The Historians' History of the World 01

Oppert, J., Babylone et Chaldée. Paris, 1874; L’immortalité de l’âme chez les Chaldéens. Paris, 1875; The Real Chronology of the Babylonian Dynasties. London, 1888 (in collab. with J. Menant); Documents juridiques de l’Assyrie et de la Chaldée. Paris, 1877; Histoire des empires de Chaldée et d’Assyrie. Versailles, 1865 (in collab. with J. Menant); Fastes de Sargon. Paris, 1863; Expédition scientifique en Mésopotamie. Paris, 1859-1863, 2 vols.; Fragments mythologiques. Paris, 1882; Fragments de cosmogonie chaldéenne. Paris, 1879; La fixation de la Chronologie des derniers rois de Babylone. Paris, 1893; La condition des esclaves à Babylone. Paris, 1888; Les inscriptions assyriennes des Sargonides et les fastes de Ninive. Paris, 1863.

Jules Oppert was born at Hamburg, 9th July, 1825. Professor Oppert is a German by birth but a Parisian by adoption. His whole oriental studies have been not alone made in Paris, but many of them under the direct auspices of the French Government, so that Frenchmen are perhaps justified in claiming him almost as a fellow-countryman. Professor Oppert has that comprehensive scholarship which is characteristic rather of the German than the Frenchman. He is a philologist and linguist of the broadest type. Unfortunately for the general public the German cast of his mind shows itself still further in his apparent contempt for the literary graces. He is a scholar who works for scholars, and it is but seldom that he has written anything which comes well within the grasp of the general public. His is, therefore, a name which one meets everywhere in pursuing the literature of Assyriology, but the results of whose investigations must usually come to the general reader, as it were, through an interpreter.

Peiser, F. E., Keilinschriftliche Aktenstücke. Berlin, 1890; Studien zur Oriental. Alterthumskunde. Berlin, 1897. (In Vorderasiat, Ges. Mitt. 1897, 4 vols.); Babylon, Verträge. Berlin, 1890; A Sketch of Babylonian Society (in Smithsonian Institute. Annual Report, 1898. Washington, 1899).—Perrot, G., A History of Art in Assyria. London, 1884.—Peters, J. P., Nippur, or Explorations and Adventures, etc. New York and London, 1897, 2 vols.; Some Recent Results of the University of Pennsylvania, Excavations at Nippur (in Amer. Jour. of Archeol., vol. 10, pp. 13, 352, 439, Princeton, 1895); The Seat of the Earliest Civilisation in Babylon and the Date of its Beginnings (in Amer. Orient. Soc. Jour., New Haven, 1896).

Dr. John Punnett Peters was formerly professor of Hebrew in the University of Pennsylvania; at present rector of St. Michael’s Protestant Episcopal Church, New York City. For more than a generation after the discoveries of Botta and Layard and their successors in Mesopotamia had been furthered by companies of English and French and German explorers, America had taken no part in the work, but in 1880, the University of Pennsylvania determined to make amends for this neglect by sending out a fully equipped exploring party. The leader of this movement, and the man who personally conducted the explorations of the first two years in the field, was Professor J. P. Peters. Through his energetic efforts the numberless difficulties that such an enterprise involves were overcome, and some most important discoveries were made. The chief of these was the location of the Babylonian city of Nippur, the site of that ancient temple of Bel, which was, as Dr. Peters points out, to many generations of old Babylonians and Assyrians what the temple of Jerusalem has been to the peoples of Christendom. His discoveries at Nippur have added greatly to the work that has been carried on at Babylon and Nineveh, and “helped to carry our knowledge of civilised man two thousand years farther back than was known less than half a century ago.” At Nippur he discovered what is probably the oldest known temple in the world. Both his expeditions met with very bitter and determined opposition from government officials and wandering inhabitants in the vicinity of Nippur, and it is mainly due to his fearless determination that successful excavations were finally made.

Pinches, T. G., Religious Ideas of the Babylonians. London, 1893; Notes. London, 1892; Sumerian or Cryptography (in Royal Asiatic Soc. Jour.; 1900, p. 75, 1900); The Babylonian and Assyrian Cylinder-Seals of the British Museum (in Jour. Brit. Archeol. Assoc.; vol. 41, p. 396, London, 1885). The Bronze Gates of Balawat in Assyria (in Jour. Brit. Archeol. Assoc.; vol. 35, p. 233, London, 1879); The Temples of Ancient Babylonia (in Proc. Soc. Bibl. Archeol., vol. 22, p. 358, London, 1900).—Place, V., Ninive et l’Assyrie. Paris, 1867-1890.—Pognon, H., Inscription de Meron-Nerar, roi d’Assyrie. Paris, 1884. Les inscriptions babyloniennes du Wadi Brissa. Paris, 1887.—Prévost-Paradol, L. A., Essai sur l’histoire universelle. Paris, 1890, 2 vols.