Lincke, A. A., Bericht über die Fortschritte der Assyriologie, 1886-1893. Leipsic, 1894.—Lindl, E., Die Datenliste der ersten Dynastie von Babylon; in Beiträge zur Assyriologie. Leipsic, 1901.—Loftus, W. K., Chaldea and Susiana. London, 1857.—Lotz, W., Die Imschriften Tiglathpileser I. Leipsic, 1880.—Lyon, G., Keilschrifttexte Sargon’s, Königs von Assyrien, 722-705 v. C. Leipsic, 1883.
Maccalester, S. H., Babylon and Nineveh. Boston, 1892.—Macphail, S. E., Monumental witness to Old Testament History. London, 1879.—Martin, G., La campaigne de Sennakerib en Palestine, etc. Montauban, 1892.—Martin, F., Textes religieux assyriens et babyloniens. Paris, 1900.—Maspero, G. C. C., Histoire ancienne des peuples de l’Orient. Paris, 1886; The Struggle of the Nations. London, 1896; The Dawn of Civilisation. London, 1897; Life in Ancient Assyria. London, 1892.—Meissner, B., Beiträge zum altbabylonischen Privatrecht. Leipsic, 1893.—Menant, J., Babylone et la Chaldée. Paris, 1875; Découvertes assyriennes. La Bibliothèque du palais de Ninive. Paris, 1880; Empreintes de cachets assyrio-chaldéens relevés au Musée britannique sur des contrats d’intériet privé. Paris, 1883; Les pierres gravées de la Haute-Asie. Recherches sur la glyptique orientale. Paris, 1883, 1886; Les noms propres assyriens; recherches sur la formation des expressions idéographiques. Paris, 1861; Hammourabi (King of Babylon) Inscriptions. Paris, 1873; Les langues perdues de la Perse et de l’Assyrie. Paris, 1890; Annales des rois d’Assyrie. Paris, 1874; Ninive et Babylone. Paris, 1888; Les fausses antiquités de l’Assyrie. Paris, 1888.
Joachim Menant was born at Cherbourg, France, 16th April, 1820. The life of this famous orientalist furnishes yet another illustration of the practical man of affairs who finds also time for the most abstruse scholarship. Throughout a long life until 1890, when at the ripe age of three score years and ten, he was retired with the title of Honorary Councillor. Menant lived the practical everyday life of a magistrate, and practised this profession with such assiduity and judgment as to attain the highest distinction. Yet, at the same time, he found leisure hours enough to make himself everywhere recognised as one of the most accomplished of Assyriologists. A comparatively young man, when the discoveries of Botta and Layard and their successors first brought the Assyrian treasures to the attention of the world, Menant seemed from the very first to have been seized with a desire to investigate the strange inscriptions from Nineveh. He was among the first who undertook the investigation of the strange cuneiform writing and from then till now he has kept well in the van of the constantly growing company of Assyriologists. The list of his works is little more than a succession of papers on one or another of the subjects most intimately connected with this field. Most of them are of a technical character, and, therefore, have necessarily appeared only to a limited audience. In one or two instances, however, and notably in the case of the little book on the library of Asshurbanapal, he has descended to the popular level, and has shown himself capable of handling the most abstruse topics in a way to make them delightfully interesting to the least scholarly of readers. Strange to say, this beautiful little book has never been hitherto translated into English, and a like neglect has attended nearly all the other publications of the author. It is difficult to find an explanation of this neglect unless it be the author’s well-known attitude towards the status of the ancient Hebrew records. On more than one occasion he has expressed the opinion that to single out the Jews among the peoples of antiquity as the one important race of their time is wofully to distort the perspective of history. Needless to say such an opinion as this throws one counter to the prejudices of a large proportion of people, including the mass of Assyriologists among the rest.
Ménard, L., Histoire des anciens peuples de l’Orient. Paris, 1883.—Meyer, E., Geschichte des Alterthums. Stuttgart, 1884, etc., 5 vols., in progress.—Monaco, A., Orientalia. Rome, 1891.—Muecke, Ch., Von Euphrat zum Tiber. Untersuchungen zur alten Geschichte. Leipsic, 1899.—Mueller-Simonis, P., Relations des missions scientifiques. Washington, 1892.—Mürdter, F., Gesch. Babyloniens und Assyriens. Stuttgart, 1891.
Niebuhr, B. G., Lectures on Ancient History. London, 1852, 2 vols.—Niebuhr, M., Geschichte Assurs und Babels. Berlin, 1854.—Niebuhr, C., Die erste Dynastie von Babel (in Vorderasiat. Ges. Mitt., vol. 3, p. 43). Berlin, 1897; Studien zur Geschichte des alten Orientes. Leipsic, 1894; Die Chronologie der Geschichte Israels, Aegyptens, Babyloniens und Assyriens von 2000-700 v. Chr. Leipsic, 1895.—Nikel, J., Herodot und die Keilschriftforschung. Paderborn, 1896.
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.