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THE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY
BALTIMORE, MARYLAND
December 10th, 1929
Dear Nelson,
It will be a pleasure to have you with us this summer. It think that we can provide you with tent quarters at the excavation. Until I have raised a certain sum after which I am going in January-March it will be impossible to say just how well provided with funds our expedition will be. I have had very satisfactory publicity, and have made over a score of public addresses since arriving in Baltimore, but it remains to be seen whether I can cash in on them this winter. At all events, the excavation will start the middle of June, so our organization will be fixed quite definitely in April. This summer we shall need a much larger staff than hitherto, since everything must be recorded by the end of the campaign. Dr. Aage Schmidt will be there as photographer, and my Finnish friend, Dr. Saarisalo, will also be there to help in one way or another. Dr. Kyle will have several of his men, though some of them will doubtless be ornaments rather than assistants. One or two of them I know, and cannot speak too highly of their qualities.
I should warn you in advance that the expedition will have a decidedly religious tone, though it will be very mixed in composition. But in our Dead Sea expedition of 1924 we had men of every faith, including Mr. Sukenik, to whom it was a novel, and at first disconcerting experience. But Dr. Kyle is one of the finest men I know, and you will be charmed with him, I know.
The American members of the staff usually pay their own way to Palestine, and are, of course, provided with quarters and with food while at the excavation, or while working for it at Jerusalem
Dr. Sellers of Chicago will also probably join our staff; you must know him already.
I shall write you again, when I know how much money I can collect, telling you more definitely about our plans.
My third son, Stephen, was born Dec. 6th. Mother and child are doing very well, and will be home before Christmas. We are living in town, near the university, but expect to move out to a house which we are buying early in March. I hope to leave for Europe as soon after May 1st as I can manage, and to reach Palestine not later than May 25th.
Please give my best regards to Dr. Blank and Dr. Marcus.
Very sincerely yours,
W. F. Albright
— 1930s —
1930
Baltimore
Feb. 18th, 1930
Dear Dr. Glueck,
Our excavation at Tell Beit Mirsim will be over, we expect, about the middle of August. I myself expect to leave Palestine about the first of September at the latest.
Our plans remain as they were; I trust that nothing will happen to make their alteration necessary. We are looking forward to having you with us.
Very sincerely yours
W.F. Albright
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THE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY
BALTIMORE, MARYLAND
October 16th, 1930
Dear Dr. Glueck:
It is a pleasure to hear from you, and know that you will be able to get off early next spring. You know that I am anxious to have you with us, and I am equally confident that Dr. Sellers is. I told Dr. Rosenau about your work with us this past summer, and he appeared to be very much pleased. I think that he will support any action taken in your favor by the Board of Governors.
I am working a good deal, though not entirely on Tell Beit Mirsim. Our department is somewhat better this year than last; I think we may expect a fairly steady improvement from now on for several years, until we reach our normal high water mark again in the way of enrollment.
My trip home was very satisfactory; I arrived with all my plans, etc., undamaged and intact, greatly to my relief. I spent three days in Paris, but no one was there, and so I could do nothing but rest and write. On the way across the Atlantic I finished my quota of material for the Jewish Cyclopedia.
The report to the Schools on the third campaign will appear in the October Bulletin; I believe it is already in print, with photos of the lions, etc. I shall also send one to ZAW, where I shall discuss the bearing of our finds on various problems of Hebrew history.
The division was not bad, from my point of view. I really have no idea whether there will be any duplicates which Dr. Kyle may want to dispose of or not. Pottery, of course, there is, as you know. The shipment of the finds from this seasons work was
delayed a month or two because Dr. Kyle inadvertently carried the permit to export away with him, and Mr. Whiting had to cable for it, since the Department of Antiquities refuses on principle to give duplicate permits, after some unpleasant experiences.
With best regard, I am
Very sincerely yours,
W.F. Albright
P.S. I am sending you three photographs taken by Mr. Matson under separate cover, by this mail.
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THE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY
BALTIMORE, MARYLAND
October 16th, 1930
Dear Dr. Glueck:
I have just read the article in Asia, with which you have had so much trouble. I can really understand your vexation with the editors of Asia. I suppose that you were a bit too anxious to be correct in your attitude toward the various scholars engaged in Palestine exploration. If you had referred to them by name only, in as casual a way as possible, the editor would probably not have deleted them. It boils down to the fact that the proofs could not be read, owing the circumstances that you mention. I have had plenty of experience with the results of not being in a position to read the proof; in fact, over half of my papers have not been proof-read by me before their appearance, with all sorts of unpleasant consequences.
I hope that Dr. Sukenik does not take it amiss. Had I read the article before seeing your letters, I should have put the absence of names– if I had noticed it — down to editorial revision, but Sukenik isn’t so hard-boiled in this respect. At all events, the article itself is very good indeed, and ought to be widely read. You have my hearty congratulations.
Very sincerely yours,
W.F. Albright
1931
THE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY
BALTIMORE, MARYLAND
March 24, 1931
Dr. Nelson Glueck
Hebrew Union College
Cincinnati, Ohio
Dear Dr. Glueck:
Please forgive me for not having written before, congratulating you on your engagement to Miss Iglauer. I have been extremely busy during the last month or two and am quite unable to see how I can finish the most important of tasks I have set myself before leaving. Dr. Sellers, as you know, will not be able to leave Chicago until the second week in May, which is too late for me, since I must have as much time as possible in Palestine in order to accomplish something with my archaeological survey. I have, therefore, decided to make reservations on the S.S. Lancastria of the Cunard Line, sailing from New York May 1st, and returning from Europe September 19th. I hope it will be possible for you to join me so that we can travel to Palestine together. Needless to say, I am going tourist’s third, which seems to be rather good on the Lancastria. Incidentally, the rates on the Lancastria are the lowest of those on any vessels which came into serious consideration. I am getting round trip ticket for about $200.00 which is materially less than the round trip on the Homeric cost me last year.
With best wishes for your future happiness,
Very sincerely yours,
W.F. Albright
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THE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY
BALTIMORE, MARYLAND
April 14th, 1931
Dear Dr. Glueck,
Your letter of April 6th arrived while I was absent at Princeton, after which I spent some time in New York. I saw a good deal of Morgenstern, and had a very instructive discussion with him at the dinner of the AOS with regard to the development of Israelite cult legislation. He gave a brilliant paper at the last meeting of the Society.
I am delighted to know that you will join me on the Lancastria. The boat sails rather early — 5:00 p.m., daylight saving time, so I fancy we should meet on the boat, and not attempt to get together beforehand. I hope you secure a berth in the cabin. If not, we can perhaps make arrangements aboard, if there are not too many passengers. My cabin is D 66. I have made no other plans, since it is easier to find out about Mediterranean sailings in Paris than here. We can even go overland if we wish to, and there is time enough.
Just now I am trying desperately to finish my little book of lectures at the University of Virginia last winter, entitled “The Archaeology of Palestine and the Bible.” Practically all but the notes is now written, but there are many interruptions.
Very sincerely yours,
W.F. Albright
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New Haven, Oct. 26th, 1931
Dear Glueck:
On way up to Hartford, on the 19th, I stopped at Philadelphia to see Professor Montgomery. We had a long talk, and he is quite pleased with my idea of your being appointed Director of the School for the year 1932-33. He and President Morgenstern had already discussed the possibility that you might be Annual Professor for that year. This post is at present promised to someone else, but there is a chance (which will not be necessary!) that the potential incumbent may be willing to change the year. Morgenstern and I had a long talk at lunch in New York, Oct. 21st, and he expressed himself favorably to the idea. He naturally did not want to appear to broach the idea himself, so I have written him a letter urging your candidacy as strongly as possible. So that is that! Morgenstern will see Olmstead, which I shall see Torrey, Dougherty, and Barton, so I have no doubt that the appointment will go through, provided nothing happens to you!
Both Montgomery and Morgenstern are very anxious for me to take over the Directorship on a part time basis for the rest of the term of the Rockefeller grant, i.e. to 1937. I have tentatively agreed to become a candidate.
The fourth campaign at Tell Beit Mirsim will open about June 15th, but Kyle will not be able to come until the end of the month. So it will be all right, and you will lose nothing, if you leave Cincinnati about June 1st, after the end of the academic year.
With my best regards to Mrs. Glueck,
Very sincerely yours
W.F. Albright
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THE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY
BALTIMORE, MARYLAND
November 2nd, 1931
Dear Glueck:
On my return from Hartford I found your letter of October 18th awaiting me. I shall be happy to send you the material when I can get it together, which I must do, since Watzinger has also written me for some pictures. Just now I am very busy. Meanwhile, please write Dr. Kyle about the matter, since he has always had the right to publish popular articles, etc. while it is not absolutely necessary, I am sure that he would appreciate your courtesy in asking him.
My efforts to secure the approval of the Trustees seem to have been successful, so I do not apprehend any serious difficulty in the way of your election as Director of the Jerusalem School next year. I wrote you from Hartford, telling you about my interview with Morgenstern and Montgomery. I have talked with Barton since. The matter will be decided at the end of this month.
With best wishes to Mrs. Glueck,
Very sincerely yours,
W.F. Albright
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THE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY
BALTIMORE, MARYLAND
December 16th, 1931
Dear Glueck:
Many thanks for your letter of the 10th. The problem of the “baths” is very difficult. A very complete bibliography of the material to which you refer, with many additional reference, was published by Robinsons, Excavations at Olynthus, Vol. II, pp., 49-50, in illustration of his bath-tubs (figs, 136, 7.). There are so many arguments on both sides of the question that I am somewhat at a loss, though Welter’s point of view strikes me as more probable than that of Blegen. I am inclined to think that Robinson is right, and that our vats are adaptation of the bath-tub idea to industrial purposes.
I hope that you have secured permission from Dr. Kyle, and have gone ahead with your article on Tell Beit Mirsim. The fourth campaign will have enough money, even if Dr. Kyle is not able to raise quite as much as he earned before, since the Schools have granted $2500 for the coming summer. I take it that we can count on your collaboration during most of the campaign, though you will have to spend some time at Jerusalem after July 1st!
Your election went through without a dissenting voice on November 27th. You probably know already that the proceedings were a bit irregular–though entirely binding. Morgenstern and Barton have different ways of doing things; poor Barton forgets and muddles, though with such excellent intentions and such honest purpose that one cannot help forgiving him. We should never forget what he has done for the Schools, and when it comes to replacing him we will begin to realize the extent of his self-sacrifice on their behalf.
Anyway, you have my hearty congratulations, and Mrs. Glueck has my best wishes for a happy and untroubled year in Jerusalem.
Very sincerely yours,
W.F. Albright
1932
THE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY
BALTIMORE, MARYLAND
February 1st, 1932
Dear Glueck:
Many thanks for your kind invitation to motor to Chicago with you from Cincinnati. I shall certainly accept your kind invitation if I go to Chicago, but it is hardly likely that I shall. I never heard anything more about that lecture which I was invited to give in Louisville, and which I accepted. In any case, I am certainly not going if I can escape it, since there is altogether too much to do, and too little time in which to do it. Chicago would take at least six days, everything considered.
You will be too busy part of the time to join our excavation this summer, but you are more than welcome to stay there as long as you can manage it. I shall probably leave about May 1st, and visit the excavations in Syria before coming to Jerusalem, where I hope to be about June 1st. With the administrative work and the duties connected with summer school, you will doubtless find yourself rather busy.
My little book on the Archaeology of Palestine and the Bible appeared in print about a month ago, but I have not seen a copy yet. I shall send you one if there are enough author’s copies to go around the absolutely necessary circle; I have begged some from the University of Virginia, which will doubtless be generous in due season.
With my best regards to Mrs. Glueck,
Very sincerely yours,
W.F. Albright
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Paris, France, September 14th, 1932
Dear Glueck:
Here I am, at the same little hotel where I always come, as you remember. Unfortunately, I have only two-three days in Paris, not half enough for what I have to do here, since there is a great deal of correspondence, etc., to be attended to. I may not even have time for any calls, though I do not want to see Dhorme and Virolleaud, whose addresses I have secured from Geuthner.
The journey to Paris was uneventful, but the weather was unpleasantly close and hot the whole time, and has remained so in Paris. I shall not take this route again, if I can avoid it, since it is too expensive. The journey from Trieste to Paris takes 24 hours, and it is, therefore, advisable to take a sleeper when one is as tired as I have been. That costs money. I slept or dozed almost the whole time from Haifa to Trieste, and have not yet slept myself out. Otherwise I am much better than usual. I have already regained my usual weight in America, and so will not have to go on my usual diet to recover from ten or fifteen pounds of lost weight.
Please express to Mrs. Glueck my hearty thanks for her courtesy and thoughtfulness. I hope that she does not plunge into medical work with too much enthusiasm and exhaust herself. Jerusalem does not permit such long hours as are possible in the parts of the States which we know.
Thanking you for your kindness and helpfulness, I remain
Very sincerely yours,
W.F. Albright
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I hope that by now you have rested sufficiently to have overcome the Strapazen of the summer. I think the best way home for you would to take a boat of the American Export line, and sleep all the way back to America. It was a pleasure to be able to work under you again part of this summer, and I am already looking forward to the next time. We were sorry to see you leave the house. The place is so big, that two people are almost lost in it. We trust that you found Mrs. Albright and the children well. My wife and I send our greetings.
Inspektor Kjaer died suddenly Sept. 29. It was the result of violent dysentery, coupled with a very weak heart, and a worn-out body. The previous Sunday he had been forced to come here to the hospital. I had begged him a week before to come here to the School and rest and place himself under medical care. He was obdurate, however, insisting that he wanted to carry on as long as he could. He died suddenly. No one expected him to die. His heart simply gave out. He was a lovely gentleman. He overdid things terribly at Shilo. When I was last up there I remonstrated with him about the working hours. They worked from five to eleven-thirty, and from a quarter after twelve to five. He kept the record book, disbursed all moneys, kept all accounts, – did everything. He had expressed a wish to be buried in Denmark in case anything ever happened to him, so his body is being shipped home. The excavations have ceased for the present. I went out the afternoon of his death, with Mr. Nielson of the Newman School of Missions, to break the news to Schmidt. He was in a daze, so I sort of took charge, suggested the immediate closing down of the excavations, and waiting to see what the developments would be. They had simply been pottering around anyway, waiting for Inspekto Kjaer’s return. Schmidt came to me a few days ago, and asked me to work with him till the excavations could be closed, and to finish digging the places that Kjaer had planned to do. I have agreed to do so, if I could take the School out with me. Yesterday I received a telegram from the committee in Denmark asking me to take charge. A meeting of the Archaeological Advisory Board is to be held Oct. 11, to decide upon the matter. The Danish committee telegraphed to the Dept. of Antiquities telling them they wanted me to continue. There will be about three weeks more work to do, according to what Schmidt tells me. If the new permits is received, – the old one was in Kjaer’s name – , I am planning to have the members of the School come out every morning after breakfast and return here every evening before dinner. I think that three weeks practical experience will be as valuable as work in the classroom. I shall spend the week-ends here, and come in several evenings a week to attend to School business.
Meanwhile, class work has started. Dr. Cumming arrived a few weeks ago. He is a delightful person, and we are going to get along very well together. He brought his son with him, his wife and daughter are staying home. She is a high-school teacher, and could not get away. All the students, who had announced themselves, have arrived. The Thayer Fellow is missing. He has never written to me, and I don’t know who he is, or if he has ever been appointed. In the American School announcement on the inside back page of the J.B.L., a chap named Eavans from Toronto is announced as the Thayer Fellow, but whether that appointment still holds or not, I am at a loss to know. In addition to Detweiler and Stinespring there are three other permanent students here this year. They are Anne Fuller, Anna D. Kyle Fellow; Robert Claude Denton, John Henry Watson Fellow; Howard G. Payne, John Spencer Turner Fellow. They come respectively from Radcliffe, Berkely Divinity School, and the Andover-Newton Theological School. Miss Bentwich has also registered for the various courses. The group seems to be a very nice one, and I am looking forward to an interesting year with them.
The division took place the other day, Iliffe representing the government. I nearly had a stroke befor he came. That beautiful red sherd, with the painting of the bull on it could not be found. I was on the verge of telegraphing to you to find out if you knew anything about it. The morning of the division came, Iliffe walked in, and the very first thing he asked to see, was the particular sherd. I told him that we had misplaced it, but that we would surely find it. He had to come back a second time anyway to finish the division. Meanwhile we instituted a search. Finally it occurred to some one, that it might have gotten hidden away in one of your black boxes. I got out the keys, we opened them up, and sure enough in one of them, we found the sherd. I am enclosing a copy of the letter from the Department of Antiquities, giving the numbers of the objects they took. We also kept s separate record. They took the ykb scarab and the finest seal cylinder, among other things. I was able to retain most of the alabaster vases, the two best gold beads, and about half of those E vases, which Dr. Kyle wanted. I also got the nice Astarte figurine for Dr. Kyle’s collection. The government also took a number of other fine things, which slip my mind at the present, but you can check up the numbers. Of courses they took the ladle, or incense spoon, or whatever it is to be called.
From a letter of Dr. Montgomery recently, I take it that there will be little or no money to carry out the proposed dig at El-Hamme. I have not yet heard from Dr. Morgenstern about the possibility of H.U.C. raising money for excavating the synagogue. His silence may also be an answer. Will it be possible to use any of the Tell Beit Mirsim remaining funds for that purpose?
I have paid all the outstanding Tell Beit Mirsim bills, totaling L.P. 63:985. The plans are all finished and I am sending them, together with the field record books, to you. We are keeping sun-print copies of Section NW, level A, Section SE, levels C through H. we are sending a set of sun-prints, the original field sheets of this year, the set of cloth tracings for the government plans. There are three record books from this year and one from last year.
Dr. Fisher is still working on his Corpus. It may get finished, I believe. Detweiler is helping hi two days a
week. He is an awfully nice chap. He is helpful in all sorts of ways around here. I do hope that he can get the Thayer Fellowship next year.
The household is running pretty well, I believe. My wife does as much work as Mrs. Beaumont did, – which takes about a half an hour a day. I have let Philomene go. She was too stupid. I have detached Victoria from the kitchen, and despite protests that the kitchen could not get along without her, it seems that the work is being done as well as ever. We are using Victoria for the Director’s house and of course, paying her salary. I have lengthened Nazli’s hours, and given Shukri more to do. They are not overworked, but they are kept busy, and there is no more loafing. I let Victoria and Nazli do all the wahsing for a couple of weeks. After that they were willing to do all kinds of extra work, to escape from that particulr job. I think the School is being run now on the minimum servant staff, and I have done about all the deflating that seems possible at the moment. I have written to the Dpt. of Agriculture for a hundred more trees to plant on the grounds. The water question is solved for the present. We are getting water three times a week now, which is more than sufficient. We have also had a number of very strong rains. After trying in vain for a month to get a permit to build and extension to the septic rank, I have finally started without a permit. Mr. Cantor, the head of the Government sanitary Dept., advised me to go ahead. I had appealed to him, finally, and he is trying to get the permit through the municipality for me.
So much for the present. I shall have the secretary make out a statement of the Tell Beit Mirsim expenditures I have made thus far, and enclose it in this letter tomorrow. He is slow, but I am beginning to feel that he is a good man for the work he now does. And I think that he is honest.
Have you discussed with Dr. Montgomery and Dr. Barton the advisability of a special fund for the director’s board bill?
With best greetings to you and your family, in which my wife joins me,
I am as ever,
Sincerely yours,
NG
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October 31, 1932
Dr. W. F. Albright
Johns Hopkins University
Baltimore, Md.
Dear Albright:
Your letters of October 1 and 12 received. I was glad to hear you got some rest on the way home. I have attended to the various items mentioned in your letters, and am eager to be of whatever service I can also in the future.
Enclosed find the photographs made by the Department of Antiquities, which desired to make them, rather than let the lion-censer go out of the Museum. The overlooked page of the Record Book has been delivered. The two weights were weighed at the Department of Antiquities. No. 2239 weighs 181.045 grams, and No. 2365 weighs 40.2 grams. Enclosed also find final statement of the T. B. M. account.
We are all glad the Annual is out. Heartiest congratulations. I am using it in my class here, and it is just the book for our needs. We are taking advantage of the T. B. M. pottery collections in the workroom, and are devoting a good deal of time to their study. When Fisher’s Corpus is finished, Palestinian archaeology will have the two books on pottery on which it can rely.
I shall send in the account of the 1931-2 Palestinian archaeological work sometime in December.
The work here is going smoothly. The Thayer Fellow, Dr. Evans arrived, and he completes the list of fellows resident at the School, whom I mentioned in my last letter to you. Miss Bentwich and Mrs. Ben-Dor are also taking regular courses. We have been visiting all the excavated sites in southern Judah, and a number tulul in their vicinity, with no original work whatsoever accomplished in connection with these visits. I find that despite my previous desire of turning over “die touristiche Seitung” to Dr. Cumming, that I am compelled to arrange for the various trips, and accompany them. The group here is a nice one, but the individual students are more desirous of seeing the country, and getting its physical atmosphere, than doing anything else. Which, I guess, is legitimate on the part of those who have never been here before, and who will probably rarely, if ever, revisit Palestine.
The household is running smoothly. The reduced staff of three is functioning as well as when five people were working in the School, apart from the gardener and the director’s maid. My wife is proving to be an efficient housekeeper, and the menus are very satisfactory, I think. I raised Shukri’s salary half a pound a month. In servant salaries alone, now, a saving of twelve and a half pounds a month has been affected, which amounts to about sixteen pounds a month, considering that I am now personally paying Victoria’s board bill, in addition to her salary.
Fisher’s Corpus is coming along nicely. It will be finished, he is sure, before this spring. He has received a flattering offer from Princeton to continue at Antioch, and would like to accept. I encouraged his acceptance. He will have telegraphed to Montgomery long before their letter arrives, so you will already probably have been informed.
Hucklesby, who did the survey work at Jerash last year, came to me last month, and asked to be permitted to continue this year, and immediately, because from March on he is engaged to work again on the Government survey of T. J. I discussed the matter thoroughly with Stinespring and Fisher, and having received Fisher’s and Detweiler’s opinion with regard to his previous work, have made the following arrangements with him. I am giving him five pounds a month expense money, and am permitting him to hire two men to help him at not more than ten plastres a day. The five pounds are to be deducted from his regular salary, which is to be paid him, whenever the Jerash expedition begins. [Handwritten note: He [?] living in the expedition [?] in Jerash, and is making new satisfactory surges in the work of surveying. Mr. Horsfield is in touch with him.]
In my last letter I wrote to you about the request of the Danish Committee to resume work at Shilo in Kjaer’s place. If you have surmised difficulties with Schmidt, you have not erred. In addition to the telegram from Denmark, I received a letter from Dean Ussing, a cop of which I am sending to you. Upon my application the permit was granted to me immediately, but my request that Schmidt’s name be included in the permit was turned down, – luckily so -, because the Danish Committee had also telegraphed to the Department of Antiquities, and proposed only my name. There was a delay of a week getting the permit through the acting High Commissioner’s office. Meanwhile Schmidt was making life miserable for me, by demanding that we begin digging again without a permit. I refused, whereupon he said he would begin anyway. I could not send a policeman after him, but Dr. L. A. Mayer, the acting director of Antiquities, with whom I kept in close touch, informed me then unofficially, that if any digging was done, I would be held responsible. I immediately. I immediately sent a special messenger to Shilo, and forbade Schmidt in strong language to do anything till I received the permit and could be present on the site. The day after, last Wednesday, the permit came. I got Dr. Cumming, and we immediately drove out to Shilo. Schmidt met us, and announced that he had decided suddenly not to permit digging in the earlier levels, but despite his former agreement with me to devote all the rest of the time and money to working on a church on the site. That was contrary to my instructions from Denmark, and my own interests and competence. He was going to permit me to dig a ditch here, and a hole there in the part of the hill where Kjaer had been digging, but forbade me to touch this spot and that wall, and so on. There were two courses left open to me. One to exercise my authority, have the man thrown off the premises, and work my own way, and in accordance with my instruction. That was impossible, because the man has moral and personal and property rights in Shilo, and he would have gone raving mad, literally insane. The other was to close the dig, -which I regretfully did. I returned to Jerusalem, and discussed the whole matter with the Director of Antiquities. He applauded my action, and unofficially requested me to keep the permit in my name, till the division of the finds previously made had taken place, and till some sort of a report had been written. He said he could not and would not have any dealings with Schmidt. I agreed to retain the permit, and explained clearly to Schmidt that no more digging was to go on this year. Meanwhile I telegraphed to the Danish Committee, and to Dr. Ingholt of the American University of Beirut, who is their representative in Palestine. Dr. Ingholt came down from Beirut, approved of my actions, and said that if I had gone ahead and dug according to my own judgment, which Fisher and Vincent had agreed with, despite Schmidt, the Danish Committee would have backed me up. All the money has been placed my name and Ingholt’s, and as soon the architect at Shilo, Schultz, is finished with the copying of some mosaics there, I shall bring the materials at Shilo here to Jerusalem.
