Raymond Philip Dougherty

Background

Dougherty was born on August 5, 1877 in Lebanon, Pennsylvania, the first of five children of the Reverend Joseph Brandt Dougherty and Mary Elizabeth (Shaeffer) Dougherty.

Education

Dougherty was graduated from Lebanon Valley College at Annville, Pennsylvania in 1897. He received an A. M. degree in 1903. He later was a student at the Bonebrake Theological Seminary, Dayton, Ohio, 1903-1904.  In Bonebrake Theological Seminary he received the degree of B. D. in 1910.  He also received the degree of Ph. D. at Yale in 1918.

Career

During 1897-1899 Dougherty held two teaching appointments: as instructor in chemistry and Greek at Avalon College, Trenton, Missouri, 1897-1899, and as principal of the Normal Department at Leander Clark College, Toledo, Iowa, 1900-1902.  In 1904 he was ordained to the ministry of the Church of the United Brethren in Christ.  From this point on his life was divided into three major periods. The first was his experience as a missionary educator, when he served as the founder and first principal of Albert Academy, Freetown, Sierra Leone, West Africa, 1904-1914.  He served as American vice-consul in Freetown in 1905-1906, and again in 1912-1913.  During this period he spent two brief furloughs (1906-1907, 1909-1910) in Bonebrake Theological Seminary.

In 1913 he was compelled to return to America because of the first of a series of breaks in health. While still in Africa Dougherty had become interested in cuneiform studies. He now devoted himself to an intense period of specialized study in this subject under Professor Albert T. Clay at Yale University. Receiving Ph. D. Dougherty at once entered upon the second major period of his life as professor of Biblical literature at Goucher College, Baltimore, Maryland. From 1920 to 1923 he was also an instructor in Old Testament literature at Johns Hopkins. He made a distinct contribution to scholarship by assembling and publishing the Goucher College collection of Babylonian tablets in two volumes of texts. He also published an important volume of texts from cuneiform tablets in the Yale Babylonian Collection. In 1925-1926 he was granted a leave of absence in order to serve as annual professor of the American Schools of Oriental Research in Jerusalem and Bagdad.

Upon his return to America in 1926 he accepted an invitation to become William M. Laffan Professor of Assyriology and Babylonian Literature, and curator of the Babylonian Collection, at Yale University, and thus began the final phase of his career. His scientific work then became dominated by a historical interest, exemplified in his two final monographs, published in the Yale Oriental Series. In Nabonidus and Belshazzar (1929), perhaps still under the influence of his early theological and Biblical training, he assembled and discussed the cuneiform data showing the place of Belshazzar in history. In The Sealand of Ancient Arabia (1932), which he considered his most important work, he sought to prove, by means of all the cuneiform sources he was able to collect, that the ancient "sealand" of Babylonian literature extended across the peninsula of Arabia and played a more important role in history than scholars have ascribed to it.

Dougherty died on July 13, 1933.

Achievements

• Dougherty is chiefly remembered for his contribution to the education, which was expressed in his two monographs, Nabonidus and Belshazzar.

Works

More photos

• book

  • The Sealand of ancient Arabia, (Yale Oriental series. Researches)
  • Archives from Erech

Personality

Dougherty was a man of solidly built physique and slightly short in stature.  He had the good humor of his Irish ancestry and the earnestness and ability for hard and painstaking work of his Pennsylvania German forbears.  He had a sense of human values which caused him to respect and to be respected by the humblest black man of Africa as well as by the most distinguished university professor.  In his eagerness to perform his work in the most acceptable manner he often subjected himself to times of distressing anxiety, and he never spared his own energies in the course of duty.

Connections

On October 4, 1910 Dougherty was married to Lulu E. Landis,  daughter of Prof. J. P. Landis of Dayton, Ohio.  He returned a few months later to Africa with his bride.  

Father:

Joseph Brandt Dougherty

Mother:

Mary Elizabeth Shaeffer

Spouse:

Lulu E. Landis

References

• Journal of the American Oriental Society, Volume 53, Number 2 (June 1933)
• Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research (BASOR)
• Obituary record of graduates of Yale University (Volume 29)