Semitic Museum Is Rich in Biblical Matter

Professor David Gordon Lyon, S.T.D. '01, Curator of the Semitic Museum of the University, wrote the article which is herewith reprinted in part from the Alumni Bulletin. The handicap the museum is now under due to lack of funds must be overcome by voluntary donations from members of the University and its alumni.

Beginning on January 31, the Harvard Semitic Museum will thereafter be open on Sunday afternoons. This event justifies a brief account of the character and significance of the Museum.

The Harvard Semitic Museum is a collection of objects coming from or relating to the Semitic stock of peoples. The chief representatives of this stock are Arabians, Arameans, Assyrians, Babylonians, Hebrews, and Phoenicians. The Semites were among the earliest peoples to rise to the state of civilized life. They have given to the world the alphabet, monotheism, three great religions, and three great books of religions. So vital and pervasive have these contributions been that, without a knowledge of their source, a large part of modern civilization is unintelligible.

Founded by Jacob Schiff

The Museum building is the gift of Jacob Henry Schiff, Esq., of New York. The contents were given by Mr. Schiff and a large number of other friends, living mainly in Boston and vicinity.

The contents of the Museum are both originals and reproductions in plaster ("costs"). Some of the groups may be named:

The casts include many of the finest Babylonian, Assyrian, and Hittite bas-reliefs and other monuments in the museums of London, Paris, Berlin, and Constantinople; likewise books, seals, seal impressions, weights, statuettes, etc., in the same museums.

The originals comprise several hundred manuscripts (Arabic, Hebrew, and Syriac); several thousand photographs and negatives; some two thousand jantern slides; a few bas-reliefs; and about two thousand clay books, seals, and statuettes of Babylonian origin; several thousand specimens of ancient pottery and coins from Palestine; and hundreds of specimens of the geology, fauna, flora, costumes, jewelry, and utensils of that country.

"A Bilbilcal Museum"

In the nature of the case, nearly all the material in the Museum has relations, more or less direct, to the Bible or to the islands of the Bible. To such degree is this true that at its inception, Professor J. Henry Thayer, of the Harvard Divinity School, proposed that it be named "Biblical Museum."

A few specimens may be mentioned from the Babylonian-Assyrian Room. Of casts we find the Babylonian code of Laws, promulgated nearly a thousand years before Moses, by Hammurabi (the Amraphel of Genesis XIV); Jehu, King of Israel (2 KI, IX); bowing in submission to an Assyrian conqueror; Sennacherib on his fateful Palestinian campaign (2 Kl, XVIII; Isa, XXXVI); the Assyrian story of the Deluge, parallel to Genesis VI IX,; an Assayrian protecting spirit, with the body of a lion, wings of an eagle, horns of a bull, and head of man, similar to the composite creatures described by Ezekiel, Assyrian war scenes and practices, hunting scenes of Assumbanipal, the Sardanapalus of Classic writers.

There are also many hundreds of originals, as Babylonian clay books, including several which record Nebuchadezzar's construction of palaces and temples at Babylon.

In the Palestinian Room of the Museum may be seen such objects as blocks of rock salt from the mountain at the southern end of the Dead Sea, the region of the story of Lot's wife; specimens of fine, bright-colored stone, such as Solomon may have used in building the Temple; models giving reproductions of the Tabennacle, of the Temple of Solemon, and of the Temple of Herod; tiles from the Tenth Roman Legion stationed at Jerusalem in the first century; hand mills, such as were used by the women of old and are used by the women of old and are used by the women of today in Palestine; agricultural implements, as the one-handled plow, which no man could guide while looking backwards, or the plowman's goad against which the prodded animal kicks in vain; skin and parchment scrolls of portions of the Hebrew Scriptures; Syriac manuscripts of the New Testament, many century; old; part of the Epistle to the Romans written on papyrus; in the fourth century; and so forth.

Appeal to Historian Is Strong

"The emphasis laid on the Biblical feature of the Museum must not be allowed to make the impression that this is the only interest of the collections. Far from it. To thoughtful minds the historical appeal is equally strong.

No one can ever feel the reality and the weigth of history so deeply as when he stands in the presence of the venerable monuments of antiquity. This is what makes a visit to Rome, Athens, or Memphis so impressive, so full of awe. In the Museum are written records of a period so ancient as to make moderns of Moses and Homer, revealing a civilization so remote as to fill our minds with wonder. These oldest remains come, of course, from the Tigris-Euphrates valley, the culture of which was a mixture of Semitic and non-Semitic elements. This culture profoundly influenced the younger branches of the Semitic stock, and, through them, all of western civilization.

The impression made by the written monuments is reenforced by the art remains. The larger speciments, as bas-reliefs and statues, many of which have found their way to the museums of Europe and American, are annalistic in character, giving in pictures, as the written records do in words, the history of the rulers whose palaces they adorned. Many of these scenes, nothing those of battle and war practices, are ethically far from pleasing. Other bas-reliefs, as hunting scenes, are, though still annalistic and characterized by certain rigid conventions, true to life and finely executed. Notably is this so in treatment of animal forms, the horse, the lion, the dog. To the student of the history of art these bas-reliefs have great value.

Nor was the ancient taste for art confined to princely personages. That it was widespread among the people appears from the artistic character of armor, statuettes, costumes, coiffures, furniture, and household utensils, such as goblets, dishes, knives, and weights.

Herodotus states that every Babylonian gentleman carried a seal. European museums have thousands of these objects, partly cylindrical, partly avoid, often inscribed with the owner's name, and provided with engravings in great variety of form. The Semitic Museum has several hundred, and not a few of our clay books are stamped with seal impressions, the original of which have never-yet been found. Only real masters of intaglio can have produced seals of such high degree of excellence.