When I examined the pottery at Shilo over a month ago, as I wrote then in a letter to Dr. Montgomery, I found that most of it dug up from E-pottery. There were some E. B. sherds and a fair amount of L. B. sherds, but the main picture was .18-.17 cent M. B. Two scarabs found with them were adjudged by Rowe, to whom I showed them, to be Hyksos scarabs. Schmidt insisted, however, that all the evidence showed that Shilo was destroyed in J. B. A couple weeks after that I took Fisher to Shilo with me, and he confirmed my judgment about the pottery, as did Vincent a few weeks still later when he went up there with Ingholt and me. The picture of Shilo, seems then to be as follows: There was some occupation during E. B. times, a considerable one during M. B., and a smaller in L. B. The material from the previous campaigns completes the picture.
I was very glad to hear that there will be about a thousand dollars for El-Hame or elsewhere. I shall do nothing now till spring. Nassif Bey wants a quarter of the antiquities for his share in return for permitting us to dig. I do not care to agree to such a proposal without authority from America. What is your opinion, please? As I expected, I could not raise money for the synagogue at El-Hemme. I told Sukenik that the various letters I had written for that purpose had resulted in negative answers, whereupon he informed me he had secured money here in Palestine. He no longer spoke of cooperation in digging the synagogue, however. I was a bit peened, but said nothing to him. I felt that cooperation should work both ways. I told Magnes and Schlossinger so a few days later, when at the tea we gave for Dr. Cumming, they broached mr about cooperation between the H. U., H. U. C., and the A. S. O. R. At their prodding since then Sukenik has written me a letter asking me to cooperate with him, knowing that I can’t now. He is beginning immediately. I shall wait and see what the developments are, and keep you fully informed as soon as any plans materialize. Is there any other particular small site you would like to have me work on?
I am enclosing a sheet of the lined centimeter paper, of which I find, we have a whole case in the cellar. If there is to be a campaign at Beth-Zur this ummer, we already have more than a sufficient stock on hand.
With best greetings,
Very sincerely yours,
NG
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THE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY
BALTIMORE, MARYLAND
November 14th, 1932
Dear Glueck:
Your very interesting letter of Oct. 7th arrived two weeks ago, but I have been so busy since then that I have allowed all my correspondence to accumulate.
Class-work is going well, with the best small group of students I have had since coming here. There are six in the Seminary, all Jews, and several of them very promising men. My research is hampered by eye-trouble, which has developed since my return. I don’t think there is anything wrong outside of the glasses, which presumably need changing.
My fourth son, David, was born a week ago (nearly two weeks now). Both Mrs. Albright and the boy are well. We run to boys, you observe.
I was very sorry indeed to hear of Inspector Kjaer’s death. I hope that you were able to carry the Shiloh excavations to a temporary end. Mr. Kjaer’s death is probably a greater blow to Dr. Schmidt than to anyone else, since he had counted so much on the continuation of the work this season.
You have doubtless heard from Professor Barton that there is money available from the unexpended balance. I do not know how much, since no meeting has yet been held. In any case, you may certainly borrow the unexpended balance of the Tell Beit Mirsim money for any archaeological work; it can be repaid to the account when a grant is made.
I am very sorry about the oversight with regard to the Phoenician potsherd, which is naturally annoying. The level-books arrived safely; I have not received the plans yet. Many thanks for your care and trouble.
You evidently have an exceptionally nice group of students this year, all serious. Since about 1928 there have been a good many who were not serious. I am certainly not going to discourage the latter kind, but it is nice to have some good students, too.
Sellers reports having met some groups of persons from the Summer School, and also reports that they were very much pleased with the Director of the said School. A short account of it, from your report to Montgomery, will appear in the December Bulletin, which goes to press in about a week.
Your conscientious work on the problem of servant staff and organization of the household is going to make things a great deal easier for me. I approve heartily of everything you have done so far. It is quite possible that we may try the lady who wrote you for a year as a housekeeper and stenographer. At my suggestion, she has seen Barton and Montgomery, both off whom are pleased with her. I have not seen her yet, but expect to soon. She does not expect much compensation, is willing to try it out for a year, and is a trained stenographer and typist, in addition to her other qualifications. This would not mean getting rid of Vartabedian, but simply supplementing him semi-privately. The combined job of librarian and secretary seems, from what you say, to fit him pretty well.
Professor Berry is a widower, so that no problem of the Annual Professor’s wife comes up next year. You are lucky this year, since a well-meaning lady with nothing to do can be a thorough nuisance.
With my best regards to Mrs. Glueck,
Very sincerely yours,
W.F. Albright
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THE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY
BALTIMORE, MARYLAND
November 22nd, 1932
Dear Glueck:
Many thanks for your letter of Oct. 31st , which has just arrived. I have also received the plans, which had been packed extremely well, and arrived in perfect condition. Everything is in order, I believe, thanks to your care. I also want to thank you for the photographs of the lion censer, as well as for the weights, etc.
In my last letter I forgot to ask you to turn over two of the new Annuals to the Department of Antiquities, in accordance with the ordinance providing that two copies of the report shall be given to the Department. I letter from the latter, just received, reminds me of this.
As soon as I head about the death of Kjaer and the request that you carry on, I apprehended that Dr. Schmidt would cause trouble. Poor Dr. Schmidt is failing very fast, so his natural characteristics are accentuated. It was evident this summer that he cannot do anything properly any more. Your course seems to have been the only possible one.
The account of the 1931-2 work in Palestine, which you have promised to send, will go directly to Miss Swindler, editor of AJA, as soon as I have made some excerpts for the Bulletin. I explained the situation to you before: the entire report will appear in the AJA, and I have promised not to continue duplicating it in the Bulletin. However, this will not prevent me from quoting you for a couple of pages.
I understand from Prof. Montgomery that Breasted has declined to provide further assistance for the Corpus (in which he is perfectly justified). I see no reason why the School cannot make a contribution, and will recommend that this be done at our Christmas meeting. It is probably better not to mention this suggestion to him unless he learns that Breasted’s reply to Montgomery, and is too much cast down.
The application by Fisher to be given leave of absence to join the Antioch expedition will certainly be granted, and the organization of the Jerash undertaking will be made along the lines suggested this summer.
The new material for the occupation-history of Shiloh is extremely interesting. It is particularly interesting to have LB, which was not found in the very small excavation in early débris previously made.
There will probably be more than $1000 for el-Hammeh, but I do not know the details. In any case, this sum will be available for any other small site you may wish to attack. With regard to Nassif Bey’s proposal, I am sure that the Schools will not object, so long as you have the full right of publication, including access to the antiquities after division. I myself care little who gets duplicate objects and pottery, provided that they are adequately recorded, drawn, and photographed. I should say that the matter was entirely between you, the Department of Antiquities and Nassif Bey, and will so advise Montgomery, if he asks me.
You have done splendidly in organizing the servant-staff. A saving of 16 L.P. a month is decidedly worth while.
With my best regards to Mrs. Glueck,
Very sincerely yours,
W.F. Albright
—
Returning from a very interesting trip in eastern Transjordan, about which I shall write a full report later, I found your letters of Nov. 14 and 22. We discovered a new Nabataean site, and an entirely new settlement at Kilweh, where we also found a hill covered with ibex carvings.
I have written a pretty full account of the recent doings of the School in a letter which I am sending to Dr. Montgomery today. Shall I send you a separate account for the Bulleting news letter, or do you usually simply make excerpts from the reports to Montgomery? I am now engaged in writing up the results of the soundings at el-Hammeh, and of the trip through the desert, and I shall send them to you as soon as they are finished. I am enclosing the archaeological report of the work done in Palestine and Syria in 1932. I note that after you have made excerpts for the Bulletin you will send it directly to Miss Swindler, editor of the AJA. I am also sending a copy to Dr. Montgomery.
Heartiest congratulations upon the birth of your fourth son David. You almost have enough for a basket-team. I am glad to hear that Mrs. Albright and the boy are well.
Mr. and Mrs. Rowe have moved in and are living with us for the present in the Director’s house. Dr. Fisher has suddenly decided to give up his house in Ramallah, and come and live in the School. As soon as the Rowes leave I shall have him come over and live with us in the Director’s house. Meanwhile I am assigning him a room in the apartment of the Annual Professor, and am giving him one of the sitting rooms for a work room.
I have sent two copies of the Annual to the Dept. of the Antiquities.
If satisfactory arrangements can be made with the lady who smiled so prettily in her photograph, I think she will be a very excellent acquisition to the School staff. A part time house-keeper is needed, and a real stenographer is very necessary. I have been trying to het some on to come in and do some stenographic work for me occasionally, but it is difficult to find a proper person.
We are very happy here in Jerusalem. The year is passing all too quickly.
With best regards to you and Mrs. Albright,
I am, very sincerely yours,
NG
1933
January 20th, 1933
Dear Glueck:
Many thanks for the Archaeological Report, which I shall excerpt for the Annual, and then send to miss Swindler for AJA. I am also excerpting from your interesting letter of December 26th to Professor Montgomery. It is not necessary to send me any special material duplicating what you have in your letters to Montgomery, since I always receive a copy of them. If you have any special report or article which you wish to contribute, send it directly to me, unless you wish Professor Montgomery to see it first.
The news from the School is extremely interesting. Congratulations on the way things are going. Everything you do makes it easier for me — since I shall not attempt to keep up the social end. If I did the contrast would not be so favorable to the School. I hope that Mr. Horsfield is quite recovered by now. How lucky that Mrs. Glueck was a member of the party!
The action of the Executive Committee on December 30th changed a number of things. I had been corresponding with Miss Kennedy, and I had an interview with her in Philadelphia the day before the meeting. Professors Montgomery and Barton also saw her and were very favorably impressed. She is just the person we want, I believe, with a long experience and wide acquaintance in Palestine and Syria, a good family background, good education, ability to manage a house, act as a hostess, speak Arabic, take dictation, etc., etc. Also (confidentially) she is past forty and very plain in appearance, so that she would not be likely to cause jealousy on the part of other feminine members of the School group However, now that Stinespring has been appointed and plans to bring his wife bout, I have been in touch with her, and find her willing to accept the post of hostess, in return for which she would receive her keep, but not her transportation, which we were going to offer to Miss Kennedy. She is not nearly as experienced as Miss Kennedy, but has other qualifications, and will,
I believe, fit remarkably well. Since she is my sister, and Professor Berry is a widower, there ought not to be any friction. Professor Berry is coming alone, as he writes me, so there will be ample room in both the Director’s wing and that of the Professor for others. The easiest solution would evidently be to invite my sister and her husband to stay with me, and to offer Dr. Fisher two rooms in the Professor’s wing. I explained the new situation to him, in a letter written January 4th, before I had heard my sister’s reaction to the idea. I hope she doesn’t feel offended. It may be added that the appointment of Dr. Stinespring as Thayer Fellow for the next two years was the idea of Professor Montgomery and had not been suggested by me at all. The Yale men, both Torrey and Kraeling, endorsed it heartily, and Torrey urged that it be made for two years. So that is that. The appointment will doubtless be considered a bit of favoritism in some quarters, but it was made on the candidate’s merits alone.
Detweiler was, as you know, appointed special architectural fellow, with a stipend to be drawn from the Jerash grant. I shall see that he receives a fair stipend, and that he has an opportunity to increase it by other work on behalf of the School. You might assure him of this for me, so that we will not feel apprehensive about his prospects. There will also be a Nies Scholar, to receive $500, part of the amount saved on the Director’s salary by the new arrangement.
With renwed congratulations on the way you are managing the School, I am, with my best regards to Mrs. Glueck,
Very sincerely yours,
W.F. Albright
—
March 15, 1933
Dr. W. F. Albright
Johns Hopkins University
Baltimore, Md.
Dear Albright:
I am sending you an article on our trip through eastern Transjordan, together with the photographs, and tracings of the rock-carvings. You may want to excerpt it for the Bulletin, if it is too large to be included in its entirety. If you feel the article merits publication in its entirety, will you send it t the AASOR or the AJA?
I am also enclosing a fuller report of our recent School trips that I made in my last letter of Feb. 28 to Professor Montgomery, in case you desire to publish it in the Bulletin. I note from your letter of Jan. 20 that you received the archaeological report, which you are excerpting for the Annual before sending it to Miss Swindler for the AJA. I do not know which parts you excerpted, but I am sending you in the next few days a fuller article on El-Hammeh, with photographs and drawings of the sherds, than I included in the report. I thought this fuller article on El-Hammeh might go to the AASOR.
I have suggested to Professor Montgomery that the $500 which the Board appropriated, at your kind suggestion I believe, to undertake any small dig I may consider worthwhile, be put at my disposal to make a survey of Bronze Age sites in Transjordan, and make whatever soundings on some of them which I may find advisable. Mr. Horsfield has assured me of his hearty cooperation.
The School session closes today. Most of the members of the School are going to Mesopotamia with Dr. Cumming for a three weeks’ stay, and then sailing to America from Beirut. I could not arrange the usual long spring trip because of Jerash. In addition to Detweiler, I have engaged another architect, E. Bartow-Müller, a classmate of his at Penn., who is now with the Penn. –Baghdad School expedition. Stinespring, his wife, who is to keep the record–book, and I complete the staff. Dr. Fisher has already gone over to Jerash with me, and he, Horsfield, and I discussed what ought to be done this season. I am taking Crowfoot over this week-end to get his point-of-view.
Fisher left the other day for Antioch. He has worked very hard on his Corpus this year, but he will be lucky if he can get the Bronze Age volume out. In a way it were better if he were relieved of his duties at Antioch for a year, or if the excavations were postponed for a year, to permit him to finish his Corpus. I think he will be perfectly satisfied to have two rooms in the Annual Professor’s quarters, and I am sure he doesn’t feel offended at the change in plans.
The plan to have your sister act as hostess is a splendid one I am glad Dr. Stinespring and his wife will be with you. It were a pity not to make adequate use of the beautiful Director’s house. The appointment of Stinespring as Thayer Fellow for the next two years is a most excellent one. He is very capable man, and I am delighted that he was been chosen. I am also gratified that Detweiler has been appointed special architectural Fellow, with a stipend to be drawn from the Jerash grant. He is highly deservant of the fellowship, and I believe that he will prove a great asset to the School.
When are you coming out? I expect to remain in Palestine till August certainly, and shall be glad to carry on for you should you come here late in summer. I have enjoyed the year here hugely, and have profited greatly, and am frankly sorry that it is racing by so quickly. I shall return on every possible occasion.
Professor Grant has arrived and expects to commence work at ‘Ain Shems soon. Alan Rowe is to help him. Starkey, it is reported, is doing well at Tell Duweir. I expect to visit him soon. Sir Flinders Petree does not seem to be finding much at Tell ‘Ajjul.
Other news I have included in my letter to Professor Montgomery, which I need not therefore repeat here.
With best regards to you and Mrs. Albright,
Very sincerely yours,
NG
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THE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY
BALTIMORE, MARYLAND
March 22nd, 1933
Professor Nelson Glueck, Director,
American School of Oriental Research,
Jerusalem, Palestine.
Dear Glueck:
A letter from Professor Montgomery transmits to me your suggestion that the $500 which has ben appropriated for your archaeological work be devoted to a survey of the Bronze Age sites in Transjordan, as well as to the soundings in some of them. He asks me to convey his approval to you in case I also agree. Of course, I agree with enthusiasm. The plan is excellent, and with Mr. Horsfield’s cooperation ought to yield results quite disproportionate to the outlay. I have no further advice, since you cannot get better advice than from Mr. Horsfield. I shall look forward to examining the characteristic pottery myself when I get to Jerusalem.
I have reserved passage in a boat sailing from Baltimore to Europe, June 7th. I shall then probably reach Jerusalem about the end of June, where I hope to find you and Mrs. Glueck — if she has not already left for Europe.
The Bronze Age pottery of the fourth campaign at Tell Beit Mirsim will appear in a fifty page paper in the next Annual. There will be 27 plates of drawings and photos, as well as a comparative discussion on the basis of the new material from Tell ‘Ajjûl, Jericho, etc. The relative chronology of the Middle Bronze will be advanced considerably, I trust.
With my best wishes to Mrs. Glueck, as well as for your success in Transjordan, I am
Very sincerely yours,
W.F. Albright
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AMERICAN SCHOOL OF ORIENTAL RESEARCH
JERUSALEM, PALESTINE
OFFICE OF THE DIRECTOR
CABLE ADDRESS: MONUMENTS
April 5, 1933.
Dear Albright:
I am sending you a small article on Tell el-Hammeh, together with a number of photographs and sherds. By the same post I am sending four plates of plans and drawings of sherds to go with the article. I leave it to your judgment as to where to publish the article, or not to publish it at all, if you do not think that it is worthwhile.
I trust that you received the article and plates on the Transjordan trip, which I sent to you several weeks ago. I wonder if I could impose on your kindness and ask you to make several minor corrections in the manuscript. I am enclosing a list of them. Abbe H. Breuil spent the morning here at the School, examining the Kilwa photographs, and was enthusiastic about the find. I am enclosing a list of his comments on the pictures which I should like to have added as a postscript to the article on Transjordan. Many thanks.
I have gotten the Jerash expedition started, and we are clearing the south side of the arch. I have engaged another architect, in addition to Detweiler. He is a classmate of his, and has been working with Bache at Tepe Gawra. His name is E. Bartow Mueller. As soon as the Jerash expedition is swinging along, I want to start on the work I wrote to you about in my last latter.
With hearty greetings,
Sincerely yours,
NG
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THE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY
BALTIMORE, MARYLAND
April 14th, 1933
Dear Glueck:
Your letter and enclosures, together with the plans, arrived several days ago, just in time to be used for the April Bulletin. I have only abstracted the report on the explorations in eastern Transjordan, since the number was already filled, and the account it, in any case, much too long for the Bulletin. It contains very interesting material, and should by all means be published. I would suggest that you change the form slightly, and present the two parts in separate articles. The first part contains little original matter, while the part dealing with the rock-carvings at Kilwa is all brand-new. There is also a great difference between the archaeological fields involved, the first dealing with Nabataean and later material, while the second is exclusively (or nearly so) prehistoric. The second part might, e.g., be submitted to AJA, which will be very glad of it, while the first part can go into a more popular article, or into the October Bulletin. I would suggest that you group the photographs and tracings on plans, placing two or three photos, after non-essential parts (not needed either for the outlines or for identification of place) have been cut off, one each plate, and making a special line-cut on a special thinner sheet, so that the corresponding tracings fit in each case over the photograph. Otherwise, this will have to be done by someone unfamiliar with the material, which is so interesting that only first-class treatment should be given it.
I have not yet received the fuller report on the excavation at el-Hammeh. When I receive it, I shall make a recommendation with regard to the place and form of publication.
I am taking your material to Philadelphia, and shall turn it over to Professor Montgomery for examination and safe-keeping until you return. The Executive Committee of the Schools meets in New York on Tuesday of the coming week.
You have doubtless received the number of AJA containing your report on Archaeology in Palestine and Syria, which I excerpted for the February Bulletin.
It is extremely full and interesting. As you will note, I edited it for orthography and miscellaneous details, but my task was simpler than usual in this respect. You would be surprised to know how careless in details some scholars with a good reputation are.
I hope that everything goes well at Jerash. Of course, minor difference and a little friction are to be expected, and no one who has any experience in such matters takes them at all seriously. You have been lucky so far this year, to judge from the uniformly good reports which I have heard from various scholars and other persons not directly connected with the School. In my last year in Jerusalem I had a very unpleasant scrap with the Annual Professor.
I am enclosing the notes from Mayer and Vincent, which you had better keep with you, so that they will not be mislaid, as might be the case if I left with Professor Montgomery. – I should have added that the Annual, now edited by Speiser and Burrows, is complete for this year; I do not know what arrangements are planned for next year. If you wish to print all or part of your material in next year’s Annual, you will have plenty of time to get it into perfect final shape, since the Annual is sent to press in May or June, as a rule.
As I wrote last time, I am sailing by the S.S. City of Baltimore from this port, June 7th. If I can catch the Lloyd Triestine boat without to much rush, I shall be in Jerusalem about the end of June. In any event, I shall telegraph from Paris, so that you will know when to expect me. It is very good news that you will remain in Palestine for the summer; you will, of course, reciprocate by staying with me in the Director’s house when you are at the School.
So that you will not misunderstand, I want to say confidentially that I had nothing whatever to do with Stinespring’s appointment as Thayer Fellow, since I believe in a strictly neutral attitude in such matters. President Montgomery seems to have thought of it first, and the Yale people, Torrey and Kraeling, were very keen about it. The two year appointment was Torrey’s idea — in fact, I thought that it was only a suggestion, which had not been adopted, until I saw the minutes of the meeting! If he and his wife retain their health and fit into life at the School, the arrangement ought to work out very well, and will, naturally, be extraordinarily convenient for me. I became slightly acquainted with Stinespring last summer, and must say that he makes an increasingly good impression. He has real ability in several directions; how much intrinsic scholarly interest he has I do not know. My sister is very adaptable and has a good general education. Her health is none too good, and the child may be something of a problem. Aside from these points, she ought to enjoy life in Jerusalem.
Mrs. Albright and the four small boys are all flourishing. Her heath improves steadily; she has never been as well as she is now, I think, since we were married. The boys are in fine condition, thanks to simple life, plain wholesome food, and plenty of sleep with good medical care.
With my best regards to Mrs. Glueck, I am
Very cordially yours,
W.F. Albright
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THE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY
BALTIMORE, MARYLAND
April 27th, 1933
Dear Glueck:
The MS of your article on Tell el-Hammeh, with the drawings, arrived too late for use in the April Bulletin. I have read it with great interest and will turn it over to Professor Montgomery for safe-keeping until your return. I have already given him the MS of your report on the Transjordan expedition, together with the plans, which he will keep until your return. I would suggest that you group the photos on cardboard or paper, to make a smaller number of plates, since it will be too expensive to reproduce them separately. To your paper I am attaching a sample of the way in which I arranged the photos for Annual XII. — By the way, you have my full and eager permission to omit “Professor” before my name in printed references of an erudite nature.
I suggest that you write to Burrows, now joint editor of the Annual (with Speiser), and ask him for space for your contributions in the coming Annual (XIV), which will go to press next spring. This will give you plenty of time to prepare the important matter which you have for final publication. I would suggest that you divide it into three parts, separating the account of the trip in the desert from the description of the carvings at Kilwa. The latter ought to come first, because of its outstanding interest. As a result of your work this spring you will perhaps have enough to make up an entire Annual.
Looking forward to seeing you again about the end of June, I am
Very sincerely yours,
W.F. Albright
1934
February 14, 1934
Abstract from an address delivered at a dinner meeting at the Harmonie Club, 4 East 60th Street, on Wednesday, February 14th, 1934, by Dr. W.F. Albright, Director of the American School of Oriental Research in Jerusalem, and Professor of Semites at the Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore.
It is an unusual pleasure to follow the two brilliant addresses by Professors Glueck and Speiser. Dr. Glueck has described the remarkable work which he has been doing in Transjordan. His success is partly due to his enterprise and courage in exploring the little-known region of Moab, which was jealously guarded by the Bedouin from intruders until recently. However he would not have succeeded in making an intelligible picture from his archaeological explorations if it had not been for his previous mastery of that difficult, but none the less important criterion, the ancient pottery of Palestine. As his teacher it has been my pleasant experience to watch the fledgeling make his first essay at flight – but I never dreamed that his first independent flight would prove to be such a voyage of discovery. May the second year of his independent explorations be even more successful than the first one!
Dr. Speiser has taken you farther afield, into the Mesopotamia where his archaeological and philological researches have won so many triumphs. His remarks on the close relation of Mesopotamia to Palestine, especially in the age of Hebrew beginnings, illustrate once again how very important for the reconstruction of ancient history the close cooperation between students of Palestine and Mesopotamia is. It is no accident that Dr. Glueck is this year heading an archaeological expedition under the auspices of our Baghdad School. Let us hope that he discovers evidence from ancient Edom bearing on the history of the Horites, that mysterious biblical people which Dr. Speiser has exhumed from its forgotten grave, and which plated so important a historical role in the childhood of the Hebrew nation.
