CB 241 H262a A A: o\ o\ 1 i 2[ 8i 91 9 i 4 i 21 HARVARD UNIVERSITY SEMITIC MUSEUM DRESSES DELIVERED AT THE FORMAL OPENING OF THE MUSEUM ON THURSDAYl FEBRUARYS, 1903 fasL'jam-i^xiiBKitis^. rsi^ THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES THE SEMITIC MUSEUM HARYARI) UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES DELIVERED AT THE FORMAL OPENING OF THE MUSEUM ON THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 5, 1903 CAMBRIDGE lPubUsbe& b^ tbe 'dniversitg 11)03 To the opening exercises wei'e invited relatives and friends of the donor of the building, all contributors to the Museum collections, the Overseers and the Corporation of the University, the members of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences with their wives, the Divinity School Faculty, Semitic instructors in the leading American univer- sities, and a few other friends of learning. About two himdred and fifty i)ersons were present. Tlie meeting began at three o'clock, and was held in the large lecture room of the Museum. It was followed by an inspection of the collections and by refresh- ments, which were served in the Palestinian room. The Semitic Museum is on Divinity Avenue, Cambridge, and is open daily, Sundays excepted, from 9 a.m. till 5 p.m. ^H-l B H- ^ ADDRESSES PROFESSOR D. G. LYON Mr. President, Honored Founder and Benefactors, Es- teemed Colleagues, Ladies and Gentlemen, Friends All : — We have come together to celebrate the opening of a building, the completion of which is a fulfilment and a prophecy. A Semitic Museum is something new. In many of the great museums of the world are to be found large collections coming from Semitic lands, but this Museum is the first which is intended to bring together only such objects and such others as are intimately re- lated to Semitic history. In other words, our Museum is the first that recognizes the fundamental importance of this material. And well it may, for the Semitic peoples have played no small part in the history of culture. In their somewhat restricted home in Southwest Asia, some of them ran through the varied stages of civilized life before the art of writing in Europe had become known. Among them flourished great rulers, mighty builders, wise law-givers. In later times these peoples 3026225 doul)tless received ideas from abroad, but they ojinnot have received so much as they gave. To mention a few facts familiar to all : The Alphabet was given to the world by Phoenicia, and Monotheism by Palestine, two of the grandest achievements of man. Judaism, Chris- tianity, and Islam, — three of the world's greatest reli- gions, — the Bible and the Koran, two of its most influential books, arose among the Semites. And the ideas which these peoples set afloat in the past have sailed beneficently through the ages. Without the Alphabet, and Monotheism, and the inspiring litera- ture of the Bible, and the contagious example of Hebrew bards and seers, and the Church, there might have been a powerful Western civilization, but it could never have been the civilization which we know. It would seem, then, most fit that we should have buildings devoted exclusively to teaching the known and to recovering the unknown about peoples so influential in shaping the ideas and the institutions under which we live. And there is need of such collections, " lest we forget " ; lest in the storm and stress of to-day we for- get the rock whence we were hewn. So vast and so absorbing is the new knowledge ever crowding upon us that many of us are in danger of forgetting that highest literary, moral, and religious knowledge, which is ever old, yet ever new. This building, with its open doors and free invitation, will stand as a reminder. To the scholar our collections will furnish the means of research, whereby the borders of the known will be still further advanced. To the student of Semitic languages and history at this University, they will serve to give a vividness and a most hel})ful sense of reality to what is learned in books and lecture-rooms. And there is scarcely a department of the University which may not find here material illustrative of its in- struction, preeminently the departments of History and the Fine Arts ; but also Music, Mathematics, Engineer- ing, Biology, Geology, and Anthropology. Likewise the Law School and the Divinity School. So true is this of the latter that there would be no incongruity in calling this a Biblical Museum. The only real ob- jection to such designation is that Semitic is a more comprehensive term. To this community, to schools and classes of art, to Sunday Schools, to the Churches, of all shades of belief, to the readers of the Bible and of History, this Museum will be a resort and an aid whose educational value only time can su})ply the means to estimate. And probably no feature of the enterprise has given to its promoters more pleasure than its anticipated value to the commu- nity and to the public at large. An incidental result of this education of the community will be a decrease of that prejudice, cruel and unjust, born of ignorance, which in the minds of some still attaches to the name Semitic. How appropriate that an