The daily morning journal and courier., 1905-03-30
FUSS OYER FOUR TABLETS.
THEY HAILED FROM BABY
 LON
And Scholars are by the Esrs-Their
 Reputed Author.

And Scholars are by the Esrs-Thetr Reputed Author. It all started over four little Baby
 lonian tablets, but it has filled the New York and Philadelphia papers the past week. The story is this:
 Dr. John P. Peters, now rector of St. Michael's church in this city, was pro-
 lessor in the University of PennsyiEa- mia and in the Episcopal seminary in Philadelphia. While there he secured the money for sending out the Wolfe expedition to Babylonia in 1SS4-1SS5, and later for the University of Penn sylvania expedition at Nippur, which he conducted for two years, and ot
 which he was director afterward while Dr. Haynes was in the field. For his first year he took with him Dr. Hil- precht as one of his assistants. He
 had known Dr. Hilprecht as fellow student in Leipzig, and had recom- l mended and introduced him to his po- sition as professor in the University of Pennsylvania. At the end of the first year of excavation at Nippur, when nothing had been found and there had been trouble and losses, Dr. Hilprecht resigned and left, declaring that noth- ing could be found there, Dr. Peters was not discouraged. He returned home reorganized the expedition, took two of it's members with him, Dr. Haynes and MT. Noorlan, and closed
 the year with large discoveries of buildings, tablets and monuments.
 Then he returned to his work at home, leaving Dr. Haynes In charge, and later resigned the directorship, which was given to Dr. Hilprecht. A year 1 later Dr. Hilprecht went to Nippur, I reaching there just after Dr.. Haynes had gathered in a large and lucky find of tablets. There he remained some | weeks closing up the expedition, after 1 having been on the ground, in both i visits, some four months. Meanwhile he did admirable work in deciphering and publishing the discoveries of Dr. Peters second year.
 But with his second visit to Nippur l he imagined himself to be great ex- plorer as well as decipherer. He wrote a book on explorations in the east in | which he represented Dr. Peters as in competent in scholarship and injudi- cious in his excavations, and claimed ! for himself the credit for what had I been done, and especially for the dis | covefy of the last collection of tablets, l which he identified as temple libra ry," and told of the general nature of it's literary contents. But during these | five years he has never published a sim l gle one. of it's contents, until scholars have begun to doubt whether it is any ] thing more than one of the record l rooms of business transactions of | which multitudes are in existence. But l he did publish in America and Germa- l ny an account of four tablets wkhich l he represented as from this temple li- l brary." When Dr. Peters found, how
 ever, that they were not from the a.'li-
 brary," and three of them from other
 cities and had been purchased years before the library was found, he so l informed the trustees who had pub lished Dr. Hilprecht's statement, for l their quiet examination.
 | But just then Dr. Hilprecht gave a lecture in Philadelphia on the subject, was questioned, and the whole scandal came out. Dr. Peters and Professor | Prince testified that the tablets did not i come from the library" and Professor l Haupt said he did not believe there was any library, and the managers of | the museum tried to make an investi- | gation, and the trustees of the univer- sity objected, and then the officers of l the museum resigned. five members in | all, and Dr. Hilprecht made no de-
 fense, but says he is going to Constan- tinople next month to carry on his work on the library
 l While scholars are concerned at the l ungenerous treatment of Dr. Peters I and cannot understand by what per-
 yersity or blunder pr. Hilprecht has
 claimed credit as an explorer which
 does not belong to him, and has repre-
 scented tablets as from this library"
 which never were there, they are more | troubled that what is said to be a most
 valuable collection of literary and his torical documents is kept from the world for five years, and no one. al- lowed to see or publish them. Then, remember that when de Morgan found
 the great column with the Code of
 Hammurabi at suez, it was only a few
 months until Pere Schell gave it to the l world
 l We trust there is such library, and
 that Dr. Hilprecht will soon give us a | taste of it's contents, or let some one I else do it.-Independent.
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