Background

Ephraim was born on January 24, 1902 in Skalat, Galicia (then in Austrian Poland, now Ukraine), the son of Jonas Speiser and Hannah Greenberg.

Education

He graduated in 1919 from the gymnasium of Lemberg (now Lvov), and soon thereafter immigrated to the United States. Already trilingual (German, Hebrew, and Polish) on arrival, Speiser quickly learned English in the United States. He received an M. A. from the Department of Semitics at the University of Pennsylvania in 1923, and published his master's thesis, The Hebrew Origin of the First Part of the Book of Wisdom. He was awarded a Ph. D. by Dropsie College (Philadelphia) in 1924, adding Greek to his language repertoire for his dissertation, "The Pronunciation of Hebrew According to the Transliterations in the Sexapla. "

Career

After becoming a naturalized citizen of the USA in 1926, Speiser received a concurrent Guggenheim fellowship (1926 - 1928) and professorship at the American School of Oriental Research (ASOR) in Baghdad (1926 - 1927), which launched Speiser's career as an archaeologist and authority on the Sumerian, Akkadian, Babylonian, and Assyrian languages and cultures of ancient Mesopotamia. A field survey of southern Kurdistan led to his discovery of Tepe Gawra.

The ASOR and the University of Pennsylvania Museum jointly sponsored excavations there and at nearby Tell Billa (1927 - 1939), which Speiser partly supervised as field director (1930-1932, 1936 - 1937). These digs uncovered twenty-four levels and sublevels of habitation; the lower ones, reaching back to about 5, 000-3, 000 b. c. , brought to light major architectural remains and specimens of pottery.

His Mesopotamian Origins (1930) focused on the cultural, legal, linguistic, and ethnic structure of society. His analysis in 1932 of the cuneiform tablets found at Nuzi (south of Kirkuk, Iraq) enbled him to reconstruct Akkadian family law as practiced in that locality. Always the synthesizer, Speiser a year later wrote "Ethnic Movements in the Near East in the Second Millennium b. c. ". Interest in the Nuzi dialect sparked his curiosity about its Hurrian element, which resulted in Introduction to Hurrian (1941), a feat of linguistic ingenuity. This work was issued in an edition of 100 copies, of which only seven were sold in the first year.

In 1943, Speiser took leave to work for the Office of Strategic Services in Washington, as chief of the Near East section of the Research and Analysis Branch. There he assembled an interdisciplinary team of scholars familiar with the languages and societies of the Near East. Their weekly and special reports, supervised by Speiser, furnished useful insights into the current and future crises in that region.

Speiser participated in the preparation of every report, from the adoption and assignment of the issues for analysis through the editing and proofreading of the final product, bringing to bear skills developed in his editorship of the Journal of the American Oriental Society. The output, including an occasional paper of his own on Iraq, bore the stamp of Speiser's insistence on standards of excellence in graceful style without sacrifice of scholarship.

The reports from his office were probably the only official ones in wartime Washington that consistently carried footnotes to identify the sources of information. In The United States and the Near East (1947), written after his return to the University of Pennsylvania, Speiser combined the skills of an ancient historian and an analyst of contemporary affairs to frame guidelines for postwar national policy.

Speiser died at Elkins Park, Pennsylvania.

Achievements

• Ephraim Avigdor Speiser's contributions to the knowledge of the civilization of ancient Mesopotamia won speedy recognition. He rose to full professor by 1931, becoming one of the youngest to hold that rank at the University of Pennsylvania. Speiser assumed the chairmanship of the Department of Oriental Studies, a post he held until his death. He also was nonresident director of the ASOR in Baghdad (1932 - 1946). In 1959 the American Council of Learned Societies awarded him a prize for outstanding scholarly contributions to the humanities, and in 1964 the University of Pennsylvania named him a university professor, in acknowledgment of his range of interdisciplinary activities.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Mesopotamian Origins: The Basic Population of the Near East

    (this must be done separately in the several departments o...)

  • The World History of the Jewish People: Volume One: At the Dawn of Civilization. A Background of Biblical History
  • Introduction to Hurrian (Annual of the American Schools of Oriental Research ; v. 20 for 1940-1941

Membership

He was a member of the American Oriental Society, of the Linguistic Society of America (1942), of the Learned Societies, and of the American Philosophical Society.

Connections

On July 23, 1937, Speiser married Sue Gimbel Dannenbaum; they had two children.

Father:

Jonas Speiser

Mother:

Hannah Greenberg

Spouse:

Sue Gimbel Dannenbaum