Background
Edward Chiera was born on August 5, 1885 in Rome, Italy, the son of Albert and Amalia (Malaguti) Chiera.
(This book was originally published prior to 1923, and rep...)
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(In the spring of 1917 the late Professor Morris Jastrow, ...)
In the spring of 1917 the late Professor Morris Jastrow, Jr., of the University of Pennsylvania, called my attention to a large collection of cuneiform tablets which are kept in the Library of Princeton University. The bulk of the documents had been presented by the late Professor Rudolph E. Briinnow, this being augmented by gifts from other alumni and friends of the University, viz., Messrs. Sheldon Franklin, Robert Garrett, Kenneth Campbell Kirtland, Cyrus Hall Mc Cormick, John Leverett Moore, Russell Wellman Moore, Charles Allen Munn, Richard Wayne Parker, Moses Taylor Pyne, Simeon H. Rollinson, Martin Dasher Wylly, and Miss Edith Ward. As a result of a correspondence between Professor Jastrow and Professor Richardson, the Librarian of Princeton University, I was asked to prepare a catalogue of the entire collection. This was soon completed, but its appearance has been greatly delayed on account of the war. As a quick perusal of the catalogue will show, the Princeton Library Collection is chiefly composed of documents of the Ur Dynasty. The three chief sources of tablets of that period, Telloh, Yokha and Drehem. are almost equally represented. Some of the specimens, and especially those from Telloh, are of a remarkably large size and find their counterpart in those from the same site now preserved in the Berlin Museum. Very remarkable also is a collection of unopened case tablets from Umma, which are perfectly preserved and covered with splendid seal impressions. Lastly, the Princeton Library is fortunate in possessing a group of about sixty seal cylinders gathered by the late Dr. W. H. Ward, the eminent authority in this field. The Library authorities felt that at least a portion, of such material should be placed at the disposal of scholars. (Typographical errors above are due to OCR software and don't occur in the book.) About the Publisher Forgotten Books is a publisher of historical writings,
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(This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of th...)
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( Edward Chiera was that most remarkable of men, a compet...)
Edward Chiera was that most remarkable of men, a competent and respected scholar possessed of an ardent desire to make his research readily and entertainingly available to laymen. More remarkable, Chiera had extraordinary gifts to equal to his desire. They Wrote on Clay combines fascinatingly the fruits of sound and painstaking archeology with the natural-born storyteller's art. As transmitted by Chiera, the message of the recently discovered Babylonian clay tablets becomes an absorbing exrusion into the common life of a vanished civilization. Few will read They Wrote on Clay without becoming infected with something of Chiera's love for the rich archeological lore of the ancient Near East. "The book presents, briefly and clearly, a vivid picture of a long-dead people who in numerous ways were very like ourselves."—L. M. Field, New York Times "No mystery story can be as exciting."—Harper's "Plainly and fetchingly written."—New Republic
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Edward Chiera was born on August 5, 1885 in Rome, Italy, the son of Albert and Amalia (Malaguti) Chiera.
He studied at the Gymnasium-Lyceum at Ancona. Though his academic career was a vigorous struggle against limited means, he attended Crozer Theological Seminary near Philadelphia and received the degrees of B. D. in 1911 and M. T. in 1912. His studies there brought a shifting of interests from the theological to the linguistic and he next undertook work in Semitic languages at the University of Pennsylvania. He achieved his doctor's degree in 1913, working under the inspiration of such men as Albert T. Clay and Morris Jastrow, Jr.
For three years he served in the Italian army. In 1907 he removed to the United States when his father emigrated to become the founder and pastor of the First Italian Baptist Church in Philadelphia. In thirteen years as instructor and as professor of Assyriology at the University of Pennsylvania he established himself in his chosen field of cuneiform inscriptions. Despite the natural ebullience of his nature, he applied himself patiently and rigorously to copying texts--especially the difficult Sumerian--and gained an unexcelled reputation as a decipherer. The copies in such volumes as Legal and Administrative Documents from Nippur (1914) and Old Babylonian Contracts (1922) are models of beautiful style. What brought Chiera wider reputation was a period of field work in 1924-25, when he held the post of annual professor of the American Schools of Oriental Research at Bagdad, Iraq, and undertook excavations at a place not far from Kirkuk. The cuneiform tablets found identified the place as ancient Nuzi, a seat of the Hurrian culture. This brilliant discovery was reported by Chiera and E. A. Speiser in an article, "A New Factor in the History of the Ancient East" in the Annual of the American Schools of Oriental Research (vol. VI, 1926). The Nuzi material, to which Chiera devoted a second campaign in 1927-28, remains a storehouse of information on lesser known aspects of ancient life. The titles of Chiera's own copies of these documents, such as Inheritance Texts (1927), Declarations in Court (1930), and Exchange and Security Documents (1931), give some idea of the nature of this material. His chief interest, however, was in Sumerian religious texts, and in that field of research he published Sumerian Religious Texts (1924), Sumerian Epics and Myths (1934), and "A Sumerian Tablet Relating to the Fall of Man" (American Journal of Semitic Languages, October 1922). He also compiled a Sumerian dictionary. The Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago was enjoying a period of expansion when, in 1927, Chiera accepted the professorship of Assyriology and the editorship of the Institute's ambitious Assyrian Dictionary. In 1928-29 he undertook an excavation at Khorsabad, the capital city of Sargon II of Assyria. This was a characteristically brilliant piece of work, of which the best-known single product is the forty-ton stone bull in the Oriental Institute museum at Chicago. Chiera then settled down--as much as a man of vivid personality can settle down--to the tasks of teaching, producing admirable text copies, and directing the work of the Assyrian Dictionary. At one time the Dictionary enjoyed the activity of more than twenty-five American and foreign contributors. Its files expanded into the hundreds of thousands of cards. Chiera was able to comprehend this material and keep it moving. He was at the height of his powers when his health began to crumble. A posthumously published work, They Wrote on Clay: the Babylonian Tablets Speak Today, was written in his illness. This outline of the busy world exhibited in the cuneiform inscriptions grew out of his desire that the world should know the absorbing interest of the things that concerned him, and for the layman it provides an excellent introduction to this area of humanistic research.
( Edward Chiera was that most remarkable of men, a compet...)
(This book was originally published prior to 1923, and rep...)
(This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of th...)
(In the spring of 1917 the late Professor Morris Jastrow, ...)
Chiera was married to Sylia Moretti in Wilmington, on August 3, 1913. They had two children: William and Helen.
