Background

Albert Tobias Clay was born on December 04, 1866 in Hanover, Pennsylvania, United States. He was the son of John Martin and Mary Barbara (Sharp) Clay.

Education

Clay was graduated from Franklin and Marshall College in 1889 and from the Lutheran Theological Seminary at Mount Airy, Pennsylvania, in 1892. He entered the graduate school of the University of Pennsylvania in 1892, working under Professors Hilprecht, Peters, and Jastrow, and received the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in 1894.

Career

From 1892 to 1895 Clay was also instructor in Hebrew at the University of Pennsylvania. In 1893 he was ordained to the ministry in the Lutheran Church and in 1895-1896 was pastor of St. Mark’s Church, South Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. In 1896 he became instructor in Old Testament theology in the Lutheran Theological Seminary, Chicago. In 1899 he was recalled to the University of Pennsylvania as lecturer in Assyriology and assistant curator of the Babylonian section of the University museum. Here he remained until 1910, being promoted through the various grades of professorships until in 1909 he became professor of Semitic philology and archeology. From 1904 to 1910 he was instructor in Hebrew at Mount Airy Lutheran Seminary. When, through the gift of the late J. Pierpont Morgan, the Laffan Professorship of Assyriology was founded at Yale, Clay was called in 1910 to fill the chair, a position which he occupied until his death.

Clay was chiefly noted as an editor of cuneiform texts. His first volume, Business Documents of Murashu Sons of Nippur dated in the Reign of Artaxerxes I (1898), was published conjointly with Prof. Hilprecht, but he afterward published three other volumes in the series of the Babylonian Expedition of the University of Pennsylvania, edited by Hilprecht, and two in the Publications of the University Museum, Babylonian Section, which succeeded it. He also published four volumes of texts in the library of J. Pierpont Morgan.

At Yale he organized and built up the Babylonian Collection, in connection with which he inaugurated the publication of a series of volumes of texts, to which he himself contributed two volumes. A third volume, prepared by him, appeared after his death. All these texts were copied with accuracy and beauty. In addition to these publications, Clay brought out a valuable volume on the proper names of the Cassite Period in Babylonia, and, in connection with the late Prof. Jastrow, An Old Babylonian Version of the Gilgamesh Epic on the Basis of Recently Discovered Texts (1920).

In addition to his books, he contributed to many scientific journals and publications, and by his enthusiasm and encouragement stimulated scientific activity in others. Several rising Assyriologists were his pupils and contributed to the Yale Oriental Series which he founded. He also projected a series of translations of Semitic inscriptions, to which a large number of American scholars had promised to contribute volumes. His untimely death occurred, however, before the first volume was published. The American Oriental Society has arranged to carry forward the enterprise as a memorial to him.

Clay was twice annual professor in the American School in Jerusalem; once in 1919-1920, and again in 1923-1924. On the first of his visits to the East he was sent to Iraq by the Mesopotamian Committee of the Archeological Institute of America to ascertain the practicability of establishing an American School of Oriental Research in that country, and on the second he was sent by the American Schools of Oriental Research as the first annual professor, and professor in charge of the school in Bagdad, which he formally opened in November 1923.

During the first of his sojourns in Jerusalem, by his enthusiasm and tact, he brought together the Orientalists resident there, differing as they did both in race and religion, and persuaded them to form the Oriental Society of Palestine, patterned on the American Oriental Society. The Society has ever since published a quarterly journal which contains much valuable scientific work. Clay’s training, while giving him a keen appreciation of all evidence which bore on textual interpretation, prevented him from attaining a similar scientific point of view with reference to questions of ethnology and history. On these he was to the end a dogmatist and propagandist. His youthful enthusiasm, which he retained all his life, made him many friends to whom he was devoted.

Achievements

• Clay did much for the advancement of Oriental studies in the United States, and especially for his own subject, Assyriology. He was especially proud of his following works: Amarra, the Home of the Northern Semites (1909); The Empire of the Amorites (1919); A Hebrew Deluge Story in Cuneiform (1922); and The Origin of Biblical Traditions (1923). In these, he developed an original theory of the antiquity of the Amorites and their importance as the originators of the civilization of western Asia.

Works

More photos

• book

  • An Old Babylonian Version of the Gilgamesh Epic

    (Albert Tobias Clay (1866–1925) was an American Semitic ar...)

  • A Hebrew Deluge Story in Cuneiform: And Other Epic Fragments in the Pierpont Morgan Library

    (This is a pre-1923 historical reproduction that was curat...)

  • The Empire of the Amorites

    (This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. T...)

  • book

  • Amurru, the Home of the Northern Semites: A Study Showing That the Religion and Culture of Israel Are Not of Babylonian Origin (Classic Reprint)

Membership

Clay was a persident of the American Oriental Society in 1924–1925.

Connections

On June 11, 1895, Clay was married to Elizabeth Somerville McCafferty of Philadelphia.

Father:

John Martin Clay

Mother:

Mary Barbara (Sharp) Clay

Spouse:

Elizabeth Sommerville McCafferty

References

• IN MEMORIAM ALBERT T CLAY; SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY OF ALBERT T. CLAY (in one issue of Journal of American Oriental Society, December 1925)
• Road to Babylon: Development of U.S. Assyriology