Harvard Semitic Museum.

The Harvard Semitic Museum, which was opened in May of 1891, at present occupies a part of the new section of the Peabody Museum building. It is in charge of Professor D. G. Lyon, and is open to students and to the public from 9 a.m. till 5 p.m. except on Sunday and holidays. The Museum is intended to contain such material as shall illustrate the Semitic instruction given in the University and provide students with the means of original research.

Owing to lack of space, there are many cases of casts which cannot yet be exhibited, but the collection as it stands is, very interesting. It contains Babylonian-Assyrian seals and clay tablets, coins, photographs, manuscripts, and a selection of casts from the finest of the Semitic monuments in the various European museums. Of the manuscripts, only a few are exhibited in the railing case. They are Arabic, Syriac, and Hebrew, and among the latter area roll of the Law and rolls of the Prophets. Some of them are from Arabia and contain a translation into Arabic in addition to the Hebrew text. The oldest of the manuscripts is a copy of the Gospels written in 1207.

Beginning on the left of the door, the objects are arranged in chronological order, except where their size or the date of their arrival has prevented. Among the finest specimens in the collection are the colored casts of monuments from the Babylonian ruin of Tello and from the ruins of the Persian Susa. There are also casts of Hittite bas-reliefs and inscriptions. In the high cases in the room are casts of Assyrian monuments of the ninth and seventh century B. C. A case to the left of the door contains the original Babylonian clay tablets, while in one to the right are the original some seals and reproductions of other small objects from Assyria and Babylonia.

The museum owns many hundred photographs, but only a few, and these representing chiefly Palestinian scenery, are on exhibition.