I should like to say a few words this evening about the remarkable archaeological work which has ben going on for a number of year under the auspices of the Hebrew University. Practically all of this work has been accomplished by my friend Dr. Sukenik, Field Archaeologist of the University, who has been engaged for years in making bricks without straw, that is, in dong important archaeological work with very limited funds. In the years just after the War he studied hard in the leisure time saved from a school-teacher’s busy day. In 1923, a little over ten years ago, he joined the American School, and was my pupil and assistant for a year. Afterwards, he went to Berlin to specialize in the field of Graece-Roman archaeology, so that he might devote himself particularly to the post-biblical archaeology of the Jewish people. From Berlin he came to Philadelphia, where he received his doctorate under President Adler.
It is difficult to find any part of the field of post-biblical archaeology where the researches of Dr. Sukenik have not written a new chapter, which often supersedes what others have written before. His work in the inscriptions of the Second Temple, his synagogue excavations, his studies on architecture, and decoration have now made him the foremost living authority on post-biblical archaeology . Two years ago he was honored by being elected corresponding member of the German Archaeological Institute; last year he gave the Schweich Lectures of the British Academy at London on the subject of the Jewish Synagogues and its Evolution. For three years he has collaborated on the excavation of ancient Samaria, representing the Hebrew University in this joint enterprise with Harvard. His latest discovery was not made in the excavators’ camp, but in the museum and the study; it is none the less a discovery of great historical importance. He has succeeded in reading some enigmatic inscription on official Jewish stamps, impressed on jar-handles of the Persian period. Simultaneously, he has correctly read the inscription on a Jewish coin and has discovered another previously unknown Jewish coin of the Persian period with the same inscription. These inscriptions are all in Aramaic, and refer to the autonomous Jewish state of the Persian period (that is, the first two centuries after the return of the Jews from the Babylonian Exile). Now we know for the first time what the politicalnature of this autonomous Jewish state was, and that it struck its own silver coins, and possessed an autonomous fiscal organization. Since I had myself worked unsuccessfully on these stamps and coins, I can fully appreciate the insight and patience which led to this discovery.
And yet the budget of the department of Archaeology in the Hebrew University is less than $3000. And this economy is characteristic of the management of the Hebrew University, an economy which puts much of our American research work and teaching to blush. A fuller professor in the Hebrew University gets less than $2000 a year. Since the first attempts to organize a school of higher studies were made in Jerusalem, before the death of Eliezer Ben Yehuda, some twelve years ago, the idea has taken root and has grown, until now the birds come to take refuge in the branches. It was then my privilege to help the little group of scholars to plan for their future school of Jewish and Oriental studies. The plan would probably never have amounted to much, however, if Dr. Magnes had not taken a hold of it, and transformed it by the power of his idealism and his own imagination, until the Hebrew University was created. For over ten years ago now I have been a warm friend and admirer of Dr. Magnes. For the past ten years I have had the rare privilege of friendship with both Dr. Magnes and Dr. Schloessinger, and I want to register the firm conviction of an outsider, who has no axe to grind, and nothing to gain, that the close cooperation of these great men, who give their devoted services without salary, who combine imagination with practicality, and who share in one of the finest types of idealism which I have ever know, is the greatest asset which the University possesses. Under their direction, with their devoted company of scholars and scientists, of teachers and investigators, the University must go on to achieve the triumphs which its destiny compels. From Zion shall go forth instruction –mi-Tziyon tetze torah!
—
The trip was uneventful, and not pleasant because of the terrific amount of vibration in tourist class of the Conte di Savoia, as you warned me. However, we were in Haifa in eleven days and I shall regard the vibration as a preliminary training for the shaking we will get on the camels.
I had a hectic day in Haifa getting the truck through customs. I saw one of the chief British officials, and he convinced me that the British Empire would most certainly fall if I did not pay the customs duty of fourty five pounds. I finally paid it under protest. It has its advantages, becasue now it will be possible to sell the car to private persons, if necessary. I secured test plates from the Chevrolet agency in Haifa, and one of their drivers, and we drove to Jerusalem the same night. The traffic authorities in Jerusalem tried to make me pay twenty five pounds per license for the car. In their eyes all trucks must be used for commercial purposes. I protested vehemently, and finally convinced them that the truck was going to be used for private, scientific purposes, and that therefore a private license, costing two pounds, would be quite sufficient. Finally by going directly to the head of the traffic bureau, Major Monroe, I won my point. Now I precedent has been established.
The insurance has been heavy, amounting to eighteen pounds, because the bounds covered by the insurance companies stop at the Kerak line, and there is an extra charge for the territory beyond that line. However, even after all these preliminary expenses, I think that we have come off rather well. The total cost of the car to the expedition, including freight, insurance and license, totals about $1170. I can easily get rid of the car at the end of six months, if it is advisable, and secure at least a hundred and fifty pounds for it, if not more. The same car here at the Chevrolet agency costs exactly $500 more. They ask three hundred and fifty pounds for a similar one.
We leave tomorrow morning for Amman, where we shall stay overnight. Monday morning we go to Kerak. Ali Abu Ghosh has been there for several days arranging for camels. We hope to get off the same day from Kerak. I have engaged Upchurch to drive the truck. He will return to Jerusalem. I am lending the truck then to the Jerash expedition to transport its load of stuff to Jerash on the second of April. Then Upchurch is taking Horsfield and his equipment to Jebel Rum, and will wait there for us till we turn up from the Arabah. Phythian Adams will be with Horsfield in Jebel Rum, in addition to the Dominicans. Head was over here for a few days as our guest. He claims that water corrodes his stomach, and acted accordingly. It is a matter of taste, I guess. He relates with pride, that he induced you to take several spoonfuls of rum. I am afraid your politeness must have ruined your sleep for several nights.
Things at the School seem to be going along very nicely. The Stinesprings are carrying on very well. It is a pleasure to be back here if my wife were here, I should be completely happy. I miss her terribly much. She is a good sport to let me go. We were lucky in marrying the right kind of women. I have been out very little, because I have been accepting practically no invitations.
I have completed the report of last summer’s survey, and am having it sent to you tomorrow or the day after, taking advantage of your kindness to read it through for me, and correct it where necessary. I have tried to limit it as much as possible, in order not to overstep too much the approximately hundred page limit, which Burrows has asked me to observe. Out of the several hundred photographs, I have chosen about thirty five to illustrate the text. However, I have gone over them again, and have eliminated still more of them. In addition to the pottery phographs, which I should like to have used as plates at the end of the article, I am sending two groups of photographs, one of which I think should be, and the other of which might be included in the text if there is space, and if it is advisable. I should like to leave that to your and Burrows’ judgment. I have cut out the Christian Kilwa and the el-Hammeh material, because that would have made the report far too large for the allotted space. I am also having sent to you two plates of drawings, one of the Moabite sherds, and the other of Nabataean pottery. I am anxious to have the report appear in this coming issue of the Annual.
I have had a long discussion with Fisher, and another with Iliffe about the Nabataean pottery, and the plain and rouletted sigillata, and the rouletted Nabataean ware. I showed them the sherds in question, and both of them agree with the conclusions I have put in the report, that both types of ware are contemporary, and both of them probably of local manufacture. Iliffe puts the dates between 100 B.C. and 50 A.D., and Fisher between the second century B.C., and the first century A.D.
I was glad to see you and Ruth in New York, and hope that her health continues to improve. I hope that we will have much to tell you when you return this summer. I am writing to Burrows that I have forwarded the report to you, and that you will send it on to him
With heartiest greetings to you and your family,
I am, as ever,
Sincerely yours,
NG
—
The Johns Hopkins University
Baltimore, Maryland
May 4th, 1934
Dear Nelson:
Your letter of the 17th of March arrived duly. It was very gratifying to know that you had got through so many initial difficulties without more trouble, and were all set to begin exploration. Meanwhile you have doubtless been finding innumerable new sites in Edom and the Arabah since Edom, outside of Petra, is archaeologically almost terra incognita, almost everything you find will be new.
I received the MS, as well as the photos and roll of plans, and will send them on to Burrows when I have finished going through them. The MS is extremely interesting. It is very satisfactory to learn that both Illife and Fisher make the sigillata ware which you found with the Nabataean sherds contemporary with the latter. I think that you will find Vincent agreeing. However, you will probably be safer if you date it between the first century B.C. and the second A.D. I do not like the date in the second century B.C. at all, since this pottery is entirely missing at Beth-zur, which was occupied down to about the end of the second century B.C.
The April Bulletin is now ready for distribution, and will reach Jerusalem in due course. It is a full number of forty pages, with numerous short articles.
I am having a hectic time trying to finish up part of what I had planned before sailing June 12th. So many things come up for consideration– the latest is the new requirement that visitors to Palestine deposit $300 as a sign of their good faith! This is going to prove an intolerable nuisance.
Very sincerely yours,
W.F. Albright
—
AMERICAN SCHOOL OF ORIENTAL RESEARCH
JERUSALEM, PALESTINE
OFFICE OF THE DIRECTOR
CABLE ADDRESS: MONUMENTS
September 20th, 1934
Dear Nelson:
The Bethel campaign closed September 15th, and we returned to Jerusalem — the five of us who were left in camp. Three of the men are now on a three-day trip through Palestine, mainly at the expense of the expedition. Sellers and three others had left about August 2nd; Kelso left on the 28th.
The main discovery of our season as the final, convincing demonstration that Bethel passed from Canaanite to Israelite hands sometime in the thirteenth century B.C. The contrast between the two Canaanite towns of the Late Bronze and the Israelite towns which followed them was exceedingly great. In area II we had the sharpest demarcation of strata between Perso-Hellenistic on the one hand and the Iron II on the other, and even more striking in some respects, the demarcation between LB II and Iron I. Masonry, art of building, plans, pottery — everything was different. LB II was destroyed by one of the severest conflagration I have ever seen indicated by an excavation. The most important single object discovered was a cylinder seal of Egyptian manufacture, representing Baal and Astarte, with the name of the latter written out in Egyptian characters, from the thirteenth century B.C.
As a result of this discovery I have surrendered my theory of the chronology of the conquest of Central Palestine, and have aligned myself with Père Vincent. Since I have been wobbling with regard to Jericho ever since Garstang’s 1933 campaign, this change of view was less difficult than it might have been otherwise. The agreement between Bethel and Tell Beit Mirsim is so striking that I am now ready to adopt a unified view of the Conquest (i.e., relatively speaking), and can doubtless emerge with a paper or monograph on the subject soon.
Mme. Marquet has now cleared a large section of the lower town, as well as much more of the upper one. There is now no further doubt possible with regard to the absence of all occupation of significance between Early Bronze and Iron I, i.e., between about 2000 and about 1800, our settlement begins at Bethel just after the destruction of Ai (i.e. within the century or so after the fall of Ai), and continues through all intervening phases down into Iron I, when there were neighboring towns on both sites. The problem of the relation between Bethel and Ai must now be taken up afresh, on the bases of the solid archaeological evidence. I believe myself that Ai has replaced Bethel to some extent in the Hebrew epic transition.
Sukenik has just made some most interesting discoveries in the tombs of the Kedron Valley. Among his finds are several very important inscriptions.
The School is getting along nicely. The Levy family moved out on Monday, so we are now engaged in cleaning up the apartment, whitewashing etc., in preparation for the Kraelings, who arrive Sunday. Levy himself occupying the room next to mine in the director’s apartment– as my guest. It has been a pretty expensive business, having the Levy’s here, and one which nearly disrupted the School on several occasions since they arrived. We calculate that they cost us at least 20 L.P. (in cash) more than they paid for. After all, 56 L.P. is the total of their bill from June 1st to Sept. 17th, for which they received an apartment, a kitchen, garage space, quantities of water, electricity, and servant attention (Abdul quit shortly after you left), besides board for several weeks on different occasions. The amount of breakage and damage is very considerable, amounting to at least eight L.P. We like the Levys very much, and we owe a good deal to him, but we cannot run the risk a second time under any conditions. I couldn’t have got them out before the Kraelings came this time if I hadn’t talked very candidly indeed to him. He is a decent and sensible fellow, so we are still on good terms, and I hope we will remain so.
Between Horsfield and Levy we are going to be pushed into some proper publicity. We are now planning articles in the Illustrated London News and the New York Times Magazine, Art and Archaeology, etc.
We have turned the double room No. 2 in the main wing into an office-work-room for the Bethel expedition, next door to the Jerash office. In the hall in front of the offices we have established a very cozy lounge. The Bethel pottery is in the new shed behind the garage. We have just put in additional shelves under all the tables, together with some higher shelves, and so will have room for all our material. That pottery shed was an uncommonly happy idea.
We have at last contracted for central heating. As you will recall, after Levy sold us the idea, I decided to put it up to the Executive Committee. Then, however, I learned that one of the Kraeling children had just recovered from pneumonia, and that the parents are worried about its health. Furthermore, it became evident that we would have nobody, or virtually nobody in the School this winter unless we put in the central heating which is being installed in so many other places in Jerusalem. Central heating seems to be installed in nearly all new hotels and apartments, as well as many homes. The Government House in Amman is now having an installation put in! So we went shopping. Eshed wanted L.P. 580 for the installation; Maude asked 420 L.P. for a better one. Moreover, Maude has been in the business of heating engineer for years; he has done most of the best work of the kind in Jerusalem; he has the best stock, and the most capital. So we have made out contract with Maude. There is a good bit more than that amount in the house balance, so we won’t have to draw on other School funds at all. The matter should perhaps have been discussed by our committee, but since you already know the situation, and Burrows and McCown are also au courant, while Kraeling will be a exceedingly interested party, I believe that delay would have been imprudent. We are putting in two oil burners, one in each side wing; the system is hot water, low pressure.
There will be a nice little group this autumn, and our attendance will probably be somewhat higher than last autumn– certainly composed of a slightly better group, on the whole.
By the way, don’t forget that a check of $500 for excavations is coming to me from the School this autumn some time. Most of it will be spent on preparing the Bethel material for publication, since we have nearly exhausted our $3000 for Bethel (half from the School and half from Kelso).
Also, don’t forget to let me know how you found the intermediate class on the Conte di Savoia this return trip, since I want to return as quickly and cheaply as possible, but can’t stand the vibration of the vessel in question in transit class.
With my best regards to Mrs. Glueck, I am
Very sincerely yours,
William
—
Hebrew Union College
Cincinnati
Oct. 11, 1934
Dear William:
I was glad to get your interesting letter of September 20, with the news about the excavations and the School. I shall await with great interest your paper on the chronology of the conquest of Central Palestine, which will incorporate some of the conclusions you have arrived at as a result of the excavations at Bethel. The working out of the interrelationship between Bethel and Ai will be most valuable. The excavations at Bethel have turned out to be ex[ceed]ingly important.
When I told my wife about the contract you had let for central heating she fai[r]ly danced for joy. I am very glad that you did not wait till the Excavative Committee could act upon the plan, but went ahead and arranged for the heating system to be put in in time for winter. It will certainly pay for itself in added comfort and health, and probably by attracting more people to the School.
The School has done very well by the Levys and I feel that he has every reason to be grateful for the accommodations he enjoyed a considerable saving to himself for a number of months. After the disturbances this year, – both Berry and Jackson were considerably an[noyed] and considering the unwarranted expense to [the] School, I agree completely with you that such a situation ought not to be allowed to arise again.
I am glad that the pottery shed is being put to such excellent use. I could [not] have gotten along without it this summer, and I don’t think that it cost very much to put it [up.]
I hope that the Stinesprings take it a bit easier now that you are back at the School. They are both uncommonly competent people, and have done very well at the School. They were helpful to me this year in every way possible, and it was a pleasure to be associated with them. I am glad that such an attractive post awaits Stinespring upon his return to America. Naturally, I have said nothing about it to anyone here.
The trip home was a very pleasant one. I got on the Esperia at Jaffa, going thence to Naples via Alexandria, where I spent most of my time in the museum, studying the pottery collections. I have decided that while much of sigillata I have found is Nabataean, a large proportion of it was imported from Asia Minor. I think I can distinguish between the two types Leaving Alexandria on the 18th of August, we are arr[iving] at Naples on the korning of the 21st, and le[aving] that afternoon on the Conte di Savoia, arriv[ing] in New York on the 29th. The Esperia is one of the nicest boats I have ever been on. Second or special class on the Conte di Savoia is incomparably nicer than tourist, and I enjoyed [the] trip home very much, getting a good rest. However, I believe that now the tourist and spe[cial] classes have been merged into one class.
I have taken over the duties of treasurer and am writing letter after letter to Barton attempting to get matters straight, in the papers which have been turned over to me, is no mention of the $500 which are yet to be sent to you for the Kyle Memorial Excavation account, nor is there anything about the ex[act] sum of money to be sent to Stinespring for the expense incurred while Acting Director. I [have] written to Barton, and have to have these matters unraveled soon, and will see to it that the checks are sent as soon as possible.
Will you please send me as soon as possible the budget for the School for next year?
Will you please send half a dozen extra [?] copies of Bulletin 55 to Head?
I have begun working up the materials from Edom. There still remains to be done the po[?] from Moab. In the article which is in press[?] I described only the Iron Age and the Nabataean pottery found in Moab.
My wife met me in New York, having obtained a week’s leave-of-absence from the hospital. We spent several delightful days on the shore at East Hampton, and then came home. She is back at the hospital now, and gets home several ev[enings] a week. The classes have started at the Hebrew Union College, and in as much as I have two [new] courses, one on Isaiah and Jeremiah, and the other on the Early Cultural History of Israel [?] I have been kept rather busy.
With heartiest greetings, also to the Stinesprings and the Kraelings,
I am very sincerely yours,
Nelson Glueck
—
Oct. 28, 1934.
Dear William:
I have just forwarded a copy of the enclosed voucher to Burrows for the $500, which had been set aside to be used by you for excavations. I have also straightened out the matter of the $250 for Stinespring, and have forwarded a voucher for signature to Burrows. Gradually, I am gathering the threads of the office in my hands.
In working over the Edom materials, I have come to the conclusion that Umm el Biyarah in Petra is the biblical Sela’. The Kenites, who also lived there, to judge from Numbers 24,21, as Phythian-Adams has already suggested, may now definitely be designated as smiths. Their wanderings in Judah and Israel are understandable, when it is realized that they were probably practicing their profession as itinerant smiths. Tuabl-cain was forger of all copper and iron vessels. They were probably among the earliest workers of the copper mines in the Arabah.
With best greetings,
NG
P.S. When the voucher arrives from the bank, will you please let me know?
I propose to have the bank deduct from the payment to be made to the Jerusalem School on March 1, 1935 the sum of $905.40, the amount I turned over to you on August 4, 1934 as advance payment.
—
AMERICAN SCHOOL OF ORIENTAL RESEARCH
JERUSALEM, PALESTINE
OFFICE OF THE DIRECTOR
CABLE ADDRESS: MONUMENTS
October 29th, 1934
Dear Nelson:
Your letter of the 11th October is most welcome. A letter from Burrows received in the same post is also in entire agreements about the installation of central heating. The latter is being carried on well, and there will be surprisingly little defacement of walls by unsightly pipes.
There are three items in addition to the regular grant to the School, which were to be remitted: the grant of $500 for me to use in excavation (aside from the grant of $1500 for the Kyle Memorial Excavation, which was paid in July); a grant of $250 to Stinespring for last spring; a grant of $250 to Kraeling (this, I find, was paid to him this past summer, so is to be counted out). The grant of $250 to Stinespring is in the acta of the April meeting (April 5th, 1934), and the grant of $500 to me for excavation is presumably in the acta of the December, 1933, meeting; unfortunately I do not have any of these acta here. There is, therefore, $750 still to be remitted for these two items.
My recommendations for the budget of the Jerusalem School next year are as follows. First, the regular grant should be reduced further from $3000 (this year) to $2500 (for several years it was $3500). The Director’s excavation grant should be reduced to $500 (last year is was $2000, or $1500+500). This represents a total reduction of $2000. On the other hand, I recommend that $1500 be appropriated for the publication of the Bethel excavation in the form of an Annual (i.e., either as a supplementary volume in the Annual series, or as an independent volume in Annual format). I hope to get the Bethel material in shape before I go, and to finish writing it up next summer. This will leave us with a reduction of $500. I also recommend that the extra compensation to the Acting Director for his care during the first months of 1935 be drawn from the funds of the School here, and that the Director be authorized to draw on them in reason for expenses in connection with the completion of any necessary archaeological recording, such as that of Jerash (in case a little additional expense is incurred after January 1st, with no available funds to cover it). Bethel, Alder, etc. in no case should such drawing (on the regular School funds) exceed 100 L.P. during the coming year. You will remember in this connection that I drew on these funds in this way for the 70 L.P. which the Transjordan expedition of 1933 cost over the original grant.
Counting in the $250 which was voted as extra compensation to the Acting Director this year, the proposed budget shows a net reduction of $750. Adding to this the grant of $250 to Kraeling, the total reduction is $1000.
I recommend also that the amount of the Thayer Fellowship for next year be left unsettled, since the present amount ($1500) is now too high, unless the holder is a mature and responsible person like Stinespring, who can act in the Director’s place with perfect competence. In the case of the ordinary post-doctoral student, $1200 will be adequate ($400 for travel back and forth, $400 for board and room at the School for seven months, $400 for all other expenses). The amount of the stipend for next year should really depend somewhat on the calibre of the man, whose appointment will presumably be made in April.
The financial report is not ye quite ready, wing to Theodore’s lack of time (since he is on a part-time basis), and the fact that it is being overhauled item by item, with all sorts of additional data added (above previous reports). The Treasurer ought to have complete data at hand, so that he can tell exactly what the operation of the School is like, financially. If Theodore were a trained accountant, it would be incomparably easier, but since he receives only four pounds a month for part-time work, we cannot expect any sort of perfection.
I have sent the five copies of the new Bulletin to Head. Thanks very much for the information with regard to the intermediate class on the Conte di Savoia.
–Among items of news are: Guy has resigned from the Megiddo expedition, immediate reason not known to me; Starkey is back, and will resume work this week; Garstand is expected to begin excavation at Jericho in early December; Colt is here and will start work at Şbeiţá in a few weeks.
With my best regards to Mrs. Glueck and President Morgenstern, I am
Very sincerely yours
W.F. Albright
—
AMERICAN SCHOOL OF ORIENTAL RESEARCH
JERUSALEM, PALESTINE
OFFICE OF THE DIRECTOR
CABLE ADDRESS: MONUMENTS
October 29th, 1934
Dear Nelson:
At last the report to the treasurer is finished and is herewith enclosed. In my previous letter I explained some of the reason why it has been so delayed. The enclosed report is by no means in the shape I should like to have it, though parts of it have been rewritten half-a-dozen times since I returned to Jerusalem in the middle of September. All the accounts had gone through item by item, since there were numerous mistakes in every account. Next year we shall change the formal arrangement, and will, for instance, include the report on the hostel in the regular statement. For some years, I understand, no report on the hostel has been submitted. This time we are submitting a copy of the monthly statement on the hostel, as well as a complete list of all payments by members of the School and guests to the hostel. It makes the bulk of the statement very considerable, but also makes it possible for you to see exactly what is going on and how things are being run.
The cash balance sheet has some changes of importance. Some of Vartabedians’ rather curious “accounts” have been altered into more business-like form. The Mâlḥah excavation account, omitted from the books since 1929-30, has been reinstated since the money was given for a specific purpose (which I plan to carry out next summer). The 0.482 discrepancy, which no amount of search succeeded in discovering, has been wrongly inserted at the bottom of the page, instead of at the end of the cash balance sheet, where I instructed Theodore to put it. However, I don’t want to delay it any more, so this will have to stand.
The hostel balance is considerably larger than it was on June 30th, so it will be ample to cover the cost of the central heating, and there will be a small balance– larger if and when Levy pays his summer bill.
It might be well if you would bring the report with you to the Christmas meeting, so that Burrows can also see it. It is pretty expensive to post it around.
–Many thanks for your letter of Oct. 28th, with the information about prospective payments to the School. It is a great relief to have some one as treasurer who does things efficiently.
