel, etc. 
 
 I congratulate you and the printer on the admirable 
 form of the volume. I am pleased that our Summer 
 School has called forth such a work. And I congratu- 
 late you on the saneness of view and the excellence of 
 style of your description; you prove that a history 
 of an ancient religion may be "not harsh and crabbed 
 as dull fools suppose, but musical as is Apollo's lute." 
 You have infused life into the old story not a small 
 triumph. You have made a book that everybody 
 may read with pleasure and profit; I hope it will 
 bring the knowledge of the old religion to many for 
 whom it has been only a name. CRAWFORD H. TOY, 
 Ph.D., LL.D., Sometime Hancock Professor of Hebrew 
 and other Oriental Languages, Harvard University. 
 
60 THE RECOVERY OF 
 
 CUNEIFORM PARALLELS TO THE OLD TESTA- 
 MENT. Large octavo, bound in red cloth, 
 gilt top, library style. Richly illustrated 
 with many copies of cuneiform monu- 
 ments. Price, $4.50, net. 
 
 This book contains translations of all the Baby- 
 lonian, Assyrian, and Persian inscriptions, mytho- 
 logical, chronological, historical, and legal which are 
 parallel with or illustrative of the Old Testament, 
 with notes and introductions. 
 
 I congratulate you most warmly upon its comple- 
 tion. I shall value it greatly and constantly use it: 
 the materials are ^ust what are wanted, and so con* 
 veniently arranged: I am particularly glad also that 
 you have found room for the transliterations. It 
 will, I feel sure, become the standard work of reference 
 on the subject, and be widely used by students. 
 SAMUEL R. DRIVER, D.D., Litt.D., Regius Professor 
 of Hebrew and Canon of Christ Church, Oxford, 
 England. Author of Commentaries on Deuteronomy, 
 Daniel, Joel, Amos, and Jeremiah, etc., etc. 
 
 In his admirable work, Cuneiform Parallels to the 
 Old Testament, Professor R. W. Rogers has collected 
 all, or nearly all, of the passages occurring in Baby- 
 lonian-Assyrian and classical literature which have 
 any bearing upon the Old Testament, and has made 
 them available to every biblical student by means of 
 careful and scholarly translations. The completeness 
 with which the materials have been brought together 
 forms a distinguishing feature of the book, which 
 does not merely, like Schrader's Cuneiform Inscrip- 
 tions and the Old Testament, aim at illustrating and 
 elucidating biblical passages by disconnected references 
 to Cuneiform literature, but, rather, strives to present 
 as a whole certain subjects or groups of subjects be- 
 longing to that literature touched upon in the Old 
 Testament. It will, therefore, be of scarcely less use 
 to the Assyriologist than to the biblical student. 
 RUDOLF E. BRUNNOW, Ph.D., Professor of Semitic 
 Philology, Princeton University. 
 
THE ANCIENT ORIENT 61 
 
 One cannot help being sincerely delighted with Pro- 
 fessor Rogers' splendid edition of Cuneiform Parallels 
 to the Old Testament, for we have greatly needed such 
 a book for a long time. The important parallels from 
 Babylonian and Assyrian literature are collected here 
 and edited in an admirable manner. Careful and re- 
 liable translations of the various documents with the 
 original text in transcription, are given with brief, 
 pointed introductions. The plan of the book is well 
 conceived and ably executed. Altogether it is a work 
 which is destined to become indispensable and of 
 which American scholarship may justly be proud. 
 JULIUS A. BEWER, Ph.D., Professor of Hebrew and 
 Cognate Languages in Union Theological Seminary, 
 New York. 
 
 DEAR PROFESSOR ROGERS: I heartily congratulate 
 you upon the appearance of your great book, Cunei- 
 form Parallels to the Old Testament. The preparation 
 of such books has been left too long to the Germans. 
 You have placed all English-speaking students of the 
 Bible and of antiquity under obligation by producing 
 in English an original help of such importance. Only 
 Assyriologists can, however, fully appreciate the diffi- 
 culties of your task and understand the full measure 
 of your success in overcoming them. The book should 
 find its way into every important library, as well as 
 into the hands of all pastors and serious students of 
 the Bible. With personal thanks, I am, cordially 
 yours, GEORGE A. BARTON, Doctor of Philosophy and 
 Professor in Bryn Mawr College, Pennsylvania. 
 
THIS BOOK IS DUE ON THE LAST DATE 
 STAMPED BELOW 
 
 AN INITIAL FINE OF 25 CENTS 
 
 WILL BE ASSESSED FOR FAILURE TO RETURN 
 THIS BOOK ON THE DATE DUE. THE PENALTY 
 WILL INCREASE TO 5O CENTS ON THE FOURTH 
 DAY AND TO $1.OO ON THE SEVENTH DAY 
 ^OVERDUE. 
 
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