institution of such benign possibilities should have its home at this University, which to its two mottoes, "Veritas," " Christo et Ecclesiae," might fairly add a third, "Freedom." Freedom to inquire, to learn, to believe, to teach ; freedom from fear, from prejudice ; freedom for all ; freedom in the truth ; freedom in devo- tion to the noblest manhood, and in service to the highest interests of man. And now a word about the building and its contents. The structure is solid and substantial, like the ideas for which it stands. On the ground floor are the depart- mental library, and three lecture rooms, wnth seats for twenty, fifty, and one hundred and sixty-five persons respectively. On the floor above this is the Curator's room and an exhibition room about eighty by fifty feet. The third floor has two rooms of about the same size as those on the second. The most noticeable feature of the exhibition room on the second floor is the large number of plaster casts from Assyrian bas-reliefs, and this may therefore be called the Assyrian Room. It includes also numerous casts from Babylonia and from the land of the Hittites, and many hundreds of original objects from Babylonia and Assyria, notably inscribed cuneiform tablets and cylinder seals. The large room on the third floor may be called the Palestinian Room, because the objects from Palestine are most numerous and of the greatest interest. There are, however, certain cases or })ortions of cases devoted to material, originals or casts, from Egypt, Persia, Arabia, Phoenicia, and Syria. The time since the completion of the building has not been sufficient for placing all of our collections on exhibition. This is especially the case with some seven hundred coins relating to Palestine, and about as many clay tablets from Babylonia. The same plea of shortness of time must be our excuse for any deficiency in regard to the descriptive labels. The doctrine, attributed to various administrators of museums, among others to Professor Louis Agassiz, that the ideal museum is a good collection of labels illustrated by specimens, is orthodox, and it is hoped that in due time ours will not fall short in this particular. To supply in part the lack for to-day, we have the assistance of students from the Department and from the Divinity School, who will aid the guests in examining the con- tents of the various cabinets. The arrangement, likewise, is in many instances not final, and in the same case will be found objects which do not naturally belong together. This results ft'om the impossibility of knowing just what cases would be re- quired liefore the specimens were unj)acked and l)iought togethei'. Nor must it be supposed that all our specimens are antiques, or meant for such. Modern life in Semitic lands is also entitled to representation in a Semitic Museum, and there are consequently many modern objects, espe- cially from Palestine. For instance, photographs and models of the mosque which now occupies the site of Solomon's Temple are an aid to the study of the site itself. As to the quality of objects to be found in a Semitic Museum, masterpieces of art must not be expected. It is in literature chiefly that the Semites have been great artists. None the less is every object, ancient or mod- ern, precious which helps us to understand their history, thought, and institutions. Even coarse and grotesque objects may speak eloquently to him who has ears to hear. The growth of our collections is known to many of you. What the University owned of Semitic material beside books prior to 1889 was some half-do/en plaster casts of Assyrian objects acquired by purchase, a small lot of Babylonian tablets presented by a friend (Miss Ellen Mason, of Boston), and a larger collection given by another friend (Hon. Stephen Salisbury, of Worces- ter). In 1881), the present Chairman of the Semitic Committee gave $10,000 for the purchase of material of Semitic origin, and this gift is the beginning of the Semitic Museum. For the considerable number of ob- jects bought with this money the Curator of the Peabody Museum (Professor F. W . Putnam) and his colleagues gave us a temporary home in a galler}' of their building. some sixty feet square. This room was opened to the public on May 13, 1891, and there the original collec- tions, with many subsequent additions, remained until their transfer to this building a few weeks ago. For their long-continued and generous hospitality, the Semitic Museum must ever remain under obligation to Professor Putnam and his associates. The Museum has continued to grow by additional gifts from the original source and from many other friends, and only a few years had elapsed when our chief benefactor provided us with a departmental library, for a long time housed in one of the lecture rooms of Sever Hall, — now happily at home in this building. Meanwhile, the Museum had outgrown the room which it occupied, and the need of a building, early perceived, became urgent, a building in which to concentrate the instruction, the library, and the collections. For such building it appeared that $50,000 would suffice, of which our Chairman offered to provide one half. This off"er was