Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 11.djvu/335

 ORIENTAL

303

ORIENTAL

1661 appeared the first edition of the great Lexicon by Job Ludolf, who in the edition of 1702 prefixed a "Dissertatio de Hannonia Lingua? JEth. cum. cet. Orient." Ludolf was also the author of a commen- tary on Ethiopic history. Later scholars who have attained eminence in this branch are Dillmann. who among other works published several books of the Ethiopic version of the Old Testament: Octateuch (Leipzig, 1853), the four Books of Kings (Leipzig, 1861-71), the Book of Enoch (1851), and the "Book of the Jubilees" (18.59) ; R. Lawrence, whopubhshed the "AscensioIsaiiE" (Oxford, 1819), and the "Apocalypse of Ezra" (1820); Hupfeldt, " E.xercitationes ^thio- pica;" (1825); Ewald "Ueber des ^thiop. Buch's Henokh Entstchung" (1854) etc. (See article Ethi- opia. — Language and Literature.)

In the field of Arabic the greatest honour is due to Baron Sylvestre de Sacy (1758-1838), a scholar of marvellous erudition and versatility, equally pro- ficient in the other Semitic languages as well as in Greek, Latin, and the modern European tongues. He may be said to have laid the foundations of Arabic grammar. Among his works are a " Chrestomathie arabe" (3 vols., Paris, 1806); "Grammaire arabe" (2 vols., 1810) etc. In Germany, George W. Freytag (1788-1861) became a great authority on Arabic. His greatest work is the "Lexicon Arabico-Latinum" (1830-37). Among the great number of more recent scholars may be mentioned Brockelmann, "Geschichte der Arabischen Literatur" (2 vols., Berlin, 1899- 1902) ; Hartwig Derenbourg, C. Caspari, Theo. Noel- deke etc. In this connexion it may be noted that an important school of Arabic studies has been instituted by the Jesuit Fathers in Beirut, Syria. As regards the study of Armenian, modern scholarship owes not a little to the scientific and Uterary labours of the Mechitarists (q. v.), a religious community of Arme- nians established at Venice since 1716. From this in- stitution, which is equipped with excellent printing facilities, have been issued numerous publications of Armenian texts, as well as translations of the same into various European languages. The latter half of the nineteenth century was marked by a great revival of interest in Oriental studies, owing to the magnificent and unex-pected results of archipologieal ex-ploration in the Bible Lands, particularly in Assyria, Babylonia, and Egypt. The account of the discovery and de- ciphering of the historic remains unearthed in these countries is of fascinating interest, and records one of the greatest scientific triumphs in the annals of West- ern scholarship. Of this great movement, which has resulted in the production of hundreds of volumes, only the briefest account can be given here.

Assyro-Babylonian Research. — Though preceded by the tentative work of Rich in 1811 and 1820, syste- matic explorations in Assyria may be said to have been inaugurated in 1843 by Paul-Emile Botta (French vice-consul residing at Mosul), at Kuyunjik (site of ancient Ninive), and at Khorsabad. These were interrupted the following year, but were resumed by Victor Place, Botta's successor, in 1851 and con- tinued till 18.55, all at the ex-pense of the French Government, which also published the results in monumental form. Henry .\usten Layard also began excavations in 1845 at the Mounds of Nimrud, near Mosul, and his work was continued on this and other sites until 1847. In 1849 he began another exploring expedition which lasted three years. It was under the auspices of the British Museum and was remark- ably successful. Layard also deserves great credit for the graphic and scholarly manner in which he pre- sented his discoveries to the public, and for having aroused interest by connecting them with the Bible story. In the mean time another expedition sent out by the French Government, under the direction of FulgenceFresnel, was exploring Babylonia, but un- forttmately the material results of the excavations

were lost through the sinking of a raft on the Tigris (1851). In 1852 the Assyrian Exploration Fund was organized in England, and, under the direction of Sir Henry Rawlinson, Loftus, and Taylor, excavations were carred on in various parts of Babylonia, and by Hormuzd Rassam at Kuyunjik. Less attention was being now paid to the identification of ancient sites, and more to the inscribed clay tablets which were dis- covered in great quantities; and Rassam, without knowing it, unearthed at Ninive a portion of the famous library of Assurbanipal (688-26 B. c).

From the time, that cuneiform inscriptions and tablets began to be brought from the East, European scholars had applied themselves to the extremely difficult task of deciphering and translating them, but without success until George Grotefend (1775-1853), professor at the lyceum of Hanover, found a key and partially deciphered a few inscriptions. The chief credit, however, for the great achievement which at last gave access to the vast treasures of the cuneiform writings belongs to Sir Henry Rawlinson. Between the years 1835 and 1839 he succeeded in copying the great inscription of Darius at Behistun in Persia. This inscription was chiselled in three columns on the face of a mountain cliff more than three hundred feet above the ground, and it was copied only after stren- uous labour and with serious risk of life. Rawlinson assumed as a working hj'pothesis that the first column was old Persian written in cuneiform characters, and the assumption was justified when the decipherment of this column was published in 1846. This furnished a key to the third column, which proved to be Baby- lonian (the most important for students of Assyriol- ogy), and the contents of this column, after much painstaking labour, were published in 1851. The second column, called the Median or Susian text, was not deciphered intil 1890. Over and above this splen- did achievement, Rawlinson rendered invaluable ser- vice to the science of Assyriology by editing the Cunei- form Inscriptions of Western Asia pubhshed by the British Museum. Between 1855 and 1872 little was done by way of excavation, but in the latter year George Smith, a young employee in the British Mu- seum, discovered some tablets containing fragments of a Flood legend strikingly similar in some respects to the Biblical narrative. The interest aroused by the publication of these fragments determined a new era of excavation. Between 1872 and 1875 Smith was three times sent to .\ssyria in the hope of finding more fragments bearing on Biblical accounts. In this he was unsuccessful and, unfortunately for the cause of Assyriology, he died prematurely while on his third expedition in 1876.

The exploration work for the British Museum was continued by Hormuzd Rassam, wlio, besides other valuable treasures foimd in variou.s jnirts of Babylonia, unearthed in the expedition of 1887-82 the great bronze doors with the inscriptions of Shalmaneser II (859-26 B. c). About the same time M. de Sarzec, French consul at Bassorah in Southern Babylonia, excavated the very ancient Telloh statues which were acquired by the French Government for the Museum of the Louvre. The work of de Sarzec was continued until his death in 1903, and resulted in the discovery of an enormous quantity of clay tablets, bronze and silver figures, vases, etc. The French ex- pedition to Susa, under the direction of M. J. de Mor- gan (1897-1902), wasoneof the most important in the history of A.s.syriology, for it resulted in the finding of the Hammurabi Code of Laws. This great code, which illustrates in many respects the Pentateuchal I^aw, was first translated by Father Scheil, the eminent Dominican scholar who was the Assyriologist of the expedition ("Textes Elamitiques-Semitiques", Paris, 1902), and later into German by Dr. Hugo Winckler of Berlin, into EngUsh by Dr. Johns and into Italian by Rev. Dr. Francesco Man. (See articles by Dr.