Your observation about Umm el-Biyârah and Selá comes opportunely, and I have already written Mrs. Horsfield about it. On December 1st a party from the School leaves for Petra, to work there for ten days or so in order to examine el-Biyârah, and some other places in and around Petra where Mrs. Horsfield thinks there are Iron Age remains. The cost of work is to be defrayed from the Balance remaining in the Mond fund, so it will not cost the School anything. Mrs. Horsfield and I are doing it for the Mond expedition, at the same time Mr. Horsfield will clear out the Khazneh with a small sum given him for that purpose. Since I am not doing this on my own initiative, but as a favor to the Horsfields, I shall not mind being bossed by Horsfield at all, but will be most docile. Results are the thin in any case. I shall not fail to give you full credit for the observation– unless I conclude (which is hardly likely) that you are wrong.
We returned day before yesterday evening from thirteen days absence, spent in the north we visited Beirut (Kraeling, Williams< Honeyman, and I), Byblos, Forrer’s soundings near Jebleh, Antioch, Rīḥānîyeh, Aleppo, Dura, Palmyra, Baalbek, and Damascus, seeing Ingholt, Forrer, Schlumberger, McEwan, Prost, Lassus, Hopkins, Seyrig, etc. While I had no time to visit new tells, we saw and learned a great deal, and had a most successful trip in every way.
As a result of recent work of Mme. Marquet and Mr. Starkey, as well as of observations made on this trip, I am now raising my chronology another notch, and would now place the calciform pottery which I assign to MB I between the 22nd and the 19th centuries. The corresponding pottery begins about the 23rd century or earlier in Syria.
Very sincerely yours,
W.F. Albright
Jan. 18, 1935.Dear William:
Welcome home!
I shudder when I think how fast the months have passed since I left Palestine, and how fast the time has passed since I left for Palestine a year ago this coming February. I am aching to go back as soon as possible. I should like to excavate one of the smelting furnaces in the Arabah, and examine the Namalah pass which I was unable to get to last year, and then I hope sooner or later to get permission and funds to study ancient Midian. I am anxious to hear about the results of the various soundings in the Petra area.
I trust you had a pleasant trip home, and did not cross on one of those huge boats, which shake you to bits, and leave the passengers in need of a real vacation at the end of the voyage.
You will have heard from Burrows the details of the last meeting of the Schools, an the news with regard to the budget adopted, and the changes in the various requests for funs, including the $1500 for the Bethel Volume and the $500 for excavations. I hope that the money for the Bethel volume can be obtained from one of the big Foundations. I hope to publish the Edom report in the next Annual, and let the extra space which will be necessary be payed for with whatever surplus funds will remain from the Edom expedition account. The Schools are in for some very drastic retrenchments during the next two years at least. It is well, as your report shows, that the Jerusalem School is in such excellent financial shape, even after paying for the heating system. Looking forward [?]
—
The Johns Hopkins University
Baltimore, Maryland
February 7th, 1935
Dear Nelson:
Your letter of January 18th arrived shortly before my return to Baltimore. On the way home I stopped overnight with Burrows, and talked things over with him in great detail. He told of the plans for starting serious work toward the raising of the endowment, and we discussed various points. I hope to see you at Ann Arbor in April, when we can talk over things- in case you are not coming east before that date.
The journey was pleasant, and the Roma is much superior to the Conte di Savoia in its tourist class arrangements, as well as in the amount of vibration. This much more than compensates for the loss of time. When I returned I was much less tired than last year, though I am pretty tired now, with all the university and other activities into which I have plunged. However, I shall be acclimated before long.
The February Bulletin, which is delayed about a week or two by the desirability of waiting for the announcement of the summer school, will contain Stinespring’s report on Jerash in the spring of 1934 and my account of the excavation of the Conway high place at Petra. Mrs. Horsfield and her husband were both very much pleased with the text of the article. We found nothing earlier than Nabataean, as I wrote to you before (or did I?).
I have already started negotiations with a view to obtaining funds for the publication of the Bethel report from the American Philosophical Society. I have no idea what the results of my effort, which will be supported by Adler and Montgomery, as you know, will be. Anyway, the volume will not be finished until late next summer or early next autumn, and we can try elsewhere if unsuccessful in our approach to the Philosophical Society.
News from Kraeling and Stinespring is very good. Central heating has already yielded fruits in the way of increasing the number of those staying at the School. In the April Bulletin I expect to include a short article on the date of the Hebrew Conquest. A visit to Garstang in early January has convinced me that Jericho must have fallen (according to the present evidence) between Amenophide and the Ramesaide periods, i.e., somewhere near the second half of the fourteenth century. On the other hand, Lachish and Tell Beit Mirsim almost certainly fell during or near the second half of the following century. Bethel fell definitely after Jericho (from the ceramic evidence), presumably in the early thirteenth century. The latest Bronze Age pottery of Bethel is unquestionably older in type than the latest pottery from the Canaanite temple at Tell ed-Duweir. With four sites yielding clear-cut evidence, though not yet as complete as one might wish, once can be reasonably sure of one’s ground. In other words the Conquest proper began after the Amarna period and continued until about the end of the thirteenth century. By the time of the Israel Stela it was nearly completed.
With my best wished to Mrs. Glueck, I am
Very sincerely yours,
William F. Albright
P.S. By the way, has Kraeling’s January instalment of his stipend been sent him yet? If it has don’t bother to mention it.
—
Feb. 25, 1935.
Dear William:
I am anxious to see the February Bulletin to find out more details about the Petra soundlings, and am looking forward with great interest to reading more about your conclusions with regard to the Exodus, which are going to publish in the April Bulletin. I hope the American Philosophical Society will undertake the publishing of the Bethel Volume.
The salaries of the officers of the School are taken care of automatically by the Provident Trust Co. till June of this year when new arrangements have to be made. Will you tell me, please, how you would like to have your checks sent to you for the next fiscal year?
I am making slow progress on the Edom report, but hope to have it finished in time so that I may be able to show it to you before you leave again for Palestine. I am wondering if there is any one in Johns Hopkins who can prepare the type of sketch plans that Detweiler prepared for me last year from Head’s sketch plans. I shall also have to have some plates of pottery made.
I received a rather excited letter from Fisher recently, who naturally is very much worried about his future. His status will have to be settled definitively at one of our next meetings, if not the next one. After next year, unless the Rockefeller Foundation renews its support, must more sever retrenchments will have to be undertaken than were put into effect this year.
Looking forward to seeing you soon, and talking over things with you,
I am as ever,
Sincerely yours,
NG
—
The Johns Hopkins University
Baltimore, Maryland
March 6th, 1935
Dear Nelson:
Your letter of the 25th has been received. My wife and I are not quite clear yet as to what arrangements we would like to have made about our next year’s salary, so I shall write you again with regard to the place of payment in May.
The thing for you to do, I should think, is to have a good draughtsman from the department of Civil Engineering at the University of Cincinnati prepare the plans under your supervision. It would not be safe to have them done here, though our School of Engineering could furnish the men to do it. The same applies to the pottery.
Fisher has moved into the School, and has sold his furniture, etc. I am very glad, since he cannot afford to keep up an independent establishment, with his various debts and obligations. I am afraid that it will be impossible to keep him on after this coming year, or that his salary may have to be reduced then drastically. You see, Kraeling, who is level-headed and a competent judge of men, and who has been in the closest touch with Fisher during this year, is sure to report adversely with regard to him. Apparently Fisher cannot prepare a respectable chapter on architecture any more, since he has neglected for many years to keep abreast of the subject, an is now very stale. I shall not support him any longer, since there is plenty of evidence that he will never do anything more, and since the School has certainly paid back the real debt of honor that it owed him. Since I shall probably resign this coming summer (i.e., I shall not remain as director after leaving in January), it will not be hard to make a complete sweep of the staffs of our organization.
Since my Bethel MS is not yet ready, no action was taken this year by the American Philosophical Society, but I think that the chances next year for favorable action are excellent. Tell Beit Mirsim II will wait for the first open volume of the Annual after the publication of your Edom monograph.
My short article on the Date of the Israelite Conquest will appear in the April Bulletin, as planned, unless something happens. The February one will be distributed in a day or two; it was delayed by Jackson’s uncertainty about his plans for the Summer School. The April number will be restricted to 24 pages, or 28 at most, since there are 40 pages in the February number. –A few minutes ago I received from Alt a copy of Frank’s monograph on the Arabah, which is very disappointing. Your copy has presumably also just come in. I don’t see why so many poor photographs of unimportant detailed were printed. However, it is a good thing that Frank’s report came in before the completion of yours, since you can now refer to it, take issue with it, and occasionally correct your orthography or your plans by his.
I am planning definitely to be at Ann Arbor in April. I shall also attend the New York meeting of our committee planned for the end of the month.
With all good wishes,
Very sincerely yours,
W.F. Albright
—
April 15, 1935.
Dear William:
Thanks very much for the mss. of your article for the Horites in Palestine. I have read it with great interest and profit. If you happen to receive it, so that I can refer to the pages in my article.
I am just getting back to work after a sad period of the extreme illness and the death of my father.
I am planning to go to Ann Arbor, and am looking forward to seeing you there. I wrote to Burrows recently, suggesting that after net year the salary of the two annual professors be cut in half. I am trying to figure out now how we can pare the budget next year to meet a severely reduced income, – that is in 1936-7.
After thinking the matter over, I have decided to accept only half of my travelling expenses when I go east to attend meetings of the ASOR. Perhaps you can give me some suggestions for further economies in our next budget, when I see you in Ann Arbor. I particularly want to hear your reaction to the suggested cut in the Annual Professors’ salaries for 1936-7.
I also want to talk to you about the possibility of my returning to Transjordan next spring, to make a survey of Ammon, and perhaps some additional parts of Sinai. The Schools will hardly be able to furnish any money, but that doesn’t particularly worry me. I think I can scrape the necessary funds together, if I get permission to go. There’s the rub. I don’t think that the authorities of the College, speaking confidentially, are willing to let me go again, I am just thinking on paper now, and I want your advice about the entire matter. It would be an ideal time to get away, because Lewy is coming here the second semester. If you could the time, perhaps we can discuss the matter in Ann Arbor. I shall arrive there in all probability next Tuesday night or Wednesday morning.
Looking forward to seeing you,
as ever,
sincerely yours,
NG
—
The Johns Hopkins University
Baltimore, Maryland
April 18th, 1935
Dear Nelson:
Your letter of the 15th has been received. I shall be particularly anxious to talk things over with you at Ann Arbor, because there was no time at New York and we were both very tired.
I only received one copy of the galley-proof of the Horite article, so the paging will have to be omitted. I have no idea when the volume will appear.
I am very sorry to hear of the death of your father, which must have been a very severe blow to you. I hope that his death has not imposed additional pecuniary obligations on you, as is so often the case.
Before I forget it, I want to ask you for the permission to have the Segal article in the Jewish Times, April 5th, photostated for use by Mr. Moon an myself in soliciting funds. Naturally we would be very glad to block out any sections not desired with India ink before reproduction – so, for instance, the Lindbergh references and possibly the allusions to political matters. You can give me your reaction at Ann Arbor.
The next budget will require a great deal of serious thought. I do not favor cutting the Annual Professor’s stipend before 1937-8, since we do not want to get in wrong with Chicago, and it would hardly be fair to make such a drastic cut as fifty percent when Graham has already made his plans on the first basis. For 1936-7 a considerably saving can be effected in the salary of the director, if a young man goes out, if absolutely necessary, the Annual Professor’s salary can be cut 25%. The question of the grant for normal expenses will be hard to discuss to advantage until I can see how this year has worked out. From the details I get, I fear that housekeeping will need a subvention, since there are too few persons staying there regularly.
I expect to reach Ann Arbor Wednesday morning, between 9:00 and 10:00.
With best wishes,
Very sincerely yours,
W.F. Albright
P.S. The April Bulletin (36 pages) will appear next week; the finished proof has been [?]
—
THE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY
BALTIMORE, MARYLAND
May 9th, 1935
Dear Nelson,
Many thanks for your letter of the 5th. I have finally reached the point where I know what I want to ask you to do, with reference to the mode of payment of next year’s salary. Meanwhile it is possible that I shall have to ask you to arrange with the Provident Trust Company (or whatever bank the Schools are doing business with the beginning of June) to guarantee us. I applied for a new passport early in April, got it, and applied for a British visa about April 20th, presenting evidence of my own return permit (in the expired passport), of my connection with the School in Jerusalem, and of my return before the end of January. But the Passport Control decided that it must write to Palestine for permission for us to enter, so we shall have to wait until word is received. The immigration authorities in Jerusalem are much more prompt than they used to be, but if they delay or decline to give the permission, I shall have to be guaranteed. We are going out and returning by the American Export Line, but I cannot afford to get the return ticket, so cannot show that. In any case, I suppose the six month interval between going and returning is too long.
Quite a number of members of the Bethel expedition had to be guaranteed last year, since the whole arrangement was made known so late that there was no time to write. Since minor children (under eighteen) do not have to be guaranteed, this applies only to my wife and myself, $600 in all.
Can you let me have the $250 which represents the first half of my $500 travelling allowance before June 1st, so I can use it to pay for the ticket? Barton has done this twice. The $250 for return travel can be sent to Baltimore after my return in January; with Barton’s permission I have been borrowing from the School and repaying to Jerusalem on my return to this country.
Please have the June installment of this year’s salary sent to Palestine instead of to Baltimore, since I shall leave the 11th of June.
The first half of next year’s salary should be paid in two quarterly installments, sent me in Jerusalem in July and October, respectively; the second half (Jan. June, 1936) should be sent me here, on the usual monthly basis.
I do not see how we can keep Fisher after this coming year. However, I do think that we ought to continue to pay him enough so he will not have to go on relief, and suggest that we pay him $1000 a year after next year, as long as we can afford it, giving him the title of “Archaeological Adviser.” If he is asked to do anything of an elaborate nature, or asked to attend a meeting, his expenses, etc., should be paid by the Schools. I also suggest that he be given permission to return to America this summer or autumn (unless it turns out that he has an opportunity to do some important archaeological work), without reduction in salary. If this meets with your approval, I shall recommend it to Burrows.
I am definitely planning to resign this late summer or early autumn, in plenty of time of your people to look around for a new director. Of course, I might be willing to step in for another year in case no one could be found or there is some unforeseen combination of circumstances (such as the abolition of my chair by the incoming president of this university). If a young man is appointed, he will have to be granted $3000, with something for travelling expenses; otherwise it would be foolish to keep up the fiction of a permanent director. This will mean a maximum saving of not over $500 on my salary, and of $3000 on Fisher’s.
I hope you can manage to get out again this coming spring, in order to continue your work. The survey of Ammon would be archaeologically more interesting, but you might easily be able to do both. This should include the land of Sihon, in any case. –By the way, some misprints got through our barrage of readers on p. 13 of my article on the Date of the Conquest in the latest Bulletin: lines 8 and 9 of the last paragraph should read… 1295-1262 B.C. … and … 1301-1268 B.C. …
I am very sorry not to get to Ann Arbor. I took my bag to the station, bought a return ticket – and suddenly discovered that one eye was oozing pus at
a great rate. My youngest boy had just had “pink eye,” so I recognized the symptoms and cancelled my ticket. The attack was light — so light that my left eye did not become infected until after my right eye had healed. I was very much disappointed, but I saved fifty bucks and got rested — I had been pretty tired.
It was certainly a great mistake to hold the spring meeting in the East. I thought so at the time, but there seemed to be nothing to do about it. Burrows is very clear-sighted, so this mistake won’t be made again. Montgomery was so very conscious of good intentions in his relations with the West, and too much of a gentlemen to be aware of possible snobbishness, so he never could see why scholars in the West sometimes felt a little offended.
Your Edom report will be all the more interesting to me when it does appear; going over the MS of a monograph in detail slightly weakens one’s zest for it when it appears in print. I am very glad that it will appear this autumn; European scholars will be impressed by its superiority over the Frank report, though you can hardly tell the Germans that!
Very sincerely yours,
William
—
I was sorry that you were unable to get to the Ann Arbor meeting, and I hope that if there was any illness in the family, that all is well again. The meeting was very interesting. Congratulations on your election to the presidency of the society.
My father’s death will impose new burdens on me. My brother and I had been helping him right along anyway.
You and Mr. Moon certainly have my permission to use the Segal article in the Jewish Times, April 5th, if you think I will be at all useful in collecting funds. I hope that you will omit that nonsensical comparison to Lindbergh and all allusions to political matters.
I reported to Morgenstern, Speiser, and Meek at Ann Arbor and to Burrows by letter your objection to cutting the salaries of the Annual Professors, and we are now all in agreement with you. Other economies will have to be found. We shall have to cut a considerable part of Fisher’s stipend, and if you cannot be persuaded to return after next year, we might, as you suggest, cut the salary of the director, if a young man goes out.
Looking over our portfolio of investments, I shall find that we have a considerable number of railroad bonds. I have heard recently that some investors do not like such bonds. I have sent the entire list to Mr. Patten, and asked him to review all of our holdings. I shall send a similar list to Mr. Warburg as soon as he answers a previous letter I sent him.
My Edom report will not be finished till the end of June at the earliest. I am sorry that you will not be able to read it, but I have checked the place names very carefully, and think that they will be correct. I shall have to cut down the report somehow or other to compress it into the approximately 160 pages with are allotted to me.
I wish I could go out again soon. I should like to strike westward into Sinai from Hmrashah, on the n.w. edge of the Gulf of ‘Aqabah. Frank went about 8 miles inland to the southwest, and found a number of copper smelting sites. Perhaps there is a whole line of them extending to Serabit el-Khadim. And then I should like to survey Ammon. I think I could raise the funds, but I am not sure I can get permission to go. What do you think of the project? I had wanted in particular to talk to you about it at Ann Arbor. In as much was Levy will be here next year during the second semester. I thought it would be a good time to get one more leave-of-absence.
I have read with much benefit your very interesting article in Bulletin 58 on the Date of the Conquest, to the general conclusions of which I subscribe. I wonder what your attitude is to the mutually exclusive accounts of the Exodus through Edom in Deut. 2,29 and 2,4-8a, and around Edom in Num. 20,14-21, and elsewhere compared with the P account in Num . 33. I think that the first two accounts in their present form are almost as late as the P account. All of them may be different interpretations of the same event.
Have you decided yet how your checks should be sent?
With best greetings,
Sincerely yours,
NG
—
May 20, 1935.
Dear William:
I have instructed the bank to send your check for $250 as first half of your $500 travelling allowance. You should have received the check by now I have also instructed the bank to send your salary checks in accordance with your letter of May 9.
I am awaiting word from you as to whether or not you desire to have the Provident Trust Co. issue a bond for you and your family. That can be arranged by a wire, if you desire to wait a few days longer.
We shall have to retire Fisher after this coming year. I don’t know what is going to happen to him, because I am sure that he has not been very provident. If we can afford it, I suggest giving him $1200 a year. I see no reason why he should not be given permission to return to America this summer or autumn without reduction in his salary. Is there no prospect of his completing his pottery-corpus? Dont’ you think it wise, with Burrows approval, to tell Fisher in a few months, that he will in all probability be retired at the end of next year?
You will be interested in known that Mr. Patten, who has just reviewed all of our investments, reports that with only two exceptions all of them have increased in value, and that only one holding has decreased about $1000 in value, aside from the Nies Legacy, which we have no jurisdiction over.
If you can find a moment in the last rush or getting away, could you tell me where I can find analogies to these scalloped rims, which seem to belong to EI I and transition EI I-II?
I am sorry you missed Ann Arbor, but I am glad you got a rest. You should get a good rest on the boat.
Sincerely yours,
NG
—
The Johns Hopkins University
Baltimore, Maryland
May 20th, 1935
Dear Nelson,
Many thanks for the check for my travelling expenses out, which was forwarded to me a week ago. Now Ruth and I have gone over all our budget and accounts, and find that it will be a very tight squeeze unless you will again be generous and let us have the June payment on my salary early in June, instead of at the close of the month, if you could have it sent to Baltimore the first of the month this time, instead of the last of the month, it would be a very great relief to us. This means cancelling my previous request to have the June instalment of this year’s salary sent to Jerusalem instead of to Baltimore. Everything else remains as before.
It seems that the Palestine Government regulations are tightening all the time. Round trip tickets on the American Export Line are no longer counted as first-class, but as second-class, and the possession of one does not alter the requirement that one be guaranteed. What a nuisance! I hope that we shall receive permission to enter Palestine before June 5th, but if we don’t shall have to telegraph you requesting a guarantee.
Miss Kennedy has changed her mind, and will not join our staff as housekeeper. Ruth has promised to carry on Mary’s job through the first six months of next year, and I have written to McCown, suggesting that Mrs. McCown may want to follow her after her arrival in January. This will mean a reduction in the expense to the School budget, which will be necessary, since attendance and number of guests have both been reduced to such an extent this year.
The third edition of my Archaeology is now being printed; thanks to the good offices of President Newcomb of the University of Virginia, which owns the copyright, it is a revised and enlarged edition again, though I was careful not to expect too much in this respect. I hope this will be the last one; I don’t suppose it will be exhausted for three or four years, by which time I shall be only too anxious not to see a new edition of a book that will be in imperative need of being entirely redone.
With my best regards to Helen, I am
Very sincerely yours,
William
—
May 23, 1935.
Dear William:
I have written to the bank telling them to change part of my recent instructions to them, and send you the salary check for June immediately. I have also informed them that it may be necessary to issue a $600 dollar bond to enable you and Ruth to comply with the Palestine Government regulations. Perhaps you had better let me know by the end of the month of May whether or not it is necessary to have the bond issued, in order that there might not be any last minute hitches. Of course, you could always stop over in Philadelphia on your way to New York, and pick up the bond at the bank, if you decide you want to wait as long as possible, the Palestine Department of Immigration has undoubtedly improved greatly, but on the other hand your application may be gathering dust for the next six months.
I am delighted to hear that a third edition of your Archaeology is not being printed. There will be a lot to add, when you completely rewrite it next time.
I am sorry that Ruth will have to bother herself again with the details of housekeeper, but under the circumstances it does mean a great help to the School.
With best greetings,
Sincerely,
NG
—
The Johns Hopkins University
Baltimore, Maryland
May 23rd, 1935
Dear Nelson:
Your letter and my letter of the 20th seem to have crossed. Sorry to have created mild confusion by changing one request with regard to sending the June salary check.
I quite agree that $1200 a year is the best grant to Fisher. My $1000 is too little, and $1500 or more would be outside of our reach. I also agree that Fisher ought to be told as soon as possible after I arrive and get my bearings, with Burrow’s approval, of course, that something like this is going to be done.
The news about our investments is most gratifying in these times. If the investments are good they are retired or refinanced; if they are not good, there is no income from them. Quite a predicament. I am all set for another ten percent reduction in salary here next year, probably followed by a third. Even Chicago, which has not yet reduced salaries, is expecting salary cuts in the near future, and Harvard is already planning cuts.
I am sorry that I cannot duplicate the scalloped rims, which I saw for the first time, to the best of my recollection in the pottery shed this past summer. Your dating is certainly right, however.
Mr. Bergman passed his orals yesterday with flying colors, making an excellent impression on the extra-departmental examiners. Next year I expect two Ph.D.s, Sachs, who will specialize in Assyriology, and Wright, who will write on the history of Gezer in the light of our present knowledge of pottery and other on artifacts. The history of Gezer will appear very differently from the picture drawn hitherto. New inscriptional material also helps.
I am now making the plates for the second Gibeah publication (which will not exceed fifty pages of text and illustrations), and will being work on the text for the Bethel publication in July.
Vincent’s article “Vers l’aube de l’histoire en Palestine,” in the July Revue Biblique, and his two article on Teleilat Ghassul in the January and April numbers, are painful in the extreme. Almost everything he says is wrong, and several important points of his have been disproved during the past year. I understand that Garstang found painted Ghassulian pottery below the thick EB strauta, themselves covering a period of centuries before the third quarter of the third millennium. There is no longer any chance whatever that I am wrong in referring the Ghassulian pottery to the fourth millennium.
Very sincerely yours,
William
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THE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY
BALTIMORE, MARYLAND
June 1st, 1935
Dear Nelson:
What a nuisance! After being informed by the British Consulate here several weeks ago that guarantees were not needed for minor children, I learn from the Passport Control Officer in New York that they are! However, none is needed for me. This makes the total guarantee required $1500 instead of $600. I suppose you will have to write again to the bank, making this change in your instructions. It may be that last minute permission will come through from Palestine, in which case the guarantees will not be needed.