originally made early in the last decade, but the times were unfavorable for soliciting money. It was last made four years ago, January, 1899, with the condition that the other half should be secured by July 1st of that year. When July approached, the work was not complete, and our friend was asked if he were willing to extend the time. To this he replied negatively, but promised to give the entire sum of $50,000 if the other donors would allow their contri- 10 butions, nearly $20,000, to be used tor the purchase of additional material. All consented cheerfully, and thus we were far better equipped than we had hoped to be. Many of the cabinets on the top floor give evidence how a part of this money has been expended, and most of it remains for future purchases. When the plans were drawn it became apparent that $50,000 was not sufficient for a suitable luiildino-, to say nothing- about cases and furniture. This has been all happily provided by our good friend, and we have a small surplus for additional cases. It is not boasting nor exaggeration to say that the Semitic Department is now, with its building, its collec- tions, and its library, one of the best equipped in the University. For this achievement our benefactors, one and all, are entitled to profound gratitude. We have thus far considered achievement. But achievement is not all. This auspicious day is not only fulfilment, it is also a prophecy. We are happy to-day. We feel like felicitating our- selves without restraint. But while we rejoice at the progress made, we cannot shut our eyes to the fact that much remains to be done. Our building is not an end, but a means. Its completion marks but a milestone in a long journey. Do what we may to make happy the passage to the next milestone, we shall still leave much to be done by those who follow us. 11 To mention the most obvious task that lies before us : We should not longer delay, in emulation of the univer- sities of Berlin, California, and Pennsylvania, to enter the tield of exploration. This is no new idea to some of us, but in my own mind it has been greatly strength- ened by my recent Oriental travels in the interest of the Museum. It is exploration in Semitic lands which gives new material for research into the Semitic past. Never were the times more auspicious, never the revelations of discovery more wonderful, than at present. Babylonia, Assyria, Syria, Palestine, Egypt, all are beckoning us to exploration. What we need is an endowment or a series of endowments devoted to specified fields of ex- cavation. In other directions, too, there are evident needs, but this matter of exploration is the first to which our attention should be given. That these needs will be met by our friends, I cannot doubt. My prophecy, then, is this : That soon we shall be sending our sons to dig for our Museum, as they are doing to-day for other museums ; that in the future, not remote, enlargement Avill be necessary to accommodate additions to our collections ; that the building itself, the library, and exploration will be properly endowed ; and that thus the Museum in an ever-increasing degree will prove to be one of the most interesting and useful ever established. 12 II PKOFESSOR C. E. NORTON Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen : — The gratitude of Harvard College is due in full measure to its munificent benefactors who have con- tributed to the erection of this building and who have supplied the Semitic Department with the means of filling; it with suitable collections. There is no place in the world, I believe, where such a Museum would be more appropriate than here, for Harvard College, the heart of the University, was the first public institution of a Commonwealth which was founded on the rock of Semitic doctrine. It was from the Hebrew Scriptures of the Old Testament that the Puritan fathers of New England derived in the main not only their spiritual nurture and their relig- ious creed, but also the informing spirit of their civil government and of their social institutions. As was natural, then, the College was established on a Semitic basis and largely as a nursery of Semitic learning. The first code of Laws and Rules governing the stu- dents, drawn up by the first President of the College, fixed as the qualification for obtaining the first scholastic degree that ' ' every scholar that on proof is found able to read the original of the Old and New Testaments into the Latin tongue, being of honest life and con- 13 versation, and at a public act hath the approbation of the Overseers and President of the College, may be invested with his first degree." In the first one hundred and fifty years of the exis- tence of the College there was no element of culture more assiduously cherished or more important in the scheme of education than that of Semitic learning. It is a curious and notable fact that for forty years in the eighteenth century we had a Jewish teacher here whose instruction every student, except the Freshmen, was required to follow on four days in the week, and each student had to be provided with a Hebrew Bible or Psalter, and a Hebrew lexicon. If, in later years, the study of