Education
From the University of Michigan in 1967, and a Doctor of Philosophy from the University of Michigan in 1974.
From the University of Michigan in 1967, and a Doctor of Philosophy from the University of Michigan in 1974.
He received a Bachelor of Arts from Harvard in 1965, an Master of Arts Professor Stolper"s earlier interests were centered on Babylonian legal texts, but his most current work involves the Persepolis Fortification Project. He and a team of student employees are currently racing to document the Persepolis Fortification Archive, a collection of Achaemenid administrative records from Persepolis written mostly in Elamite (though a Greek and, surprisingly, an Old Persian tablet have been discovered). His publications are numerous, including: The šaknu of Nippur, The Kasr Archive, Babylonian Evidence for the End of the Reign of Darius I: A Correction, A Note on Yahwistic Personal Names in the Murašû Texts, A Late-Achaemenid Lease from the Rich Collection, "Yet Another Iranian Loanword in Late Babylonian: Babyl. mašǎ̄ka < Ir.
*važ̵ ā̆ka, Fifth Century Nippur: Texts of the Murašûs and from Their Surroundings, Some Ghost Facts from Achaemenid Babylonian Texts, The Governor of Babylon and Across-the-River in 486 B. C., Review: Iranians in Babylonia and A Paper Chase after the Aramaic on TCL 13 193.
Among his publications on the Elamite language are: Texts from Tall-i Malyan, I: Elamite Administrative Texts (1972-1974), Elam: Surveys of Political History and Archaeology and Entrepreneurs and Empire: The Murašû Archive, the Murašû Firm, and Persian Rule in Babylonia. In addition to doing important scholarly work, Stolper is also active in campus life at the University of Chicago.
He recently argued for hamantash in The Great Latke-Hamantash Debate, an annual university tradition. Hamantash traditionally loses this debate, and Stolper"s valiant efforts resulted in no change, despite the fact that he showed adorable pictures of his dog and constant companion, Baxter.
Stolper also has a healthy mythology surrounding him at the Oriental Institute.
He is widely credited with the invention of "Stolper"s Law", which stipulates that, when translating Akkadian, an unknown adjective is likely to mean "pure", and an unknown verb probably means "destroy". Revolutionary teaching methods have also been attributed to Stolper, who refers to himself as the "Stolperstein", or stumbling block. A reference to this teaching method can be found on the forthcoming Latke-Hamantash debate Digital Video Disc, as the moderator cited it before Professor Stolper"s speech.
Stolper is also renowned for his quips concerning the Akkadian language.
As one of his students fondly recalls in an entry entitled "Akkadian is so easy", he told his class:
“Number-one has exact information except for you.”- A communication between Babylon and Uruk in the first Achaemenid reigns.