I have written to prospective members of the School, warning them to apply for a visa well in advance– at least three months, if possible. In our future Bulletins we must print standing instructions to would-be members of the School and visitors to Palestine, so that there will be no trouble.
Last May and early June I wrote scores of letters in connection with this matter of guarantees, etc., but I never expected to be caught myself. After my Palestine residence lapses next year, I shall take care to apply for a visa months in advance.
In residence at the School next fall will be McCown, Berry, the Lanes, the Two Brother Fellow and his wife, a Chicago student, Bergman, and perhaps some others, so that the School will be able to balance its housekeeping budget, I hope, especially since my gang will swell the numbers rapidly.
I have already read the proofs of the third edition of my Va. lectures, so the book will be out before July, I suppose.
Ruth is well and joins me in sending our best regards.
Very sincerely yours,
William
—
June 3, 1935
Dear William:
I have just written the Provident Trust Co. to send you a bond for $1500. You should receive it within a few days. It is to be sent to your home address in Baltimore. There is no use waiting any longer. I think it advisable to have the bond ready in time, without waiting till the last minute in the hope that an answer may be received from Palestine
I am glad to hear that there will be so many in residence at the School next year. As news of our heating-system spreads, we ought to get still more as time goes by.
I can’t tell you how much I miss the School and the work in Palestine. I know how eager Ruth must be to be there again. I wish we had enough money so that you could find it possible to remain the Director of the School to the exclusion of everything else. No one can ever take your place.
Helen is finishing her first year of internship, and commences her second year immediately as “houseman” in internal medicine. She joins me in sending you and Ruth and the children out best greetings, and wishes for a pleasant trip.
Will you drop me a card to let me know that the bond has been received, when you get it?
As ever, sincerely yours,
NG
—
The Johns Hopkins University
Baltimore, Maryland
June 6th, 1935
Dear Nelson:
I hope you received Ruth’s telegram, being sent as I write this letter. This morning we received, special delivery, the letter from the Philadelphia bank stating that the bond could not be sent out of the state. So Ruth posted down to the American Express to get Mr. Magill’s advice on the best way to arrange the tangled mess, and has just phoned me that the advice from Palestine finally came through. It is true that the advice came through in two letters, each containing two slips, and that one child was overlooked, but I don’t think that the Passport Control officer in New York will make any trouble over this omission, since it is obvious that there has been a simple oversight. So nothing more needs to be done, unless you receive a frenzied telegram at the last moment. I am dreadfully sorry to have caused you so much trouble, but I do not see how I could have foreseen so much difficulty and so much false information and blundering in official quarters. Next time– if there ever is a next time– I shall get my permits at the earliest possible moment, even six months ahead of time. This year I had a new passport to get, which consumed several weeks.
Other actual or potential guests and members of the School have been heard from, so there will be a very respectable attendance this summer and next year. I haven’t heard anything more about the Summer School, and wonder whether it can have fallen through.
A letter just received from Garstand tells me that he has stratigraphical material from the latest campaign at Jericho which proves my dating of the Spatkanantisch of Watzinger as well as the relatively early dating of the Ghassulian. So I was right in all three points where I differed from his conclusions. Before the Ghassulian, however, comes metres of Neolithic with Tahunian flint-culture, and under that comes Mesolithic (found for the first time anywhere in the world in a mound!).
With best wishes to Helen and renewed thanks, I am
Very sincerely yours,
William
—
THE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY
BALTIMORE, MARYLAND
June 7th, 1935
Dear Nelson:
Complications seem to pile up steadily with regard to our visas. I have just sent a telegram to you and a nearly identical one to Burrows, asking both of you to send authorization by special delivery to Mr. Soast of the Provident Trust Company, authorizing him to wire $1500 to the American Express Company in New York, which has our passport. Their man reports to our man in the American Express Company here that the British Passport Control Officer is very much irritated over the whole thing, and refuses to give us a visa unless $1500 is forthcoming. You see, the Palestine authorities send four slips for my wife and three children, but failed to send permission for one of the four children. Hence we must put up the money for all of them. I suppose that, at the last minute, they will find that they cannot give me a visa, in spite of my own return visa on the expired passport, So far I am assured by all and sundry that that will be all right (including a formal statement from the British Passport Officer in New York over his signature). I have learned to believe nobody in this game. This complication surpasses anything I have met in all my years in Palestine. including all experiences of which I have heard.
I am dreadfully sorry that I have caused you so much work and anxiety at the last moment, but I do not see how it could have been avoided, unless I had started that day after my arrival. As it was I applied for my passport the first of April, and the letter was written to Palestine asking permission on April 26th. I did not seriously dream that formal permission would be necessary, since I seemed to have all documents in hand to prove my statements. But I failed to reckon with the inelasticity of the red tape with which the British officials are hemmed in, or with new banking laws, or officials who give misinformation and break their word. All of these things and considerably more have happened. I am afraid we are due to have a great deal of trouble of this kind in future, even when we think everything is arranged.
Very gratefully yours,
William
—
WESTERN UNION
Received at 1020 E, McMillan, Cincinnati, Ohio
JH384 28= BALTIMORE MD 7 517P
NELSON GLUECK=
HEBREW UNION COLLEGE=
PLEASE SEND AUTHORIZATION SPECIAL DELIVERY TO PROVIDENT TRUST COMPANY TO WIRE FIFTEEN HUNDRED DOLLARS TO AMERICAN EXPRESS COMPANY NEWYORK AS GUARANTEE ALBRIGHT PASSPORT STOP FURTHER COMPLICATIONS HAVE ARISEN=
:W F ALBRIGHT
—
WESTERN UNION
Received at 1020 E, McMillan, Cincinnati, Ohio
JH189 17=BALTIMORE MD 6 1134A
DR NELSON GLUECK=
HEBREW UNION COLLEGE=
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W F ALBRIGHT.
—
AMERICAN SCHOOL OF ORIENTAL RESEARCH
JERUSALEM, PALESTINE
OFFICE OF THE DIRECTOR
CABLE ADDRESS: MONUMENTS
August 29th, 1935
Dear Nelson:
The financial report for last year is nearly finished now, and will be sent, I hope, next week some time. It was delayed for a week because I gave Theodore permission to be absent a week collecting information on mat-making in the Ḥûleh region for Mrs. Crowfoot. Either simultaneously or a little later will go the financial report for July-August; I decided to keep them together because the Summer School crossed the two months.
The Summer School was very successful, and the character of its members higher than usual. I have recommended very strongly that the Summer School be taken over by the School as part of its organization and curriculum in future. Moon estimates that Jackson cleared $1500 on this Summer School, but he will have the exact figures on his return, since he has carefully collected all the information and will tabulate it. Since Jackson has been increasingly unwilling to do anything for members of the Summer School who are not with his party (though he could more than cover his additional expenses and trouble by doing it), and since more than half of the members of this party were attracted through our office and not by Jackson, we do not owe Jackson anything, morally or otherwise, which has not been fully paid. The School took in $270 in tuition fees this year, and made an estimated profit of $300-400 on board and room, so the total ran around $600-700. If we could have the total net profit of not less than $2000, we could pay over half of the executive secretary’s salary from the Summer School receipts. Moon did very well with the group, and is obviously a much better man than Jackson for this sort of thing. We cannot slip back into our old practice of running the whole show, aside from the services of the Director in Jerusalem, by voluntary contributions of time; our organization is now too elaborate, and too many interests are involved. The School is going to have an increasingly valuable educative function, and the Summer School will be an essential part of it.
We have arranged to start repairs on the house this coming week, going over all the woodwork most carefully, with Riemer and Hirsch (now reduced to a small concern, having gone bankrupt some time since because of Riemer’s inability to skimp his contracts or to collect bills) doing the work. The painting, long overdue, will follow, with a man recommend strongly by Riemer and Hirsch. We want to get the place into the best possible shape before I leave – who knows what will be done with the balance in the treasury by the next director or directors, who may prove more economical- but may also prove less so?
Magnes went to Europe yesterday, to fight things out with the curatorium. At Levy’s instance, I wrote the strongest statement I could on behalf of Magnes, and gave it to him. He made two sound emendations, to eliminate politics, and both he and Magnes (to whom he gave a copy) seemed very much pleased. Not that I think it will do any good, but every little helps. –By the way, Levy has not yet paid his bill for last summer, but promises faithfully to do his best this autumn. I pointed out that an unpaid bill would give McCown a fat opportunity to make trouble, which impressed him considerably. He has avoided Stinespring and me as much as possible while in Jerusalem these past few months, and admits that it is solely because he is ashamed of himself. The baby is flourishing and Mrs. Levy seemed when I saw her last. It is no joke being married to a talented and temperamental chap like Levy.
Fisher’s son Clarence has just got married. He apparently is without a job! In any case the parents both know the girl and her family and heartily approve of the match. Fisher has just had most of his teeth out, having had a marvelous crop of abscesses, which explain much of his recent ill-health. He has been working valiantly at the Corpus.
The Petries and Ellis (their student) are staying at the School, having been here most of the summer. His library has been moved in, and occupies the salon upstairs. Since it hardly duplicates wither ours or the British School, its presence is quite an asset. The Petries fit in extremely well, and cause no extra trouble; their requirements in the way of room are very much less than they were originally.
There are only seven staying at the School besides our family, but this is the smallest number here since my arrival. Business should pick up notably in September, and we expect to be full during October and November. The water-supply is very low, and must be husbanded with the utmost care. This autumn will probably see the most acute water shortage– or one of the most acute — in years, since the city is growing so steadily and so much building is going on. It is hopes that the ‘Aujā supply will come in this winter.
I do not know whether I shall attend the Rome Congress or not. If war breaks out I shall almost certainly not attend; Italy and Rome will not be pleasant to visit during wartime, and the Italian members of the Congress will be all told out for propaganda. A special Nazi delegation is coming to Rome, but happily does not seem to contain any outstanding Nazis, such as Schaeder. Jirku will not be there.
Your Kilwa paper, long overdue, will appear in the next number of the JPOS, now in press. I shall read the proof very carefully, and hope the results won’t be too bad. Other papers in this number will be : my presidential address last year on “Palestine in the Earliest Historical Period” (30-35 pages), a long one by Canaan, another by Alt, shorter papers by Joshua Starr (long overdue), Ginsberg, Reifenberg, etc., etc. The number will contain 160 pages, bringing the total for the year to about 360 – quite a respectable volume for $5.00. Sukenik’s monograph is the most important thing in the volume. I hope to get the first number of 1936 through press before I leave the end of December.
The material for the Bethel and Ader publications is now being completed, and work will begin shortly on finishing preparation of the material for Gibeah II and Petra. I hope to get the Bethel volume ready for press before leaving, and to bring all material for the other sites back to America, so that it can be worked up there. I have $500 from the Hopkins next year for working up archaeological material, and I want to utilize it as much as possible.
Ruth joins me in sending Helen and you our best regards. The gang is all well.
Very sincerely yours,
William
—
I was glad to get your interesting letter of Aug. 29. I have not yet received the financial report, but assume it is on its way or will be sent soon. The news about the School itself is most pleasant, particularly that the summer session was so profitable. I am distressed, however, when I think of all the time and energy Ruth must have expended while acting again as housekeeper of the School. It would have been nice if she could have devoted all of her time or her most immediate personal interests. However, her loss is our gain. I was particularly glad to hear that you are putting the School into tip-top physical shape before leaving at the end of December. The more you do now, the better it will be for the near future of the School.
I agree most thoroughly that the Summer School should be taken over by the School as a part of its organization and curriculum in the future. I am convinced that Moon could handle the organization and travel of the Summer School at least as well, if indeed not much more efficiently than Jackson. It would be quite a relief to our general treasury, if the Summer School receipts could provide for the large portion of Moon’s salary. With the growth of our organization, his services are becoming more and more indispensable. On the other hand, the condition of our financial resources requires that we husband them most carefully, and that we reach out for every possible source of income. We have finally reached a financial impasse.
Is pend most of last night, and all of this morning working over the finances, and I am alarmed. If Barton has explained the situation to me correctly, we can only allocate $12,500 from the Rockefeller Foundation for our 1936-1937 budget, which I am now trying to prepare, and in 1937 proper we receive nothing from the Foundation. I have written to Burrows, urging what I recommended last December that immediate contract be made with the Rockefeller Foundation to see what can be done for the future. As it is, I find that I cannot prepare a budget to cover our normal restricted activities, even diregarding the appropriation of another $7500 for Tepe Gawra in the 1936-7 budget to match the appropriation made in our last budget, and diregarding for the nonce the question of a reduction of Fisher’s salary or of a pension, or of anything for him. There are only two ways out of the difficult at the present, and I shall oppose both of them most strenuously. One is to include in the budget income from corporation and membership dues and from investments, which we have been putting into the endowment fund, and which is matched by a like sum from the Rockefeller Foundation. Thus if we used the approximately $10,00 total income from these resources which we have
been diverting the endowment fund, it would mean forgoing another $10,000 from the Rockf. Foundation, which we could have at the end of 1936. The other way would be to dig into our capital. However, I am against that because with the nec. replacement of some of our holdings with bonds yielding less income than previously, our net income is going to be somewhat reduced anyway; and besides, I think we would have to secure the consent of the Rockefeller Foundation. If the worst comes to pass, and we ought to envisage such a situation, for the 1937- 1938 budget the Schools will have a total income of about $10,000 from all sources. If conditions continue to improve in this country, there may be some positive results from our Endowment Campaign, and the Rockefeller Foundation may possible renew its grant to us. As treasurer, however, it is my business to watch the funds we have, and my motto is: “Auf das Beste hoffen, aber auf Schlimmste gefasst sein”.
Th JPOS XV, 1-2 which has just come in is a grand issue. Sukenik’s monograph is superb. Thanks for taking care of the Kilwa notes in the issue of the JPOS. An article on el-Hameh, which was in page proof for the AJA almost a year ago, and then because of space or finances was not published, has just appeared in the last issue of the AJA in a botched form, because the plates had to be readapted to the present issue. They have sent me no reprints. I am glad to lear that the Bethel volume will be ready for the press soon, and that the GIbeh II, Ader, and Petra publications are on their way towards completion. I am now reading page proof for the Edom article. It was reassuring to read your comment on Alt’s work Aus der ‘Araba II-IV in Bulletin 39. He is completely wrong with regard to the Roman origin of the caramanserais in the ‘Arabah. His article appeared too late for me to answer him in the body of my Edom paper, but I did take issue with him in an Addendum. In connection with your review of Abel’s Geographie… in the JPOS you will be interested to know that a close examination of all the biblical passages indicating that Seir-Edom is on the west side of the ‘Arabah shows beyond all doubt that every one of them is post-exilic in origin and has not Idumaea and not the preexilic Edom in mind. I have considered these passages in a lengthy footnote in the Edom article, and have dealt with them in more detail in a forthcoming article in the HUCA on The Western Boundary of Edom.
Helen is still in the General Hospital, and now earns fifty one cents a day. She comes home about three times a week for a couple of hours, and has every other week end off. Helen joins me in sending you and Ruth and the children and the rest of the School our warmest greetings.
NG
—
19
AMERICAN SCHOOLS OF ORIENTAL RESEARCH
FOUNDED 1900
INCORPORATED IN THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA
Nov. 9, 1935
Dear William,
I have your letters of October 7 and 21 and the accounts which accompanied them. You are leaving the Jerusalem School in a remarkably fine physical and financial condition. I shall incorporate all of your suggestions in my remarks on the financial condition of the Schools at the December meeting of the Schools. I am a bit dubious about reducing the grant to the Jerusalem School from $2500 to $2000, however. The former sum is already rather low, and I am afraid that the difference might be diverted to purposes which are certainly no more important, and to projects which are perhaps even now too ambitious. I refer to the $7500 appropriation for the Tepe Gawra dig made in the 1935-6 budget, which was to be matched with a similar amount in the 1946-7 budget. I consider Tepe Gawra a most important matter, and am as anxious as any one for the excavations there to be brought to a scientifically satisfactory end, but I do not want to the Schools crippled or moral obligations such as we have to Fisher completely sacrificed, and I agree with you that if possible the scholarships should be restored. (the Nies fund nets us less than $2, two dollars a year, now). You know, by the way, that $3000 of the 1935-6 Tepe Gawra appropriation has been turned over for work this winter at Tepe Gawra, although the original idea was to save it all for one final dig next year. As a matter of fact, however, all of these remarks with regard to the 1936-7 budget appropriations amount at the present moment to so much speculation, as I informed you in my last letter.
Since then, however, there have been a number of interesting developments, which have somewhat altered the situation, and which also affect me personally. In response to an urgent telegram from Burrows, I went to New York about two and a half weeks ago, to meet him and Cyrus Adler at the latter’s office, for the purpose of interviewing Warburg in connection with the School finances. Burrows has probably written to you about all of this, and I have purposely refrained from writing to you sooner, because I thought it would be just as well for you to hear from him first. We saw Warburg. To make a long story short, Warburg offered to give the Schools a considerable sum of money, about $50,000 (fifty thousand dollars – an approximate sum which he mentioned rather generally) if certain conditions were fulfilled. They were that whatever money he and Mrs. Warburg might give must be spend within say ten years or so, and secondly that the new director of the Jerusalem School must be acceptable to him. In that connection he mentioned my own name several times, Burrows and I left then, Adler and Warburg staying at the Harmonie Club where we had met him, to participate in another meeting. The possibility of my returning to the Jerusalem School was thus precipitately brought up, and it would be untrue if I were to say that I wasn’t tremendously stirred, and that I am not deeply interested. It had never occurred to me that I might get another extended leave-of-absence from the Hebrew Union College. Burrows and I talked the matte rover, and left saying that my availability depended up Dr. Morgenstern, and with both of us saying we did not know if the Board of Trustees would care to accept any gift with strings attached to it such as Mr. Warburg insisted on. I returned to Cincinnati with feat and trembling in my heart, because according to conversations I had had with Dr. Morgenstern last year, I felt that he would be adamant and under no circumstances recommend that I be given another leave-of-absence in case the directorship of the Jerusalem School were eventually to be offered me. To my delight and amazement he not only did not reject the idea fortwith, but said the he would give it careful consideration. Last week he called me in again, and said that in view of the availability of Julius Lewi for the near future, he was inclined to recommend to the Board of Governors of the Hebrew Union College that in case the directorship of the Jerusalem School is offered me I be granted a leave-of-absence for three years, and be promoted at the end of this year to a full professorship. It would give Lewi and opportunity to settle quietly for several years during which an opening in Assyriology might offer itself somewhere, and would enable me to serve the Jerusalem School is the opportunity were to be offered me. It happened that there was an HUC Board of Governors meeting at just this time when Dr. Morgenstern and I were having our initial conversations, and I believe that Dr. Rosenau had a great deal to do with the assurance given to Dr. Morgenstern that the trustees would receive favorably such a suggestion from him. That is how the matter stands now. If the position is offered me, I should love to go. Helen finishes her internship in June, and there would be no question of separation between us.
I have just been requested by Moon to go to Chicago and interview Mr. Patten. So I have written to Patten and to Sellers, and will go up as soon or if such an interview can be arranged. Dr. Morgenstern and I are going to tackle some Cincinnati people for contributions to the endowment.
With heartiest greetings to you and Ruth,
I am, as ever, sincerely yours,
NG
—
AMERICAN SCHOOLS OF ORIENTAL RESEARCH
FOUNDED 1900
INCORPORATED IN THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA
Nov. 13, 1935.
Dr. William F. Albright
Director,
American School of Oriental Research, Jerusalem.
Jerusalem, Palestine.
Dear William:
In accordance with your letter to Moon regarding the check for $44 to be sent Dr. Arthur J. Jackson, 4707 Connecticut Ave., Washington, D.C., I am writing to the Provident Trust Co. to send him such a check, and to deduct a like amount from the payment to be made the Jerusalem School, which is to be remitted on March 1, 1936, representing the last third of the 1935-6 appropriation.
Sincerely yours, NG
—
AMERICAN SCHOOL OF ORIENTAL RESEARCH
JERUSALEM, PALESTINE
OFFICE OF THE DIRECTOR CABLE ADDRESS: MONUMENTS
November 23rd, 1935.
Dear Nelson:
A letter of November 8th from Burrows, received several days ago, reports the good news that you may come out on a three-year term as director here. I hesitated about writing you, not knowing how much of this, if any, might be confidential, but I have since reflected that it could hardly come as a real surprise to you, and that you probably knew much more about it than Burrows told me in his letter. I immediately wrote back a very enthusiastic letter to Burrows, and hoped that my latest previous suggestion of Olmstead for a year (as desperate remedy) would be taken as a pis aller (not with respect to Olmstead, but with respect to the idea of a part-time director for one year).
If you can persuade Mr. Warburg to give you a big gift for the School and then come out for several years, there will be none of the deterioration in the scientific output, or in the physical plant that I have been apprehending. It is a marvelous idea, which I endorse with all my heart. Naturally I am keeping a mum on the subject here, except to President Moulton. After the close of your term there may be first-rate younger blood available– or perhaps you can prolong your stay.
I think that this is the line along which we must strike out in our further work for raising endowment and developing and consolidating the School, viz., continuing the policy and the method of work which has brought us reputation and has yielded such remarkable archaeological results. You are the only man who can carry on along these lines at this emergency.
Yesterday, Garstand, FitzGerald, and Rowe arrived, and will being work on the new plan of the Garstand at once: another campaign at Jericho and soundings or excavation sin Galilee (Hazor, Tell Qisan, etc.).
With my best regards to Helen,
Very sincerely yours
W.F. Albright
—
AMERICAN SCHOOL OF ORIENTAL RESEARCH
JERUSALEM, PALESTINE
OFFICE OF THE DIRECTOR CABLE ADDRESS: MONUMENTS
December 5th, 1935
Dear Nelson:
Enclosed are the financial statements of the Hostel and School for the month of November. The house will continue to be full through December, so that we shall have a nice increase in our hostel balance by the beginning of January. What will happen after that remains to be seen, since there have been very few requests for accommodations in the later winter, and several of our people will leave in December.
Mrs. McCown arrives the 6th of December (tomorrow afternoon), but I hope that no fur will fly in the three weeks before we sail (this is, of course, a strictly confidential remark– I know that McCown is a little worried, since he is all for keeping the peace, and has been, for example, not only most correct in administrative matters, but also very nice to our Jewish students, who are naturally a bit sensitive, because of what they have heard around).
Breasted’s death is a body-blow to the Oriental Institute and a great shock to all of us; he seemed to be so well and happy when we saw him here recently. However, it is hardly tragic, since he dies at the pea of his powers, with his institution fully organized and the archaeological harvests beginning to pour in.
The circular of Nov. 19th indicated that your coming out in my place is definitive. I earnestly hope that nothing happens between now and July 1st to make it impossible for you to come; it is such an excellent idea, from every point of view.
With best wishes to Helen, I am
Very sincerely yours,
William
—
AMERICAN SCHOOLS OF ORIENTAL RESEARCH
FOUNDED 1900
INCORPORATED IN THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA
Dec. 8, 1935
Dear William:
I have received the revised monthly statements of the School for July-October, and the House statement for October. You have certainly had a great deal of trouble with Theodore, but your efforts have certainly made for important savings for the School. I am glad that Mrs. Blair has taken hold of the accounts to efficiently, and hope that she will be able to remain at the School for a long time.
I had already last spring instructed the bank to send you monthly salary checks t your residence in Baltimore, and likewise the additional $250 for travelling expenses. I wrote to the bank yesterday asking them to send these checks to the Eutaw Savings Bank, Baltimore, to be deposited there to your account.
There is nothing new to add to my last letter with regard to Mr. Warburg’s proposed gift to our Schools. At Moon’s request I went up to Chicago to interview Mr. Patten. Sellers and I went together, and Mr. Patten gave us $500 for the Endowment Fund. The University of Cincinnati by recent vote of its Board of Trustees has decided to become a corporation member of the American Schools of Oriental Research. So that means another $100 a year. I hope to get some more money from Cincinnatians before the year it is over.
The new volume of the Annual containing my Edom report is out. If it has any merit, it is due to your teaching and example and encouragement. Because of an unfortunate misunderstanding which I shall not attempt to explain by letter, I am having two extra maps withdrawn which were inserted in the pocket for the large map at the last moment, and which were not properly checked. They are not mentioned in the text so the report does not suffer because of their absence. I am enclosing the corrected maps for your own use. Perhaps I can use them in a subsequent report, if I am able to continue the survey, or perhaps in a corrected form they can be put in the Bulletin. The U. of Cincinnati is doing a qualitative and quantitative analysis of the ore specimens I brought home, and when I receive the report I thought that perhaps you might want to publish it in the Bulletin.
