Robert Francis Harper

Background

Robert Harper was born on October 18, 1864, at New Concord, Ohio, United States, the son of Samuel and Ellen Elizabeth (Rainey) Harper.

Education

Robert attended Muskingum College, 1879-1880, and was graduated from the old University of Chicago in 1883. After studying three years in Germany under Professors Schrader and Friedrich Delitzsch, he received the degree of Ph. D. from the University of Leipzig in 1886.

Career

In 1886 Robert Harper became an instructor in Assyriology at Yale, a position which he filled until 1891, with the exception of the year 1888-1889, when he went to Nippur as one of the Assyriologists of the first Babylonian expedition of the University of Pennsylvania. The year 1891-1892 he spent at the British Museum inaugurating the researches which continued through later years formed the chief scientific work of his life, and the publication of which constitutes his chief literary monument - the editing of the Assyrian and Babylonian Letters Belonging to the Kouyunjik Collections of the British Museum (14 vols. , 1892-1914). In 1892 he became associate professor of Semitic languages in the new University of Chicago, of which his brother, William Rainey Harper, had become president. In 1900 he was advanced to a full professorship, a position which he held until his death.

For the rest of his life he devoted himself mainly to the teaching of Assyriology, when in Chicago, and to the copying and editing of the Babylonian and Assyrian letters in London during his vacations. This program was interrupted in 1908-1909, when he spent a year in Jerusalem as director of the American School of Oriental Research - a position which he filled with distinguished success. In addition to his major activities, he was curator, from 1900, of the Babylonian section of the Haskell Oriental Museum and director, from 1902 to 1906, of the Babylonian Expedition of the Oriental Exploration Fund of the University of Chicago, which under Dr. Edgar J. Banks as field director excavated Bismya. He was managing editor for some time of the Atnerican Journal of Semitic Languages and Literatures, and in February 1906 succeeded his brother in the editorship. He was also an associate editor of the Biblical World and the Atnerican Journal of Theology. He edited in 1901, Assyrian and Babylonian Literature, to which different scholars made contributions; and in 1908, as joint editor with Francis Brown and George F. Moore, published two volumes of Old Testament and Semitic Studies in Memory of William Rainey Harper, a worthy monument to the memory of his distinguished brother.

Achievements

• Robert Harper is best remembered as editor of the Assyrian and Babylonian Letters and of The Code of Hammurabi, a volume containing the original text with transliteration, translation, sign list, and vocabulary - a volume that is still one of the best instruments for the study of that great body of legislation.

Works

More photos

• book

  • The Code of Hammurabi King of Babylon. About 2250 B.C. Autographed Text Transliteration...

    (Complete English translation with a running parallel tran...)

  • The Code Of Hammurabi King Of Babylon About 2250 B.C.: Autographed Text Transliteration Translation Glossary Index Of Subjects Lists Of Proper Names ... With Map Frontispiece And Photograph Of Text

    (Published in 1904, this volume contains a translation of ...)

  • Old Testament and Semitic studies in memory of William Rainey Harper;

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

  • Assyrian and Babylonian Literature

    (Assyrian and Babylonian literature. Selected translations...)

Personality

Far from being simply a dry scholar, Harper was one of the most genial and social of men. He had a genius for friendship and companionship. This manifested itself at Chicago in the organization of the Quadrangle Club, where members of the faculty could enjoy social fellowship. He will be remembered by those who knew him, whether in America, London, or Germany as the possessor of a happy combination of the qualities of a devoted and accurate scholar and a genial and companionable man.

Connections

Robert Harper never married.

Father:

Samuel Harper

Mother:

Ellen Elizabeth (Rainey) Harper

Brother:

William Rainey Harper

References

• Who s Who in America, Vol. VIII, 1914-1915 (8)