Hebrew has fallen off, and if the influence of the Hebrew scriptures in the life of the College has declined, on the other hand there has been a fuller and more general recognition of the immeasurable debt which our Western civiliza- tion owes to the Jewish race and to its sacred books, from the fact that they have contributed to it the law and doctrine of Righteousness. Whatever else the Old Testament may be, it stands, solitary and distinguished, as a document of Righteousness, and whether by the mouth of Law-giver or King or Priest, or Psalmist or Prophet, the burden of its teaching is, "In the way of Righteousness," and only in that way, " is life." This is the great Semitic contribution to civilization. But during the last seventy years the interest in other 14 branches of Semitic learning has vastly increased with the enormous and rapid increase of knowledge by dis- covery and investigation. Syria, Arabia, and Meso- potamia have yielded up a part of their long hidden treasures ; Nineveh and Babylon have been called up from their tombs to tell us their story, and reveal something of their ancient greatness. But only a begin- ning has been made in this work. The future will give us much more. And so with this Museum ; it will grow from year to year in interest and importance. And as its collections increase may they not only add to the means of knowledge in the University, but may they help to quicken and strengthen in the youth who resort hither from generation to generation that spirit which found its highest poetic expression in the Semi- tic literature of the Hebrew race — that moral spirit, which is the inspiration of individual and of national Righteousness. Ill DR. CYRUS ADLER Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen: — George Brown Goode, the most distinguished museum administrator of his time, declared that "the degree of civilization to which any nation, city, or province has attained is best shown by the character of its public museums and the liberality with which they are main- 15 tained." If this test be applied to Harvard University, then this ancient seat of learning would outrank all of its parent institutions and sister institutions in foreign lands and at home, for there does not exist, to my knowledge, any single set of university museums which equals those of Cambridge in Massachusetts. To these foundations with which the names of Agassiz and Pea- body are associated you have now added a new one — unique in all the world — the first museum exclusively devoted to Semitic studies. It is coming to be more and more recognized that in everything which makes for the higher life the mod- ern man derives directly from a few groups of peoples that lived about the Mediterranean, and that a knowledge of their civilization is essential to an understanding of the history of human thought. It had been supposed for a long time that religion was the only important product of the Semitic mind and soul, and the study of these important peoples was confined to the theological faculty or pursued from the })oint of view of the divinity student, thus limiting to a profession what should have been the property of all cultivated men. But as Semitic researches advanced through the dig- ging up of buried cities and the uncovering of hidden parchments, it was seen that the rudiments of the sci- ences and the arts as well were to be found in Western Asia ; that not only must the student of the Bible know his Semitic history and archaeology, but that 16 every educated man should be cognizant of the fact that when he used his alphabet, he was going back to the ancient Phoenicians ; that when he examined the face of his watch, with its combination of sixes and tens, he was employing the number system of the ancient Bal)ylonians ; that when he spoke of the stars in the heavens or uttered some of the commonest terms known to mathematical and chemical sciences, he was speaking in the language of mediaeval Arabia ; that when he prayed to his God, he was employing the concept handed down from Palestine. These, I take it, are the ideas which the Semitic museum at Harvard is designed to teach in objective form to your great body of students. Its eflectiveness on this side will be in proportion as correct museum methods prevail. The distinguished head of the Smith- sonian Institution, Mr. S. P. Langley, has inscribed over the entrance to one of its rooms the words "Knowledge begins in wonder," and a museum is, to be paradoxical, a kindergarten for grown-up persons. "An efficient educational museum," said Dr. Goode, "may be described as a collection of instructive labels each illustrated by a well-selected specimen." To these selected specimens there must always be added the reserve and study collections to stimulate original re- search after the interest shall have been aroused and the preparatory training necessary for successful research shall have l)een acquired. 