I am taking you financial reports reports east with me at the end of the month. You are leaving the School in a remarkably fine financial position. If the Directorship is offered me for three years, I shall be most happy to accept it. I think that Dr. Morgenstern with his unusual generosity and willingness to cooperate will recommend that I be given a leave-of-absence. The ideal solution would be naturally if you could possibly have remained permanently.
Helen joins me in wish you and Ruth and the children a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.
Sincerely, NG
January 31, 1936
Professor Wiliam F. Albright
Johns Hopkins University
Baltimore, Maryland
Dear William:
Welcome home. I imagine that you and Ruth and the children are rather tired and are glad to be home and have a chance to recuperate from what I know must have been the last hectic weeks in Jerusalem. I hope that Ruth has completely recovered from the effects of the journey. I know they must have enjoyed tremendously the stay in Jerusalem. We all greatly regret that you felt finally felt the necessity of resigning as Director. There is no one who can really replace you. Naturally, I am very happy, on the other hand, that I shall be able to return to Jerusalem. Just last night the Board of Governors of the Hebrew Union College unanimously and enthusiastically gave me a leave of absence for three years and also the difference in salary between the two schools. I shall leave some time in June and am not sure at the moment whether Helen will accompany me or come several months later on.
I shall file away the statement you made out for McCowan and take it with me to Jerusalem when I return. You are certainly leaving the School in wonderful shape, and I shall attempt to keep it in as good a condition as possible during my administration. I am delighted about Lewy’s coming to Cincinnati. I have seen quite a bit of him at various places during the last year and entertained a high regard for him. I am meeting him Sunday morning at the station and will see to it that he is taken care of during the first days of his getting orientated in Cincinnati.
I was in Baltimore the other day but, unfortunately, you had not yet arrived. I shall have to wait now till April before having an opportunity to see you again. There are, however, a number of things which I should like to ask you about: first of all the matter of passports. When I was in Palestine last time Hyamson, as a last dispensation before his departure for England made me a Permanent Citizen. However, that lapses, I believe, after one has been away from Palestine for a year. I am wondering whether you think it advisable for me to write to Edwin Samuel and ask him to have the renewed for me or whether I should write to a British Consulate in this country or whether McCowan might best handle the entire matter for me. Judging from your experiences last summer, I font believe that it is too early to begin thinking about the vexatious matter of passports and of bonds. Some new wrinkles will probably have developed since you left which you may be able to tell me about.
I am wondering whether under the conditions that prevail in the Mediterranean now our Summer School project will go through or not. I certainly hope that is will because the School can make good use of the revenue resulting from the Summer School. I hope that Moon is pushing the matter very hard and will leave no stone unturned. I have heard nothing about the matter since the December meeting and am somewhat concerned.
I believe that you were to see Burrows and are therefore informed about the results of the last meeting of our Board of Trustees. The budget for the coming fiscal year is working out quite satisfactorily I think and since the last meeting I have been able to figure out several additional sources of the income. I am working on the revised budget now and will have it typewritten very soon. I am hoping that the $1500 appropriation suggested for the continuation of the Transjordan Survey will go through at the April meeting. I m very anxious to extend the survey into Amon and Moab, and also into Midian and Sinai. I have the feeling that a line of Bonze Age and Iron Age settlements or stations may be found extending into Midian proper. At least I should like to take a whack at finding our, and next year may be the last time for many years to come when exploration will be possible in that particular territory. I am confident that I shall be able to secure permission to get in. you know that $500 have already ben restored in the budget to b used by the Director for General Archaeological purposes. An additional $1500 will enable me to carry out a piece of exploration similar to that required for Edom. There was money left over from the sale of my last truck to enable me to purchase a new one and I have negotiations on hand for such a truck now. I am wondering what you think of the possibility of purchasing an ordinary Ford car and an extra trailer which could be attached to it.
I am annoyed at Levy’s delay in paying his bill and think, perhaps, that some steps might be taken to compel him to do so if he delays much longer. He might be told, and if there is no other way I shall be glad to write to him myself if you want me to, that it will be necessary for the American School to think of adopting some such plan as attaching his salary or whatever to the legal procedure may be. He was very generously treated at the American School and it ill behooves him to delay paying such a greatly reduced bill.
I am looking forward to your discussion of the Lachish letters in the February Bulletin. I see that Torezyner has already given up his original point of view. The Chemistry Department at the University of Cincinnati has not yet finished analysis of the materials from the Arabah and I cant very well hurry them up. As soon as they have given me the results I should like to write them up for a short article for the Bulletin.
Helen joins me in sending you and Ruth and the children our very warmest greetings.
Sincerely yours,
NG
—
The Johns Hopkins University
Baltimore, Maryland
February 3rd, 1936
Dear Nelson:
Many thanks for your long letter of Jan. 31st and the good news which it contains. I am very glad to hear that the Hebrew Union College is treating you so handsomely. The new Annual arrived today. I had not seen it before, and want to congratulate you on the publication — your third independent one. It contains a great mass of valuable information, clearly presented, with an index and map which will add greatly to its usefulness. I look forward eagerly to the results of your archaeological survey this coming year. Of course, you must continue. I a few corrections are necessary here and there in the transcriptions of place-names, but that is all that I have noticed in a rapid perusal.
Enclosed is the statement of the School and hostel for the month of December, from which you will see that the hostel is now in condition to stand two or three months of small attendance. The Secretary’s Account includes payment for the month of January. The Corpus Research Account represents Mr. Noble’s board and room. By the way, I think that you did exactly right about Fisher’s stipend and the payments to be made at the completion of each step in the Corpus. I am glad that there was enough available to make a more generous treatment possible. I have just written the new head of the Oriental Institute, Dr. Wilson, commending the Corpus to his attention for publication.
A visit I had the other day with Mr. Stevens of the Rockefeller Foundation makes me hope that they will do a little help tide us over the bad period. I am afraid that I cannot do much more in Baltimore this year, since the University has just had to make a further series of drastic salary cuts and reductions in staff which will rather cripple us here, at the same time that a big endowment campaign is planned.
I suspect that you had better write to Levy (“The Ahram,” Cairo), making your remarks as gentle as possible for the first time. Urge him to pay up before McCown returns to America and you take over.
You will have no trouble about securing permit to enter Palestine without having to deposit $600, if you will write now to McCown. In Bulletin No. 60, p. 32, there is a statement of the situation which I have written. I shall mention the matter in the letter I am writing this morning to McCown, but you should write him also, giving the facts about your arrival, and mentioning the boat you are taking, if possible. Not that the latter is absolutely necessary, but every piece of information helps. The fact that you and your wife were permanent residences will help; you can get reinstated after your arrival in Palestine.
I hardly think that people will feel quite so alarmed about travel in the Mediterranean this summer, after nearly a year of peace. However, one can never tell. I shall do my bit in the Bulletin and whenever possible otherwise to reassure people. The question of a suitable steamer may be difficult, since the Italian Line is out of consideration, so far as we can foresee. However, I the attendance is small we can remember that Jackson would almost certainly have quit at the last moment, as he did once before, leaving us in some embarrassment.
I shall look forward to the chemical analysis and deductions from it, which will be in nice time for the April number.
The news of Wilson’s appointment as head of the Oriental Institute was a great relief. What I know and have seen of him impresses me more favorably than is the case with any other of the potential candidates from the Institute staff. Frankfort would have been my choice, but I suspect that Wilson is steadier and probably safer all around. Anyway, in exchanging letters this past week with Wilson, Charles Breasted, Olmstead, and Grahams, I have done everything possible to pour oil on the troubled waters–indirectly, of course. Perhaps Chicago will consider publishing Fisher’s Corpus now; I rushed being indiscreet by writing Wilson about it. Anyway he has seen the Corpus and was, I think, favorably impressed.
With my best wishes to Helen, I am
Very sincerely yours,
W.F. Albright
—
THE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY
BALTIMORE, MARYLAND
March 27th, 1936
Dear Nelson:
Enclosed are the financial reports of the School in Jerusalem for January and February. They appear to be quite satisfactory, and McCown has certainly economized our resources well. The delay is due to the fact that Mrs. Balir was laid up for several weeks with jaundice. Other news from Jerusalem is interesting, but not exciting. Some forty papyrus rolls and many fragments have now turned up at Hafîr el-‘Aujā. Nothing is reported from Lachish or Jericho.
By the way, I forgot to write you asking for an announcement of the work of the School next year. Do send me a few items, which may simply be given me seriatim, and I will arrange them in proper form, since it is now so late, and I don’t want this Bulletin to be delayed in appearance, like the last one.
I have completed a ten-page sketch of Breasted’s career for the American Scholar. It took me the best part of a week to write it, since it had to be handled so carefully and strict accuracy was necessary. The question of style must also be taken in to careful consideration in such a sketch.
I can imagine how busy you must be these day s– I am glad that I am not going to be so rushed as usual!
With my best wishes to Helen, I remain
Very sincerely yours,
W.F. Albright
—
THE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY
BALTIMORE, MARYLAND
April 4th, 1936
Dear Nelson:
Many thanks for your prompt reply. I shall prepare the statement about the coming session of the School for insertion in the April Bulletin. The available copy went to press yesterday, and what is necessary to complete the number will be added before the page proofs, as usual. –Here I have to stop and change the spools, which were put in wrong.
The meeting of the A.O.S at New Haven will be small, but the caliber of the papers averaged well above the usual. I am looking forward to yours, which particularly intrigues me. Enclosed is the — somewhat illegible– copy of a short paper which will appear in the April Bulletin, Toward the end are some observations which may interest you. There are also in the forthcoming number sketches of Lyon and Badè, the Gawra report, and article by Speiser, reports on the soundings at ‘Anâtā and Râs el-Kharrûbeh, a trip to Qarn Sarṭabeh by Dr. Moulton, etc.
Considering the state of Fisher’s Corpus, I think you will be able to recommend the payment of $1000 to him this summer. Why not tell him that, in order to encourage him? If Moulton decides to invest something in a dig at Roman Jericho there will be plenty for Fisher to do when he grows wary of working on the Corpus next year.
The Jewish Institute of religion is giving him a D.H.L. this May. Now all I need is one from the Yeshiva College in order to be an all-around Goy, since I am already Honorary Member of the Hebrew University. Since I am already giving yearly addresses at the Jesuit Theological Seminary at Woodstock, and at the Methodist Preachers’ Meeting of Baltimore, I am beginning to apprehend a not unjust suspicion of being “all things to all men.” Or course, one explanation is strict neutrality.
With best wishes to Helen, I am
Very sincerely yours.
W.F. Albright
—
May 8, 1936
Professor William F. Albright
Johns Hopkins University
Baltimore, Maryland
Dear William:
Thanks for your letter of May fifth. I am distressed to learn that you have suffered again from an attack of lumbago, and hope the definite cause and the proper cure can be found. You are much too young a man to be troubled so much with these things. It is lucky you are what you are or otherwise you would be accusing those waves which hit you at Nathanya of being diabolical of the elders of Zion.
I am delighted that you are receiving your second D.H.L from a Jewish institution, this time from the Jewish Theological Seminary. It seems to be that the only thing now which remains to make you a complete goy is for us to crown you with a third degree. I think it is wonderful that the University of Utrecht is giving you an honorary Doctor of Theology on the occasion of its tercentenary. I know of no one who more deserves to be singled out for recognition and honor than you.
The last thing in the world to occur to me would be to permit our friendship to be disturbed but any difference of opinion on scholarly subjects. If it did I should be a very poor pupil yours for certainly one of the many things you taught me is that real scholars must welcome sounds differences of opinion, must be eager to learn and always ready to have mistakes pointed out to them. As a matter of fact, I hesitated for some time before venturing to differ with you in the interruption of the passage in Judges V just because I fear that it might possible affect our relationship and then I decided that to do just that would indeed be a reflection on friendship which I treasure to greatly
I hope that Morey is made a Trustee. We need him very much– the Rockefeller Foundation has been very generous to us indeed, and I hope that within the next three and a half years we can achieve our goal. I think it should be possible for me, after two or three years to request a mutual friend of ours to give us another gift. I am beginning to think that it will be absolutely necessary either to reduce greatly or to do away completely with the salary of an executive secretary. We simply cannot afford it.
I have written to Olmstead expressing my delight that he and his family plan to stay with us for some time in Jerusalem and have extended a cordial invitation to him to deliver a course of lectures at the School. I have left the subject for the lectures open to him but have suggested that the History of New Testament Times which he is shortly to publish would be a very welcome subject for discussion. I am hoping that Olmstead’s connection with the Schools this coming year will make for more friendly relationships between our School and the Oriental Institute.
I shall send Mrs. Blair the hostile accounts listed in your letter.
With cordial greetings to you and Ruth, I am, as ever,
Sincerely yours,
Nelson Glueck
—
May 20, 1936.
Dear William:
Mr. L. H. Wood, 6932 Clyde Ave., Chicago, Ill., who had previously applied for the Thayer Fellowship, has written me saying that he is able and willing to finance himself for a year’s stay at the School, if he receives the appointment as a Fellow. I am writing to him saying that he will hear from you directly and that I believe the Thayer Fellowship has already been awarded, but that there may be some other Fellowship. I believe the Jastrow Fellowship is still open, is it not? I have discussed the matter with Morgenstern, and agrees with me that if you are willing, Mr. Wood might be awarded that Fellowship.
The awarding of honorary degrees to members of the ASOR seems to be contagious. To my complete amazement, the President of the University of Cincinnati informed me yesterday that my Alma Mater is giving me this june an honorary LL.D. I could not refrain from expressing my surprise to him, and wondering why the degree had not been awarded to a better qualified person, – some one like Blegen, for instance. He said that members of the faculty are never given degrees by their own university, and that the U. of C. felt that I had done etc., etc. Well, I am delighted to receive it, although it does complicate the plans I had for leaving Cincinnati on June 3, and driving east very slowly with the new Dodge station-wagon. I shall have to make other arrangements now, because commencement exercises take place here on the night of June 5. The car has to be on the boat by June 8. The boat sails June 9.
I feel certain that the archaeological department of the U. of Cincinnati is responsible for my nomination. President Walters told me that Mr. Warrington, the chairman of the trustees of the university had read in the Bulletin that I sailing June 7, and in as much as they heard that I was motoring east with a new car, they id not see how I could make it. I told him that Mr. Warrington had misread the date. What interested me is that he reads the Bulletin so carefully. I think that behind the awarding of this degree lies the satisfaction of the U. of C. with the new relationship with our Schools. I urge you and Burrows to cultivate the Cincinnati chapter of the Archaeological Society. There is real money here, and evidently its members are interested in our Schools.
Sincerely yours,
NG
—
THE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY
BALTIMORE, MARYLAND
May 23rd, 1936
Dear Nelson:
Congratulations on the Ll.D! These University of Cincinnati connections which you have established are very gratifying. I agree entirely as to the desirability of cultivating relations with this important archaeological center.
I am communicating with Burrows and Montgomery, and shall let Mr. Wood know of his appointment as Jastrow Fellow in a few days.
You must be terribly rushed these last few days. I am heartily glad that I can take things calmly, since I don’t have to rush off to Palestine. Sorry that you are getting back there under such unfavorable political conditions. Let us hope that there will be a new period of doldrums for the next three years!
Very sincerely yours,
W.F. Albright
—
AMERICAN SCHOOLS OF ORIENTAL RESEARCH
FOUNDED 1900
INCORPORATED IN THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA
May 26, 1936
Dear William:
Enclosed please find a short article about the ores and slag we found in the ‘Arabah and in the hill country of Edom. I thought you might care to publish it in the Bulletin. There is also appended to it the complete report of the chemical analyses by Dr. John C. Weaver of the University of Cincinnati, which I thought might also be included.
The Dodge station-wagon has been delivered to me in Cincinnati, and I am having it broken in by letting trustworthy people drive it. I had intended driving it from here to Jersey City, but will now have it sent to Pittsburgh, and drive it on from there because I cant leave Cincinnati now till the night of June 5, when the commencement exercises take place. By having the car driven a thousand miles or so, I can get it properly serviced here in this country, and also hope thus to be able to have it considered a second-hand car by the Palestine custom authorities, with a consequent appreciable reduction in duty.
I hope that the Palestine situation will better itself shortly, and certainly do not expect it to last indefinitely. I wrote Moon in reply to his request for advice about the holding of the summer-school to cable to McCown for information. He is on the scene and ought to be able to give definite information. I certainly hope that the summer-school sessions can take place.
I am terribly rushed, and will need the rest that I hope to get on the boat. This burning the candle at both ends is completely exhausting.
I wish I could see you again. If possible, I shall route my drive east through Baltimore. If not, I shall look forward to seeing you soon again in Palestine.
With all of my best wishes to you and Ruth and the children, in which Helen joins me,
I am, as ever,
July 2nd, 1938Dear Nelson,
It was a real treat to receive your letter of June 12th and the MS of your article for the BULLETIN on Tell el-Kheleifeh. It is very interesting and is written with your customary verve and enthusiasm. Being so interesting it will form an admirable entree for the October Bulletin, which should go to press late August, just before I sail for Belgium (if I do, which is problematical, in view of the European situation).
Since it is much too long, especially in view of the wealth of illustrations, it must be cut. Here there is a chance to avert future trouble by omitting some of the topographical and chronological part. I think that it will be prudent to wait for the cleaning and decipherment of the jar-stamps before publishing a provisional historical reconstruction. In the first place, it is quite evident from the inscription in Aramaic characters that the last settlement must come down in the seventh century. I enclose a tracing of the characters as I see them for comparison with the original. I read preferably l’mgbr, with alternatives l’mṣbr and l’mṣ br. Just as there are superfluous vertical stroke at the bottom of the bet, so I suspect a superfluous stroke at the left of the gimel (?), thought former I easier to explain as a slip of the incising tool while the latter is hard to explain this way. Perhaps the inspection of the original will help. I regard all the characters as certain except the g – ṣ. The name would be ‘Ammi-gabar, “My People has Prevailed,” or the like. There are good many Aramaean and Edomite names of the eighth-seventh centuries B.C. which have this formation; e.g. Ilu-Gabri (7th cent.), Ilu-gabar (5th cent.), Našhu-gabri, etc. (7th cent.), Si’ -gabbari (7th cent.), Quaš-gabri (7th cent.), etc. I have exhausted the material for comparison without finding anything like the ṣade, if it is one, and there are no well-attested personal names or elements to make the ṣade plausible. The bet and reš are most like lapidary Aramaic forms on inscriptions of the fifth to the third centuries B.C.; the lamed and the ‘ayin can be duplicated anywhere in the seventh and sixth centuries (except in strictly cursive script; the mem is best in place in the seventh century; the gimel fits in almost anywhere. In other words the inscription cannot be older than the seventh century and may go down to the sixth; it cannot be earlier or later unless it is an aberrant specimen of some kind.
Now, it would be too bad if I were to publish your provisional conclusions and they should probe to be entirely wrong after the jar-stamps had been deciphered. I suggest that I eliminate the topographical discussion and your historical deductions (except for the pre-Solomonic and Solomonic periods). If you are right you can print the topographical discussions in the BULLETIN or elsewhere after the epigraphic data are fully studied; otherwise you can work the material up afresh to suit the new facts if you don’t like this idea, I suggest that you cable me to hold the material for further instructions; otherwise I shall go ahead and eliminate the doubtful matter from the present report (without changing it otherwise, except verbally where advisable).
It is fine to hear about the fourth year you are to have in Jerusalem!
This is very fine, from every point of view. Now, if nothing happens, you can finish the T.J. Survey as well as your excavations at Tannûr and Kheleifeh, and can return to work the latter up with an easy conscience. You are doing well!
Torczyner will sizzle some more when he sees the October BULLETIN, where I hope to print a short article by H.L. Ginsberg on the Lachish Letters. Confidentially, I am reviewing Torczyner’s book at length in Kirjath-Sepher. I pointed out to Joel that my review would be none too favorable, but he insisted that I go ahead, saying that he relied on me to keep away from personalities. Don’t say a word about this to anyone there, since it might create an awkward situation at the University, where Torczyner is not very well liked (I don’t need to tell you that).
With my best regards to Helen, whom I hope to see in Brussels,
Very sincerely yours,
W.F. Albright
—
The Johns Hopkins University
Baltimore, Maryland
July 8th, 1938
Dear Nelson:
Your letter of June 23rd beat your letter of the 22nd by several days. The new seal-impression is extraordinarily interesting. Your reading, “Quas-‘nl servant of the king,” looks quite all right, though the last part o the name is very strange. Can it be ‘pl or ‘ml? Either would have the advantage of being a known verb, but ‘nl is quite mysterious. If the letter-forms are right this inscription also belongs to the seventh century B.C., though it is lapidary Hebrew, not cursive or semi-cursive Aramaic. Can you send me copies or prints of the micro-photographs when you have them made?
In view of the new evidence I advise you to let me print only those parts of your paper this time which will not be affected by a lowering of the date of the last stratum by a century or more, as will be necessary, I suspect. It is likely that the seal belongs to an Edomite official of Quas-gabri, the last known king of Edom. Remember that the Arabs were permitted by Assurbanapal to settle in the land of the Edomites about 650 B.C. or a little later. The first half of the seventh century would be eminently satisfactory for both the inscriptions (assuming that our copies are correct). At all events, the discoveries at Kheleifeh are so important that it would be a pity to rush into print and then have to reverse the first conclusions to so considerable an extent as will probably be necessary. Even if your chronology should turn out to be right after all, no harm can be done by waiting a few months before publishing the inscriptions and a reconstruction of the history of the site.
Now that the European situation is really quieting down for a bit, I can really set about enquiring with regard to sailings. I hope to visit the American Express office in a few days, after which I shall let you know what my tentative sailing dates are. I must reach Brussels by Sept 5th and leave Oxford as soon as possible after Sept. 23rd.
The last galley proofs of Tell Beit Mirsim II come in tomorrow. Otherwise the book is entirely set and all the plates and charts are ready. The latter are mostly very good –much better than I had expected. Some time ago I finished a 30-page MS on the chronology of Tell el-‘Ajjûl for AJSL (October number). I differ as politely as possible from every date and dynasty of Sir Flinders. With the help of Ginsberg and Gordon, both of whom contributed essential observations, I have succeeded in eliminating the moon-god Terrah, Ashdod, and other Negebite elements from the RSh. picture. I expect t present a paper on the subject at Brussels, thereby making myself still less popular with the Virrolleaud and Dussaud.
That 800 L.P. surplus in the House account is grand. The improvements were all most needed ones. You will have the School in wonderful shape by the end of your four years if nothing happens. The news from Palestine these days is very saddening, but one can hardly expect anything else, I fear, for the present.
With best wishes to Helen from Ruth and me, I am
Your W.F. Albright
—
The Johns Hopkins University
Baltimore, Maryland
July 12th, 1938
Dear Nelson:
My letters of July 3rd and July 8th gave some idea of the successive reactions, after seeing the Aramaic graffitio and the seal-impression. As you recall, I wanted to date the Aramaic inscription in the 7th or 6th century B.C. I now have two close parallels for the mêm: one is from Bliss’s Tell el- Ḥesī, stratum VI (the late pre-exilic Jewish city), outside the city wall (Bliss, Mound of Many Cities, p. 50 f.; Hooke, PEFQS, 1936, 38), a graffito reading unquestionably lṠmk (for the ṡ cf. the closely parallel cursive ṡamekh from Lachish); the other is from a Lachish seal (cf. Harding’s copy in Lachish Letters, Table of Characters, near end, col. 3 form end) [y,y]. In other words, the mêm is most closely paralleled by examples which must be dated in the seventh and early sixth centuries.
Meanwhile McCasland is back, full of enthusiasm after his profitable year in Palestine. He showed me a number of photos of vases and sherds, including some which were new to me and a number which I do not have at present (since I sent the material to Burrows). Of course, his memory or his information may be misleading, but I am not stressing his dates too strongly. The juglet #445 is most interesting, since it appears to be transitional type between the classes discussed TBM I, #95 and 116, and can hardly be earlier than cir. 850 B.C. nor later than cir. 700 B.C. at the outside. McCasland thought it belonged to stratum II? Half a cooking pot (apparently left without a number by Mr. Beumont) suggests the ninth-eighth centuries; McCasland ascribes it to stratum II. An amphora and the vase on which there is a row of seal-impressions both look superficially like sixth-century work; the latter reminds me strongly of late sixth-century pottery at Bethel. However, impressions based on such chance photos may be entirely misleading, so I am just asking whether the evidence of cases and inscriptions does not point to a date in the sixth century (time of Nabonidus???) for stratum IV and to a Solomonic date for stratum I, with II possibly belonging to the time of Jehoshapat and III to that of Uzziah???
Yesterday I went down to the American Express Company to enquire about sailings. I shall probably leave for Havre on the S.S. Paris (French Line), leaving N.Y. Aug 24th, and arriving Aug. 31st. I shall then return by the same boat from Southampton Sept. 24th, arriving N.Y. Oct. 1st Saturday). The alternative is the Queen Mary, which leaves N.Y. on the 24th, arrives at Havre on the 29th, leaves Southampton on the 28th, arrives in N.Y. Oct. 3rd. against the Queen Mary are two serious objections: it arrives in N.Y. too late for me to get here in time for my classes Monday, the 3rd; it costs (tourist class), round trip, off-ceason and all, $30.00 more than does the Paris.
Yesterday I had a visit from Gordon, who is a research fellow at Smith College next year (he will study the local collection of 500 cuneiform tablets) and from Kelso. Kelso will probably be out in the Near East next summer; I am definitely not coming out until 1940 (if then).
Very sincerely yours,
W.F. Albright
—
THE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY
BALTIMORE, MARYLAND
July 20th, 1938
Dear Nelson,
Just a few lines to give you the latest reactions Torrey, with nothing but the text of the Aramaic graffito to go by, dates it provisionally in the fifth century B.C. As I pointed out, the mêm suggests a fate in the early sixth century and the pottery is, of course, opposed to so late a date as the fifth. An elongated amphora from stratum IV (which McCasland had photographed) belongs to a type which does not appear yet at the end of Tell Beit Mirsim A or Beth-shemesh II and which Petrie, Gerar, dates in the period following the disappearance of the pottery characteristic of TBM A (especially miniature black-burnished juglets and miniature amphoras, etc.). Moreover the Gerar-Kheleifeh type is the direct progenit of the still more elongated amphora of the Persian period (fifth-fourth centuries).
I am rushing whatever information I can to you so you can consider it and make whatever revision of the original chronology may be needed. You see that it would have been imprudent to have rushed into print in dealing with novel material. I may say in passing that Fisher has really never worked with stratified deposits of this period so his chronology might very well be materially off.
With best wishes,
Very sincerely yours,
W.F. Albright
—
I returned from Transjordan yesterday, where Winnett and I had been exploring the upper stretches of the Wadi Zerqa. Our return was a hasty one, because a rider sent out by Harding found me after a day and a hald with a message that I was to phone Helen, who was ill. We changed course and rode to Rumman, on the Jerash road where there is a police-post. The line to Jerusalem was out of order. Fortunately, I had ordered Ylias to meet us that day by the former bridge across from the Zerqa. We intercepted him, and got back to Jerusalem in the afternoon. Helen is in the second month of pregnancy, and a lot of complications has set in. Dr. Zondek has ordered her to bed, from which she may not stir. There is a day nurse in attendance.
Our trip to Switzerland is off, and I may not be able to go to Brussels. I shall make every attempt to do so however, because I am very anxious to talk to you about Tell el-Kheleifeh, and particularly to show you the drawings of our pottery. The photographs have yet to be made. Vincent was in the other day, and dated the pottery from the twelfth to the seventh century B.C. I am particularly interested in hearing what your reaction is to the copy of the Aramaic inscription is. The photograph I sent you is not as clear as I thought it was, who was familiar with the original inscription.
I am more than grateful to you for halting me in my rush to print, and saving me the embarrassment of back-tracking almost immediately after my first article. However, as you know, I am more than willing to confess my mistakes previously made, and correct them in public on the first possible occasion. I have no patience with people like Torezyner and Dussaud, who simply will not admit errors, and stick their heads ever more deeply in the sand of their own dicta, however wrong their conclusions may be.
Now that the pottery is all out of the boxes and baskets, I shall begin to study it with my level- and record-books in hand. The situation is all the more complicated by reason of the fact that the first two levels in the area of the north slope of the mound are very poorly preserved, and were in fact only distinguishable, (aside from the smelter), when we began to get to the top of the mound, where there is a greater, undisturbed, or comparatively undisturbed depth. It is near this point that we had to call a halt to the excavations for the first season.
I have your letters of July 8, 12, and 20, and am keeping closely in mind the suggestions made. A the present, I am inclined to make the following correlations:
Levels Refinery.
- (Edom), Solomon, Jehoshaphat I.
- Edom, independence from Joram, I. A
III. Uzziah II.
- Edom regains Elath in 735 B.C. The
last Edomite city certainly continued down into the seventh, and may have lasted into the sixth century B.C.
I am sending a copy of this letter to Brussels in case you should not receive it before sailing. With best wishes for a pleasant and restful trip and many thanks for all your trouble and help with my first article, and with the dating of the Khleifeh materials, as ever, sincerely yours,
The Johns Hopkins University
Baltimore, Maryland
August 13th, 1938
Dear Nelson:
Your two letters of July 14th and 20th have been received. So Frau Stahel is dead! Poor old thing, she had certainly outlived the time when life could have any joy.
Gliddren (Thayer Fellow) will also be at Brussels, so we can talk things over in detail. I have paid for my tickets in full and so will there unless the new European war actually breaks out before I sail. What times we live in!
Thanks very much for the enlarged photo of the stamp and for the collation of my proposed tracing, etc. The double control by yourself and Winnett was particularly welcome. In this case we must simply leave the decipherment of the last three letters of the graffito in abeyance. Whatever reading we offer must, however, reckon with the probability (greatly enhanced by the enlarged photo of the impression) that our letter-forms belong to the sixth century B.C. (earliest date seventh, latest fifth). For the stamp I suggest the reading lqwṣ’n(m?)l ṭbḥ hmlk, “Belonging to Quas’n(m)l, officer of the king (cf. rab ṭabbāḥîm, śar ṭabbāḥîm in the Bible).” The third letter of the second line is very distinctly ḥet; I do not see how it can possible be dalet. Here is my suggested reading of the text, giving the forms that I think I recognize.
Since lamed, ‘ayin and mêm of the two inscriptions seem to be very similar, in fact, almost identical, it follows that the inscriptions reflect substantially the same phase of Edomite script. Note that qôf, waw, ṭet, and ḥet, in the stamp are very late, reflecting a cursive stage as late as that of the Lachish letters, relatively speaking. The ĥe is very late, approaching the latest lapidary ĥe in post-exilic stamps and Maccabean coins. If my reproduction of the samek is anywhere near right, the samek also has a very late form, though I cannot duplicate it anywhere.
When the epigraphic evidence is taken together with the evidence from Tell Jemmeh for the date of the jar on which the seal is stamped, I don’t think that a date prior to the sixth century is possible. However, here again only detailed study of the material which you have will decide. Meanwhile I shall omit the parts of your paper which seem to me too uncertain as yet, and shall print the rest without change. I shall reproduce photos of the inscriptions with some remarks as to their reading, very cautiously phrased, so as not to propose any date at all for them. As an experiment, I shall have the seal reproduced in still larger scale, so that students can form an opinion. –By the way, Maisler’s suggestion that the Edomite name be read Qôs-‘anā-lî is not only hard to parallel, but it is most unlikely that the final yod would be omitted.
Wright has just written me that Graham has accepted an invitation to head an institution in Canada and will, accordingly, leave the University of Chicago. I wonder who will replace him; Irwin is a very nice chap but rather ignorant and very undisciplined.
Ruth is learning to drive a car and expects to be an accomplished driver when I return from Europe this October.
With best wishes,
Very cordially yours,
W.F. Albright
—
The Johns Hopkins University
Baltimore, Maryland
August 18th, 1938
Dear Nelson:
Your letter of the 7th arrived this morning, just as I was putting the final touches in the revision of your MS on Tell el-Kheleifeh for the next BULLETIN. I have eliminated all but the general biblical synchronisms, so that you will have little or nothing to change when you work the material up. In a postscript I quote in extenso from Vincent’s letter of the 31st, received day before yesterday and giving detail of the striking chronological agreement between the three of you (11th — 7th centuries). I am leaving your general synchronism of the pre-Davidic and Solomonic occupations with strata I-II, but have been careful to avoid positive statements. Stratum III and IV appear as dating from “about the eighth” and “about the seventh” century, respectively. In this way you are safe from drastic later modifications. All three inscriptions will be reproduced: the S.-A. inscription as it is shown in the photo; the seal-impression cut out of the photo and further enlarged (to a total of eight times); a tracing of the six-letter graffito made from the photo but following the identical copies given by you, Winnett, and Vincent (and labeled as such!). The panorama appears as first-page cut. The number should be out about Sept. 20th.
I am very sorry indeed to hear of Helen’s illness and earnestly hope that it does not prove to be serious. Ruth joins me in sending our best wishes. We shall be most disappointed not to see you at Brussels. If war does not break out first, it promises to be a most interesting meeting, with good attendance, especially from Belgium, Holland, Scandinavia, France, and Great Britain.
By the way, all the Tell el-Ful material (practically all potsherds) is in the attic, in labeled baskets, so if Hamilton sends over for it, there will be no difficulty in finding it.
With best wishes,
Very cordially yours,
W.F. Albright
—
I returned Saturday, the 27thm from another TJ trip of exploration in the area south of the Zerqa. With the exception of the immediate es-Salt area, and the Jordan River valley, I have now completed all of the territory of Sihon, which is as far as I shall be able to carry the third part of my Explorations. I have finished about half of the text for this third part. Winnett and I were out for the first four days in this month, and then were compelled to return because of a summons from Helen, who is in her third month of pregnancy, and was about to experience the same accident that terminated her previous pregnancy. A rider sent our by Harding found us after a day and a half, and we to back to Jerusalem as fast as we could. The abortion had fortunately been averted. Helen felt much better about a week after I returned to Jerusalem, so I hied myself off to TJ again, this time alone, because Winnett was about to leave for India to join his family there. The trip was interesting, and the same historical results that have previously been obtained apply to the territory as far as the Zerqa. Particularly is this area rich in EB III sites. I found one, for instance, overlooking the Beq’a from the west, which is 300 metres long, and the outer wall of which can still be traced. I do not remember exactly, but I believe we found about eight BA sites along and immediately south of Zerqa, and it seems to me that there were several MB sherds. If that is true, then the Zerqa may prove to be the boundary line of the gap between EB and EI. Conditions have become so aggravated recently, however, that I shall be compelled to halt my explorations for a while. A particularly brutal murder of some non-Jewish government surveyors on the TJ side of the Jordan occurred while I was not very far away.
Another reason that I shall have to stop for a while, is that upon returning home, I found that Helen had had a relapse. It is so serious, that as much as I hate to do so, I am compelled to cancell the trip to Brussels, which I was going to make primarily to see you and Morgenstern. We had previously given up the idea of going to Switzerland. In addition, the situation here has taken such a turn for the worse, that I feel also it would be better for me to be around in case anything happened. Fisher isn’t here, but even if he were, I could not rely upon him to know how to act if a difficult situation arose.
I forsee the possibility of not being able to do much field work this year. This will not be all to the bad for me, because I have a great deal of research and writing to do in connection with the materials I now have in hand. It will of course seriously affect the schedule of work I had planned out for the next two years. I am very desirous of finishing the survey. If I can’t continue working in northern Transjordan this year, I shall need a fifth year out her in order to complete it. One of the reasons for going to Brussels, was that I wanted to broach the possibility to Morgenstern of one yet additional year’s leave-of-absence, which would make the five that he and I had originally talked about.
Mainly, however, I wanted to go to Brussels to talk Tell el-Kheleifeh with you. With regard to your comparison of the mêm of the Aramaic inscription with that of the inscription from Tell el-Hesi, it seems to me that there is a good deal of difference between them. However, after examining the similar types of jugs and looking up the positions of where they were found, I can agree with your letter f July 8 that the first half of the seventh century would be a satisfactory date for it. With one exception these jugs were found at depths which could belong to Level IV. The exception definitely belongs to Level III. It is smaller jug, and is the one in which we found the cat amulet.
(2). Most of the Quas’anal seal impressions were found on or near the floow of hat is definitely Level III, which I now date from the time of Uzziah to the time the Edomites regained Elath.
(3). The south-Arabic inscription was also found on the floor of what is Level III.
(4). We have thus far found none of the black-burnished juglets of TBM A. but numerous elongated juglets with rounded bottoms that are common in TBM A.
(5). The juglet #445 definitely belongs to the transitional type analogue of the Cypro-Phoenicia ointment juglet of EI I, being between the classes discussed in TBM I, #95 and 116, and which juglet you say in your letter of July 12 “can hardly be earlier than circa 850 B.C. nor later than circa 700 B.C. at the outside”. The fine, but somewhat irregular, almost continuous ring-burnishing of the jug, and its general appearance lead me to believe that it is nearer the earlier than the later f the two limits you suggest. We have a number of this type of juglets, but smaller, which are practically duplicated by fig. 14, p. 85of TBM I. Juglet #445 definitely belongs to Level III, as of the others mentioned either with certainty or probability.
So much for that for the present. I am having the drawings of most of my pottery inked in now, and will have both drawings and pottery photographed as soon as possible, and send you copies. In the meantime, I find more reason as a result of the examination I have made this week of adopting the dating I suggested to you in my last letter. I am quite prepared to assign Level IV to the period extending from about the end of the eighth to the beginning of the sixth century B.C. I shall be most grateful for any additional comments or criticisms.
Winnett left two articles with me, thinking that I would be taking them to Brussels. I had suggested to him that you might care to publish one of them in the Bulletin. He would like Ryckmans to have the other published. On the other hand, I am sure that Winnett would be very glad to have both articles published in the Bulletin. He is a fine fellow. I should like to recommend that he be kept in mind for the future Annual Professor.
Will you please present my apologies to the Secretary of the Congress, and explain to him why I cannot come, and cannot give the illustrated lecture on Kh. Et-Tannur that I had planned to give? I am enclosing two photographs from Kh. et-Tannur. I wonder if you could ask competent authorities for me what the meaning of the symbol above the left shoulder of the Tyche in the Zodiac panel is, and the meaning of the similar symbol above the right shoulder of the defaced Tyche. I wrote to A.B. Cook, who had previously written to me for permission to publish our Hadad figure in his new volume, (which permission I gave him), but he has never answered me. If Charles Picard is at the Congress, he would be a good person to ask. Seyrig does not seem to know what the symbol is, nor any one around here.
Wishing you a pleasant stay abroad,
as ever, sincerely yours,
Nelson
—
Your letter of Aug. 13 has just arrived, and increases my disappointment are not being able to see you in Brussels.
I am sorry that you are going to publish the qws’nl seals and I believe you would have accepted my ‘bd instead of your suggested tbh. The phot. I sent you was the best generally, but the last line has some obscurities, as has art of the first line. From the ten or more seals I have, one can make out individual letters, which are clearer than some of the letters of the seal, the phot. of which I sent you. There is no question but that the first letter of the second line is an ‘ayin and not a tet. The dalet is inall cases somewhat blurred, but in a number of examples, is much clearer than the dalet in the phot. you now have.
If it is still possible to hold back the publication of this seal, I would urge you to do so, till I can provide copies of all of this type, together with photographs, and description of the room and level in which they were found. I am, for instance, at the moment, looking at an impression, in which the ‘ayin at the beginning of the second line, is fully as clear as the ‘ayin near the end of the first line. I see that I have made a mistake in sending you the one photograph, because while I had in mind the other individual letters on similar seals, you could see only the one in front of you.
I think it quite all right to publish the Aramaic graffito, particularly if you could incorporate the remarks with regard to where it was found, which I made in my letter of August 29.
I have not given the phot. of the qws’nl seal for publication to any other journal. I forget whether or not I sent the Aramaic graffito phot. to Asia, but I have not sent it elsewhere.
In as much as for some reason or other, airmail service has been cancelled until further notice, I think I shall wire you and suggest that you withhold the qws’nl seal from publication till the Dec. Bulletin, if it is not too late to do so.
Du Vaux’s article on the exploration of the es-Salt region, in the RB which has also just come in with the mail, has shown me that I cannot rely on his survey for the area he had examined, as I have been temped to do, and carry on elsewhere. During the last trip, I touched the northeastern section of the area he examined. He completely missed four EB III sites around Remeimin, and a considerable number of other important EB and EI sites around ed-Selihi, er-Rumman, and Umm ed-Dananir. He was in too much of a hurry. Otherwise, however, I am gratified by the results he achieved, and pleased that some one else has achieved results which tally completely with my own.
With best wishes,
sincerely yours,
NG
P.S. Helen’s condition remains about the same. For some reason, all the Arabs have suddenly abandoned the tarbush for the kaffiya and agal. If they don’t, the shabab shoot at them. One luckless Armenian refused to comply with the order yesterday, and got two bullets in his body as a reminder.
—
Since receiving your letter of Aug. 13, yesterday afternoon, I have again compared all the qws’nl impressions, and am enclosing a new collation of them, with the exception of the phot. of no. 463 which I am putting on the back of the sheet, marking in red ink, what are actually only blurs, and which have left you to adopt the readings of two letters different from those I have suggested. On the handle with two impressions, no. 463, the phot. of which I sent you, several of the letters are blurred, particularly the first and last of the first word in the second line, which I read ‘bd, and you tbh. In as much as you are attaching importance for the dating of this seal impression to these particular letters, I am hastening to give you copies of the letters on other handles, which are clearer. You will notice, that the first time the person using the seal made an impression on handle no. 463, he spoiled it, and tried it a second time on the same handle. (this is not so clear in the phot. you have, but in another phot. I shall have both impressions photographed, and not focus merely on the better one). In the second attempt, the handler of the seal was more successful, and pressing quite hard, produced what is generally the deepest and clearest impression of all those he made. (Almost all of these seal impressions were found at the bottom of one room of level III, stamped on the handles of the same type of jug, although some were found elsewhere in the same level on different types of vessels). However, in pressing hard, he created several lines, partly also because of the fact that the sea may have been dirty, which do not belong to the letters, and which have misled you, who are not familiar with the rest of the seal impressions. Having the other seal-impressions in front of me, I naturally, as also Winnett and Harding who have collated them separately, have been able to discount the blurs. I admit, that looking at the phot. I sent you, the third letter of the first word on the second line looks like a het, and that the first letter looks something like a tet. Having just gone over the other seal-impressions, I can assure you that the first letter in all the rest of the impressions, that is clear is an indubitable ‘ayin, and that the third letter can certainly not be a het, but is a dalet. I am also enclosing a very rough and rapid collation that Harding made the other day, which I shall ask you to return to me. He made a careful collation of the Aramaic graffito, which I had intended asking you to publish in the Dec. Bulletin.
In fact, for the Dec. Bulletin, in addition to sending in a rewritten part of the historical treatment of Tell el-Kheleifeh, I should like to submit a careful collation of all the seal impressions, together with several additional photographs, in which, I believe, the debatable letters will show up more clearly that in the photograph I sent you. That is why I should like you if possible to hold back the publication of the qws’nl impression, and also the Aramaic graffito. I should prefer to have you base whatever remarks you make then based on all the material, rather than on photographs, which I see in both instances have misled you, and will therefore certainly mislead others. That would be a pity.
I have tried hard to read a mem for the nun of ‘nl but there is no possibility of doing so. What you have suggested as a light line of a third stroke which might make a nun into a mem is again only a blur. The other impressions show the nun too clearly for any doubt on that score.
I am enclosing drawings of the large jug-type with the qws’nl seal impressions, also the drawing of a cup with a loop handle, of a type of which there were about ten or more in the same room near the bottom of the floor of level III. On the handle of each of these cups was a potter’s mark. Every vessel in this room, then, with a few exceptions, had either a seal-impression or a potter’s mark. It was some kind of vessels were found in level III, without potter’s marks or seal impressions. On the back of the drawing you will find the copy of the potter’s mark.
When would you be inclined to date no. 530? It was found in a disturbed room at a 1.50m. below the surface, near the bottom of Level III. In this room, however, on the top is level IV, and beneath level III are clear traces of levels II and I. By the way, the qws’nl stamped handles were found about two metres below the surface at the bottom of level III.
The Cypro-Phoenician type of juglets which can be dated to +- 800 B.C. also belong to level III.
Sincerely yours,
NG
The he, as you will see from Harding’s and my collations, has a far less or non-lapidary appearance of the type in post-exilic stamps and Macc. coins than seems apparent in the phot. I sent you.
—
The Johns Hopkins University
Baltimore, Maryland
London, Sept. 13th, 1938
Dear Nelson,
Your letter of the 29th and 31st of August and of Sept. 1st have been duly received, as was also the carbon copy of your letter of the 7th, the original of which has reached us in Baltimore.
Everyone was sorry to miss you at Brussels, Miss Caton Thompson was particularly anxious to see you. Morgenstern was there for most of the Congress, and Glidden appeared for the last two days with his wife. I gave Winnetts paper to Ryckmans after reading it; the Minoeon paper I have with me. I shall see whether it can be made suitable for the Bulletin; it is a little thing for JAOS, bit with a little rearrangement can perhaps fit the Bulletin.
I am very sorry to hear of Helen’s continued illness, and earnestly hope that she has recovered since your letters of a fortnight ago.
It is hardly likely that the publication in the October Bulletin, which went to press Aug. 22nd, and must have been in 2nd page proof when I received your letter Sept. 9th, will be embarrassing. I was very careful about the text of your article, which can hardly contain anything which you will have to recall, it is I, and you, who will have to recall certain comments, especially on the Qws’nl inscription. It is a very unusual case, where I would not have ventured out on the ice but for the seeming agreement of the enlarged photo with your hand copy, which also offered a clear ḥet here. After the comparative tables by you and Harding (which I return herewith) your reading runs certain. However, I don’t think that a date before the 7th century is well possible, on account of ‘ayin (open at the top) and mêm, to say nothing of hê and kaf. The form of the jug on which one impression was formed, can read well with a seventh-century date. I suggest that the juglets of late type belong to the same time (you say that there are a number which are practically [?] by fig. 14, p. 85 of TBMI), since most of the TBM specimen belong to +- 600 B.C., and that #445 belongs to an early phase of stratum III (8th century). These juglets are evidently very important for dating purposes No. 530 escapes us entirely; I have an idea about it. — At present, then, a date in the 8th – 7th century for III and the 7th – 6th cent. for IV looks reasonable. But don’t try to put the Qws’nl seal back into the 8th century, since is simply won’t work!
I suggest for the December Bulletin the article on the history and typography of Kheleifeh which you have promised, and a good hand-copy of the Qws’nl inscription, as well as of the graffito, to replace the tentative one which appears in the issue. Burrows will preserve a paper on the discoveries at the Thanksgiving meeting of the Philosophical Society, in which everything available up to then will be utilized. I shall sound out Contolin et al. before the vav application is made, so that we shan’t make a mistake there.
I am completely at a loss as to the symbol above the shuttle of the goddess. If Seyrig can’t determine what it is, who is there who can? If I run across someone who really knows around here I shall ask him. There was no one at the Brussels Congress.
The Congress, by the way, was a whole of a success from my point of view, in spite of the fact that I spent the first day and a half in bed with bronchitis there were some 500 persons present. The Mari discoveries and the new [?] were enough to fill me with enthusiasm. The Ras Shawme debate fill rather than as a debate as a {} of the absence of Dussaud and Virolleaud. The English text of my paper, with little change, appears in the October Bulletin, so you can see for yourself that the Negebite theory is philologically dead though it will wriggle and even jump about for a few year more. De Vaux’s paper was very well received; he is a charming man as well as a hillean scholar. I also saw a good deed of Manger and of [?]
I shall be back in Baltimore by Oct. 2nd. News from Ruth is good. She is taking her motoring very seriously and is making steady progress under different teachers. — All is worried (to a woman PH.D. who was employed in the office of [?]), lucky woman!
June 13th, 1939
Dear Nelson,
Your letter of May 25th has just been received. Congratulations on the success of your second campaign! I await receipt of your more detailed report for the BULLETIN, as well as of the promised photos and hand-copies of the Aramaic ostraca, with eagerness. I wonder whether you will not have to reduce the dates of the second, third, and fourth settlements. Cannot the fourth settlement belong to the sixth-fifth century, the ninth-eighth (where you actually date it!)? In this case if I understand the stratification aright, the South-Arabian and Edomite inscriptions will presumably belong to the end of III, early in the sixth century B.C., and IV will have been Persian, from the late sixth to the late fifth century B.C. Since IV is so poorly preserved, this will not affect the fact that the bulk of the pottery from the latest stratum preserved over the whole area (III) belongs to the seventh or early sixth century B.C.