17 Every museum should have three functions — to pre- serve, to instruct, and to add to the sum of knowledge, — record, education, research. It holds within itself for its Curator the great joy of eternal striving. No museum should ever be completed, for "a finished museum is a dejid museum, and a dead museum is a useless museum." My learned friend. Professor Schechter, who has probably recovered more ancient manuscripts than any other single man, told me a story recently of an Eng- lish provincial who came to London to see the British Museum. It was cleaning day, and the Museum was closed to visitors. The Englishman stormed — he was a British tax-payer and yet was excluded from the National collections. A polite official informed him that the stalf was absent, and that the Museum was not open to the public. The tax-payer demanded to know where the members of the staff were, and the official explained in despair that a mummy had died and that as a mark of respect the curators had gone to the funeral. The apologetic official had hit upon a profound truth — it is the business of inuseum officials to make m.um'mies live. It is a little over twenty years since the study of Hebrew and the cognate languages, which had been, in American universities, the property of the theological faculties, was made a portion of the University curri- culum in the academic and philosophical courses. It 18 is even a shorter period — if I may be allowed a per- sonal allusion — since Professor Lyon and I began to exchange casts of small Assyrian objects for our respective collections in Cambridge and Washington. Neither of us dared to hope that before a generation should pass a special museum would have been erected and filled with collections to further the studies to which we were devoted ; and I rejoice to-day with the professors and with all the members of Harvard Uni- versity, with the generous donors and with Semitic scholars everywhere, at the formal opening of this Museum, which bears within itself the promise of the more liberal education of the student and the provision of original material for the scholar devoting his life to the increase of knowledge in the important fields of Semitic archaeology, ethnology, palaeography, and philology. IV PROFESSOR C. H. TOY A LETTER READ BY PROFESSOR G. F. MoORE Unable, to my regret, to be present at the formal opening of the Semitic Museum, I am glad to send, to the University and to all persons interested in Semitic studies, congratulations on its successful completion ; and, as one of the instructors in the Semitic Department, to offer hearty thanks to all those who have contributed toward its construction and equipment. 19 To the University the Museum will stand, among other things, for the unity of Semitic genius and culture. The Semitic peoples, it is true, have followed diverse paths, — have, indeed, been pioneers in diverse lines. The Phoenicians were the earliest commercial middlemen or universal traders, and the final fashioners of our alphabetic signs. The Assyrians and Babylonians prac- tically began that process of empire-building that ended in the unification of the Roman world. The Jews were the first to make monotheism an element of popular life, and they composed sacred books and established institutions that form the basis of Western Aryan re- ligion. The Arabians created a religion that now con- trols Western Asia, European Turkey, and Northern Africa. Here are certainly difierences of historical achievement ; yet in them all we can see a common element : the organization of everyday life, and, more particularly, of commercial and religious life. Other things have been done by other peoples, — this thing by the Semitic people. This substantial unity justifies the title " Semitic Museum." This Museum will, however, it is to be hoped, be only one among many in the University. Alongside of its collections will stand those that illustrate the civi- lizations of Egypt, India and Persia, Greece and Rome, and the races of modern Europe. These are to be studied, each for itself, and then all of them together. It will be found that they have all contributed to our 20 modern life. The history of the ancient Western World has been described as a series of actions and reactions between the Semites and the Indo-Europeans, and this description comes very near the truth. Culture then, as now, was a process of give and take. In this process the Semites bore themselves bravely and with honor, borrowing freely and giving as freely. It is not worth while to ask what race contributed most to the final result, — such a question could not be answered. It is enough to know that there came about a fusion of various elements, not one of which could be dispensed with in the make-up of modern civilization. For certain of these elements this Museum will stand, and, in conjunc- tion with other Museums, will aid the University in its task of bringing its students into sympathetic touch with the total intellectual and spiritual life of the world. For this function the Museum is already well prepared by its excellent equipment ; and we may trust that it will grow steadily from year to year, and become more and more a powerful exponent of Semitic culture. Extracts from various other letters were read by Pro- fessor Moore. One of these letters was from Professor Morris Jastrow, Jr., of the University of Pennsylvania, and was as follows : — To our regrets that we cannot accept, I wish to add my sincere congratulations to you and to the promoters of the Museum upon the success which has crowned 21 your efforts. You have created a unique institution, and the opening of the Harvard Semitic Museum marks, I firmly believe, an epoch in the further development of Semitic and general Oriental studies in this country. Amid the great stir created by the sciences that stand in close and direct touch with the needs and conditions of daily life, we are apt to lose sight of the advances made during the past two decades in the promotion of the sciences which are concerned more particularly with the past. The celebration on February 5th will serve to call attention to this fact, and I venture to think that the encouragement of the less practical sciences is the safest and surest index of a country's intellectual progress. - V JACOB H. SCHIFF, ESQ. Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen : — Those among us who know something of German literature may be acquainted with Goethe's beautiful saying: " Wohl dem, der seiner Ahnen gern gedenkt," ' ' Happy he who in gladness remembers those he sprang from." With a deep attachment to my race, proud of its past achievements, sensible of its continuing respon- sibilities, pondering over its development, the question has at times presented itself to me, ' Where did the history of my people begin?' And the Psalmist made -n answer : ' As Israel came out from Egypt, the house of Jacob from the land of its oppressors, then Judah entered upon its holiness, Israel upon its conquest!' Thus the Psalmist. Thus the ages have reechoed the words of God to the Patriarch of Ur Chasdim : ' Through thy seed shall all the peoples of the earth be blessed.' Forth into Egypt the Patriarch's children emigrated, alas, into bondage, and bondsmen have never made history. But the promise of God faileth not ; and after a sojourn in Egypt for four hundred years Israel, freed upon High command, took possession of the land promised its fathers. For thirteen hundred years the Israelites dwelt in Palestine, until their long wandering, their great world mission, began, — a mis- sion not yet, as is evident, ended. Unrolled before our vista, since the Patriarch's days, lie centuries of Semitic history and development, to which the Hebrew has, however, by no means been the sole even if he has been the largest contributor. Babylon, Assyria, and others — as in less remote times the fol- lowers of Mohammed — have had their important share in the development of Semitic civilization. Indeed, the history and activities of almost all of the various branches of what is generally known as the Semitic race have furnished so tempting a field for study and research that scholar and layman alike have for decades been vying with each other for the prized treasures broufifht forth from below and found above the surface 23 in the countries in which have been made the history and displayed the activities of the Semitic peoples. Here in the United States we hav^e perhaps been somewhat late, but the interest in Semitic study and research once aroused, the competitive work has, in true American spirit, been taken energetically in hand and pushed forward by almost every important seat of science and study. In Harvard University, some fifteen years ago. Professors Lyon and Toy set themselves the task of calling forth the active interest of a larger circle in the work to which the Semitic Department under their charge was devoted. Thus my own interest became engaged, and I felt that the cooperation asked for by these earnest and energetic men must not be withheld. Truly can I say that the opportunity then presented has become to me a source of the deepest interest and of continuous gratification. Speaking primarily as Chairman of the Committee on the Semitic Department, it is but proper that I give expression to our appreciation and to our gratitude for the encouragement, as well as for the substantial cooperation, we have received from President Eliot and from the Corporation of Harvard University; they have, indeed, facilitated in every way the carrying out of our plans, and have thus made possible what has been accomplished. No less are we indebted to the Trustees of the Peabody Museum and to its sympathetic Curator, Professor Putnam, who so readily opened the doors of 24 their own building thirteen years ago to make room for the temporary housing of the collections which were then started. These collections have now been trans- ferred to this their permanent home, where, as is our hope, they will continue to grow, to become an efficient and valuable apparatus for aiding in the development of science, knowledge, and enlightenment. Mr. President, we now place this building and its contents in the keeping of Harvard College. We com- mend it to the fostering care not only of yourself and of the governing bodies of this great University ; but we commend it, likewise, to the good- will of all who believe that the gaining of a thorough knowledge of the civilization of those who have been before us means a better humanity and happier conditions for ourselves, and even more so for those who come after us, and who are to become judges and recorders of our own activities, of our own achievements, and of our own civilization. 25 VI PRESIDENT C. W. ELIOT Mr. Schiff : — I accept on behalf of the President and Fellows of Harvard College this great and interesting gift, and I accept it in the spirit in which you offer it. I accept it as the storehouse of a great historical past, and with the confident anticipation that for centuries to come it will be the means of expounding an enlightening and inspiring progress which to us is an invisible future. The Curator of these collections has set before you the history of this undertaking. It is a case where a high pui-pose has been gradually developed. The develop- ment of such a purpose through a course of years, coming at last to a happy consummation, is always delightful to contemplate ; it is always a subject of congratulation and rejoicing. It is fourteen years ago that the Visiting Committees of the Harvard Board of Overseers were reorganized and enlarged, and multiplied in number ; and then first in this Institution a Visiting Committee for the Semitic Languaffes was created. There were three members of this Committee : the venerable Andrew Preston Peabody was the Chairman: the second member was Mr. Schift'; and the third was Mr. Salisbury. Dr. Peabody gave to this Committee's work the benediction of his presence 26 till his death in 1893. Then Mr. Schift* became Chair- man of the Committee, and by this title he prefers to be addressed to-day. The Committee consisted in the year 1893 of the same four gentlemen who now consti- tute it, — Mr. Schifl' as Chairman, Mr. Stephen Salis- bury, Mr. George Wigglesworth, and Mr. Isidor Straus. These four gentlemen have constituted this Committee for ten years, and they have steadily pursued the objects which to-day we see fulfilled. It was, however, in 1899 that a great impetus was given to this undertaking through Mr. SchiiTs action already described by Pro- fessor Lyon ; and in that year a considerable number of persons contributed to this enterprise. Among those other persons were found numerous habitual givers to Harvard University, — types of the New England pro- moters of education. This cooperation was historically natural and just, and was very grateful to the Committee and particularly to its Chairman. Professor Norton has already told you how appro- priate a place this University is for the establishment of the first exclusively Semitic Museum. Harvard College was a highly characteristic Puritan foundation. Its early teachers and governors, and the ministers of the Puritan Commonwealth, were all Old Testamen- tarians, as Professor Norton has indicated. Early in the second century of our foundation, the first professor in Harvard University was appointed, and very appro- priately he was a Professor of Divinity. His name was 27 Edward Wigglesworth, appointed in the year 1721, eleven years after his graduation as a Bachelor of Arts. This first professor was succeeded by his son, Edward Wigglesworth ; and these two, father and son, covered seventy years with their combined terms of service. Mr. George Wigglesworth, a member of the present Visiting Committee for Semitic Languages, is a direct descendant of these two professors ; and his son is now a member of Harvard College. You see how appro- priate the membership of this Committee has been, and how it illustrates in its own constitution the various interests represented in this building and its collections : they are Semitic primarily, but they are also intensely New England. Mr. Oscar S. Straus, in his book on the " Origin of Republican Government," has clearly shown how the Puritan Commonwealth was modelled on the Jewish commonwealth under the Judges. Professor Norton has justly said that we owe to the Semitic race the conception of righteousness as a national ideal embodied in law. This ideal characterizes the Old Testament, — and indeed both Testaments. There is another infinitely precious conception which we owe to the same race, a conception expressed more fully in the New Testament, though not lacking in the Old, — the purest and tenderest conception mankind has ever won of domestic love and joy. Therefore, I say, we owe to these Semitic peoples — the peoples from which came the three greatest religions of the modern world, or of 28 any age of the world — the greatest spiritual concep- tions of all time. We look forward to a continuous and enlarging use- fulness for this Museum. We expect it to contribute] year by year and century by century to the education! and training of American youth in the sublime Semitic j conceptions, and to their knowledge of the sources of! these conceptions. The Museum, as has already been said, is necessarily to be a place for keeping safe sure records of the history of a great race ; but we may be sure that it will also prove in the future the means of inducting our youth into new discoveries greater than any we now imagine, — discoveries as to the genesis and significance of our biblical records, and as to the development of the fundamental ideas which we owe to the Semitic peoples.