Glidden was granted an additional $500 by the Committee on Personnel of the ACLS, which met at the end of May. The ACLS (executive committee) voted to grant the money for the purchase of speech-recording apparatus, which is to be stored at the School in Jerusalem and to be used next year by Harris.
Your reference in a postscript to a cable indicating that you have decided not to ask for an extension in your leave of absence for a fifth year is interesting, though I had not known anything about the cable in question. I am afraid that the APhs will hardly be willing to make a third grant but if you return to America you can undoubtedly raise the money yourself and get a half-year’s leave of absence in a couple of years for that much-to-be-desired third campaign. Ezion-geber is sensational and exciting enough to demand and to receive further attention!
Last I heard, you were down for at least forty lectures, including three in Baltimore (Oct. 31 — Nov. 2). We want also to arrange to have you present a paper on your results at the autumn meeting of the Philosophical Society in Philadelphia. I hope we don’t overwork you!
Ruth is away on her first long-distance auto trip (to Columbus and Cleveland). She seems to have done very nicely so far. Kelso is spending a fortnight here with me. He is now planning some detailed technological research in T.B.M. and Bethel antiquities with the aid of friends and acquaintances in Pittsburgh. He has already obtained very valuable initial results and I am encouraging him for all I am worth, since he can do excellent work along this line, where he lacks the philological and comparative archaeological training for specialized work in other fields.
I am delighted (and relieved) to learn that Fisher feels good about things, since I was a little apprehensive. He is definitely unpredictable! I think that we ought to give him some such a title as “archaeological adviser,” though without specific duties, after he goes into retirement, so far as the Schools are concerned. You might sound him out on this question.
With my best wishes to Helen, I am,
Very cordially yours,
W.F. Albright
—
July 6th 1939
Dr. William F. Albright
The Johns Hopkins University
Baltimore, Md.
Dear William:
I am sending you a first preliminary report on the second season of excavations at Tell el-Kheleifeh for the Bulletin, and as soon as possible I shall send you a second article. I shall deal with the pottery and the inscriptions in the second article, as well as attempt to reconstruct the history of the sire. I still am unable to send you photographs of the ostraca which have been out of my hands for three weeks, with the result also that I have not been able to work on them. The Museum has agreed to photograph them for me, using a number of different filters, but thus far the photography has not been completed. I guess my stuff has to wait its turn, and there is no one else in Palestine who can photograph the ostraca as well as Schweig at the Museum, or who has the necessary equipment available. I saw him the other day, however, and he promised to push them through for me as rapidly as possible. With the present article I am sending you for the following paragraphs: Nos. 76, 80, 84, 90, 123, 158, 165, 166, 167, 169, 207, 213, 215, 219, 469, and one looking north at main gateway. I believe I have already sent you some, and there may be some duplications. Those that you do not want to use, or do not want to keep you might return to me.
My architect, Pinkerfeld, left for Italy shortly after returning from Aqabah, and practically nothing has been done with regard to working out our plans in the various levels. Until that is done, I hesitate to speak about the dating of the various settlements at Tell el-Kheleifeh. I am inclined at the present, however, to the following tentative datings, which will depend largely upon the analysis of the pottery after I have examined it with relation to the level book. There were several rooms which had considerable depth of deposit, and in which I went down very carefully gathering sherds from approximately every twenty centimetres down. Unfortunately, I find that in these rooms the pottery is considerably disturbed. Yesterday, or instance, while unpacking some of the pottery, I found the top of an elongated jug which had been found at approximately one metre below the surface, fitted on t the bottom fragments of the jug, which were found almost two metres below the surface. As a working hypothesis, however, and because of what I am sure now to be the upper and lower limits of occupation, namely between the 10th and 5th centuries B.C., I am thinking of these datings:
- Solomon tenth-ninth centuries B.C.
Ia. Jehospaphat
- Uzziah eighth century B.C.
III. Edomites after 735 B.C. eighth-sixth centuries B.C.
- sixth-fifth centuries B.C.
I shall be interested in receiving your reaction to my dating of Ezion-geber I to the tenth century B.C. on the basis of the main gateway.
Campbell wrote to me from Antioch, asking urgently for some on to give him someassistance. I sent him the Gliddens, with whom he is pleased. Now he is writing me urgently, asking me for an architect. His architect seems compelled to leave by the advent of the Turks. I not that the ACLS voted to grant the money for the purpose of a speech-recording apparatus, which is to be stored at the School in Jerusalem, and used next year by Harris. Does that mean Zellig Harris? I should like to point out the Hebrew University already possesses a very elaborate speech-recording apparatus used by the recently deceased Dr. Lachmann. It seems to me that Harris might negotiate with the Hebrew University for permission to use their apparatus, perhaps paying a rental, and devote the funds at his disposal for other purposes during his stay in this part of the world.
In my cable to you announcing that we had arrived at Aqabah and that Iliffe was improving, I believe I also said: “Disregard last letter”, meaning the letter to you in which I spoke of my desire for the extension of me leave of absence for a fifth year. That is the cable I referred to in a postscript to one of my recent letters to you, which you mentioned in your last letter to me. The decision which I communicated to Dr. Morgenstern not to ask for a further leave of absence weighs heavily on me. I do not see how I can complete what I have in my hand by the end of next year, particularly in view of the fact that the lecture-tour is going to take up so much more time than I expected. I had expected to be away altogether, including going and coming, for a period of two months. It seems now that I shall have to be away about three or three and a half months. Another difficulty has arisen recently which makes me wish that somehow or other I could stay on for a fifth year. Sporadic troubles are being incited in Transjordan, which makes it impossible for me during certain periods to visit certain areas. In fact, although it has not been mentioned in the papers, troubles have again broken out in northern Transjordan, and I have just received a communication from Harding, requesting me at the instance of Kirkbride to postpone my explorations of northern Transjordan for the present. It is a shame to have to delay or stop that work now, when I ma so near the goal of completing the survey of Transjordan.
It is because of the spreading dire in Transjordan that I was hoping that you and Burrows might be willing to make a third application for me to the American Philosophical Society to continue and finish the Tell el-Kheleifeh excavations next spring. I was not sure that I would be able to work this spring, and as you know, the government held me up for a time. If world and local conditions possible permit it, the excavations ought to be completed next spring. It hardly seems possible that I there is no major war before then, conditions will be sufficiently peaceful after that to undertake any work at Aqabah for many years to come. One can also not tell how long it will be before not only northern Transjordan, but all of Transjordan becomes as generally impossible to archaeological work as Palestine has become. It is simply a matter of how much money outside interests are prepared to pour into Transjordan to stir up trouble. This year’s campaign has done much to settle some of the problems with regard to the history of Tell el-Kheleifeh, but the answer is as yet by no means completely satisfactory. We may find nothing of additional importance in the third campaign, but I hardly believe that, because we have reached what should be the most important part of the mound, immediately behind the gateway. If you do not think the American Philosophical Society will be at all willing to make a third grant, perhaps the American Council of Learned Societies might be willing to make a grant. In any event, I shall be seeing you in Baltimore, as I am delighted to learn from your letter and we shall have an opportunity to talk the matter over in detail. I shall be delighted to present a paper at the autumn meeting of the Philosophical Society in Philadelphia.
Helen and the baby left on July 3rd on the American Export, and will disembark at Boston. I put them on the boat, and got out of Haifa just in time before the bomb exploded and curfew was slapped on town. I probably could have got out anyway, because I go around armed with all kinds of travel and curfew passes. The White Paper has certainly brought no peace to this country. Conditions, if anything, are worse than they have ever been, and the situation is being further complicated by the appearance on the scene of irresponsible Jewish territories.
Fisher has taken Miss Carey’s house at Ain Karim for the summer, instead of going to Cyprus as he originally planned. When the occasion presents itself, I shall sound him out, as you suggest, with regard to giving him some such title as “Archaeological Adviser” after his retirement.
With best wishes to you and Ruth,
I am, as ever,
Sincerely yours
NG
—
THE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY
BALTIMORE, MARYLAND
The Johns Hopkins University
Baltimore, Maryland
July 9th, 1939
Dear Nelson,
Your letter of June 14th was duly received and interested me greatly. As soon as I saw the photo of the gateway I thought of the Solomonic gate of Megiddo and the corresponding gate at Carchemish, but I could not be sure that the photo was adequate. I agree entirely that the comparative architectural evidence is decisive. The gate might possible be a little later than Solomon but it cannot be earlier. At all events, it raises the Solomonic hypothesis from the level of probable working hypothesis to practical certainty.
I made all the desired changed in text of your monograph, on which Furst has already begun work. It is now in his hands again. Burrows has doubtless informed you that it will appear as a double volume, thus taking care of its unusual length without straining our budget, and at the same time bringing it up to fate, since we had fallen a year behind. The proof will all be ready for you when you return to America the end of September (as I learn from Engberg). –Wait a moment, he only wrote that you were leaving early in September and I see that you were hoping o get to Algiers, for early October. Don’t cut corners so that you will have no chance to rest before lectures start!
The hand-copies of the ostraca interest me greatly. No. 2701 seems clear in the first three lines. As you say, Salman and Lḥyân, rather a common personal name as well as a tribal one). I don’t like the penultimate letter in line 4, however, since it is not at all like other cases of beth in this inscription or at this period. No. 2069 is puzzling. Qrplws is not enlightening and I don’t like the waw. The place-name Tpy’n (possibly Ṭapî ‘āh but hardly Ṭapyân at so early a period) looks very Egyptian, but I have not tried to run it down. If I locate it shall let you know. May I try Reich on it? Anyway, the fifth century date is certain.
Very sincerely yours,
W.F. Albright
—
The Johns Hopkins University
Baltimore, Maryland
July 28th, 1939
Dear Nelson,
Your letters and articles of July 6th and 11th have both been received. My heartiest congratulations on the discoveries at Jerash, which are rather unexpected, since we had all assumed that the site had been combed by the excavators in all directions! I suggest that this article can wait until the December number of the BULLETIN, since we want both the article which I have received and the next one on Ezion-geber for the October BULLETIN.
The first proofs of the Annual are probably in Engberg’s hands, and I suppose he will send you the second proof in Palestine, so you can read it on your way!
Don’t you think that the rich materials, including South-Arabian and “Aramaic” inscriptions (not ostraca), from stratum III must belong to the period immediately before the last destruction of this level? Nearly always we find the richest materials from a destroyed stratum in the latest occupation level of the stratum in question. This dating would be splendid from the epigraphic point of view. As you know, I have been most reluctant to date the seal impression, graffito, and the South-Arabic characters before 600 B.C., though I was willing to compromise at a pinch on the late seventh century. If we could date all this material in the early sixth century (not after 550 B.C.) it would be fine. As you know from the recent bulletin ARTICLE by Winnett, the latter has proved that the oldest Minaean inscription from Dedan and the vicinity are younger than the oldest inscriptions of local origin — which seem to belong to the 7th-4th century. Of course, I don’t mean that these imported vases must come down as late as the Minaean colony there, but simply that they can hardly be dated too early and a date in the 6th century would be most suitable.
If you received my latest letter you know how strongly I favor your Solomonic date for stratum I. After the gateway I feel that the date is practically certain. A destruction by Shishak is well within the bounds of probability, since Noth and I have just independently pointed out that a large section of names in the Shishak list must be Edomite. I enclose my review of Simons in the Archic fűr Orientforschung ngb in the list with nqb, “mine.” Noth’s discussion appeared in ZDPV 61, 29 7 ff.
Your suggestion about Harris is excellent, though it may be too late. I shall write immediately, calling attention to this fact.
I am afraid that it will not be possible to get a third subvention from the Philosophical Society for Ezion-geber, since the second application was made and granted with the express understanding that this will be the last. I know that the site is important and that the money has been well spent and the results first-class, but rules are rules. The ACLS has no money for grants any more — alas! I really think that it will be wisest for you to finish up your work recording and preparing for the publication of Tannur and Kheleifeh (which will take all your spare time next year) next year and come home until things quite down in the Near East. You have plenty of material for a preliminary publication and you can raise money yourself for a substantial third campaign (say three months), in which you can complete or practically finish the site. With the mass of pottery you now have you can certainly date individual levels rather closely, even if most of the material is local. One never really finishes anything in archaeology.
Père Vincent’s remarks in his review of Annual XVII are rather misleading, though I shall not make any effort to reply anywhere, since we are such old friends and we cannot agree on everything. His insinuation that I have changed my mind about the distinctions in M.B. pottery at Tell Beit Mirsim is not at all true. In the publication of the pottery I throw I and H, G and F together so far as types of pottery are concerned, and only differentiate between pottery from these strata, as well as from E and D, when there is actual stratigraphic basis. Wright is not a closet pottery man, since he spent a season at Bethel, did a good deal of work on pottery thereafter at the School in Jerusalem, and has worked since nearly a year on Grant’s material from Beth-shemesh, which is very extensive. Of course, as you know, Wright’s conclusions are my own almost throughout, too, since we discussed matters at every stage of his progress. He did a grand job on the classification of E.B. pottery, though there is plenty still to be done.
Very cordially yours,
William
—
August 6th 1939
Dr. William F. Albright
The Johns Hopkins University
Baltimore, Md.
Dear William,
Thank you very much for making the desired changes in my manuscript. I was delighted to hear that it will appear as a double volume, and I shall be glad to see the proof when I come home. In as much as I understand Burrows has handed over to you the complete manuscript which I sent him, you have probably seen the dedication page which I meant for you to see only after the volume was published. I am taking, as you will have seen, the liberty of dedicating the book to you and to Morgenstern. I trust that you will accept the dedication in the spirit in which it is meant and afford me the pleasure of expressing in a small way my gratitude to you for your instruction and help and friendship.
I am enclosing photographic copies of the ostraca, and as soon as possible will send you photographs of my handcopies of them. No. 2070 is very difficult indeed. I cannot think what the inverted sort of open 8 which occurs in every line except one on the obverse side, and several times on the reverse side, means. The script is considerably different from the script of 2069 and 2071.
I am also sending you copies of the Director’s Annual Report and the Library List. The Hostel is in very good condition, and I note from the July accounts, which are on my desk at the moment, that we have some L.P. 718.00 surplus, despite all the improvements that I have made during the last couple of years. We shall lose considerably during the next couple of months, because at the moment there are only three people staying at the School.
I was in Transjordan on Wednesday, and had lunch with Kirkbride who has now givenme permission to work in the Jerash area, but will not let me work in the Ajlun proper. I am going over again early Monday morning, and will spend about a week in the Jerash area. I have decided not to go to Algiers, and will take the Explort boat leaving either September 11th or September 25th. I have gotten a little tired lately, and so for that reason have decided to take your advice not to cut corners before starting on my lecture-trip.
Sincerely yours
NG
—
August 20th 1939
Dr. William F. Albright
The Johns Hopkins University
Baltimore, Md.
Dear William,
I was glad to hear that the first proofs are already in Engberg’s hands, and that he will be sending me the second proofs to read on my way home. If I can get a cabin, I am going to take the Excalibur, sailing September 11th, and getting to New York on October 4th. That will give me the chance to get a good rest on board boat, and tossee something of my family in Cincinnati, and enables me perhaps to get away for a week somewhere with Helena lone before commencing the lecture-tour. At the moment, I am a bit tired, and somewhat stale.
I finally succeeded in getting permission from Kirkbride to return to Transjordan, but he limited me to the Jerash area, and I made a number of interesting discoveries which I shall not detail here, except to say that for a considerable distance north of Jerash the gap in the Bronze Age period continues.
I am deeply impressed with what you have written in the past and in your letter of July 28th with regard to the dating of the Qosanal seals, the “Aramaic” inscription and the Minaean inscription. I have no particular hobby-horse to ride with regard to the dating of those inscriptions, and on the whole would be most willing to date them to +- 600 B.C., if the contexts in which they were found at all permitted it. There is, however, no question that these epigraphic materials do not come “from the period immediately before the last destruction of this level”. They seem to come rathre from the very beginning of Stratum III, from which Stratum most of our pottery finds originate. I simply cannot see any possibility at the present time of assigning all of this pottery to the latest phase of Iron II. Some of the Qosanal jars were found for instance more or less intact and in situ on the floor of the first phase of Stratum III. There is on the whole thus far comparatively little clear cut stratigraphic pottery finds, as I pointed out in my letter to you of July 6th. I shall know much more clearly where I stand when the architect has worked out the various levels. I hope to bring the worked out charts and plans with me when I come to Baltimore, and I shall also bring drawings and photographs of pottery with me. I am very anxious to hear what you will have to say about them.
In the meanwhile, I think I shall wait with the second article which I have promised on Tell el-Kheleifeh until I have had an opportunity of studying my materials more closely. In as much as I said in the article that I sent you that I would discuss the history of the settlements at Tell el-Kheleifeh in a second article, I am going to ask you to omit the references to the datings of Stratum III and the Minaean inscription to the 8th century, which appear in the first article I am also going to ask you t add for me a paragraph with regard to Shishak’s invasion. These changes will be noted on the separate enclosed pages.
I am pleased that you agree so strongly with my dating of Ezion-geber I to the Solomic period. I was extremely interested in your note in the Archiv für Orientforschung, and in Noth’s article in the ZPDV. I think it most probably now that Shishak destroyed Ezion-Geber I.
I am enclosing copies of my hand copies of the ostraca and also a photograph of Room 27 which shows a number of the Qosanal jars in situ at the bottom of the floor which beging with Stratum III.
I shall probably her when I get to America whether or not the lecture before the A.P.S. which you spoke about in one of your recent letters, has been scheduled.
I am still hoping that somehow or other I can get the funds to complete Tell el-Kheleifeh next spring. It is hard to believe that is war doesn’t break out soon, it can be staved off more than a year or two at the very most. It is for that reason that I should like to finish the work there. Of course, I guess with it is bound up my love for my work over here and my deep regret that I shall ever have to leave it.
I quite agree that Père Vincent’s review of Annual XVII is somewhat off the mark. Even of Wright were a closest pottery man, which he isn’t, it would not form in itself a valid criticism. I shall be interested when I get home in hearing what you have to say about my datings of the Transjordan sherds in the volume now in press,
Looking forward to seeing you,
Sincerely yours, NG
—
The Johns Hopkins University
Baltimore, Maryland
Nov. 6th, 1939
Dear Nelson,
Enclosed is your check for $100.00 in payment of your Hopkins honorarium. A little additional l-[?] unexpectedly came in since Friday, and I shall try to arrange for another check, since I don’t want to return the money!
Your lectures here were most successful, in spite of the mistake in making arrangements Thursday evening. We can safely say that your visit was a great success. I hope that the contacts and acquaintances which you made will prove of direct value for your future excavations. When you need something for Kheleifeh or for another site you can write me and I will do my best, with the aid of your old and new friends in Baltimore.
With best wishes from Ruth and to Helen, I am
Very cordially yours,
W.F. Albright
—
THE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY
BALTIMORE, MARYLAND
October 14th, 1939
Dear Nelson,
I have just heard from Engberg that you had returned safely. My heartiest congratulations. You have a lecture programme which will d-[?] the boldest spirits.
Do return the MS as soon as possible to me, so that we can print this number. It will probably be safest not to base any argument at all on Megiddo. I do not believe that the Megiddo Gate really belongs to Stratum III, but suspect that it is older, though possibly not as old as Solomon.
I was a fool this summer and submitted to an operation on my left hand (Sept 1st) hoping to secure some use of it. The operation was partly successful in reaching its objective, but I am practically hors de combat and will hardly regain use of my hand for many months. Meanwhile I am forced to cut down my work to less than half (which is already a great advance, since I could hardly work at all two weeks ago). I should have found some other time for such a rash experiment. However, what is done is done, and there is no use lamenting a fait accompli.
Now, our house is yours for your stay in Baltimore, but I suggest that it would be more advisable for you to accept a local invitation if it comes, since you can make contacts which may be very valuable later. Feel absolutely free to stay where you please and go where you please, knowing that you can always come to us.
The photos of the ostraca, supplemented by photos of the [?] copies, are very interesting, I have shown them to Montgomery and was hoping that Torrey can find time to examine them. Also H.L. Ginsberg (unless you have a new objection). I will show you my suggestions when you are here. The [ם ג ל פ ר ק] one I date about 300 B.C. or a little later; the others seem to me to belong to the period about 500 B.C., but are not later than cir. 450 at the latest. I suggest [ן י ל ע פ] for [ן י ל ע ב] and explain [ם ג ל פ ר ק] as [καρπολοjοs], “collector (appraiser) of taxes on harvests (esp. grapes),” [ן א י פ ט] connect with the [Ταρíωγ νησοι] of Greece. These suggestions should be checked and improved on (if possible) before you mention them, however.
Very cordially yours,
W.F. Albright
P.S. The Jerash paper will also appear in this Bulletin.
—
Baltimore, Dec. 7th, 1939
Dear Nelson,
Your postal of Nov 5th was duly received. Engberg had noticed and corrected the entries in your index under Qasr es Rujm. Yesterday I made another version of the index (which Engberg had already checked in detail) and corrected a number of orthographic details such as Ard for Avd, [?] for [?]. At Speiser’s suggestion the cover and title have been revamped, so as to feature the title of your book on the outside as well as the inside. – I wrote Burrows a very strong letter urging him to cancel your N.Y. trip. Too much is too much. Next year you can be there in force!
Very cordially yours,
W.F. Albright
— 1940s —
1940
THE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY
BALTIMORE, MARYLAND
May 17th, 1940
Dear Nelson,
Your letters of March 3rd and 19th arrived in late April and were most welcome. I have been exceedingly busy this spring, so I have not been able to attend to my correspondence properly (though it has not been excessive, since I am not in touch with any friends or activities in most of Europe, for obvious reasons). It was very painful to get something from Dossin at Liege just after the German rape of Belgium. The war news is inexpressibly horrible, and the end of our age seems to be at hand. What the new world of tomorrow will be like one cannot — happily — know, since it may be a world in which freedom and decency are no longer known in huge area. Our liberals and radicals thought that they could do away with the age-old sanctions and ethics of religiously conditioned civilization and build “a brave new world” on their ruins. They have mocked at God, but the theodicy which we are witnessing remind us that God still exists.
By the time you receive this letter — if you ever do — the Mediterranean will probably be plunged into the war and you and the other members of the School will have to return by the Pacific Ocean. It is very fortunate for you that you r term comes to a close now! La takrahushai’ — la’allahukheir. I have not replied to Glidden’s letter of Feb. 5th, received in late March, but he must be on his way home now.
I find time to wonder, in spite of the war news, at your subsequent work at ‘Aqabah, after the first two weeks. It will be almost too good to be true if, after successfully completing your second campaign, you succeed in getting all your material into shape for recording and bring the records home with you. The article of the ostraca will be most welcome for the October Bulletin, along with your report on this campaign. With the new ostraca you already have substantial material, though its interpretation is very difficult. Torrey sent me his notes, which are pretty bad, though somewhat better than his first statement to you. Neither Montgomery nor Ginsberg could do anything more with them. Both accepted my proposals, but I still regard my Greek words as demanding more evidence. I hope to lay them before Youtie this summer. I have had a good deal of correspondence with Torrey this spring about various other unpublished seals and graffiti; his ideas are so often extraordinary and impossible that I am reluctantly coming to realize that he is no epigrapher at all, though he undoubtedly knows his languages. Even as a philologist, however, he is handicapped by his ignorance of the ancient Oriental languages and of linguistic method.
Very cordially yours,
W. F. Albright
—
THE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY
BALTIMORE, MARYLAND
September 21st, 1940
Dear Nelson,
The enclosed blank may suggest that you present a paper on Tell el-Kheleifeh at the autumn meeting of the American Philosophical Society. I hope you can do it. The Society pays your hotel expenses while you are in Philadelphia.
Yesterday I sent you the galley proof of your article on Tell el-Kheleifeh in the current BULLETIN. I hope you get it promptly. It is great stuff. — In review of Loud and Shipton’s MEGIDDO in an early issue of AJA I come out against Loud’s chronology of the City Gate, which seems to me increasingly improbable.
Many thanks for the complimentary copy of your new book, for which I am writing a short blurb in this number of the BULLETIN. The number contains several exceptionally important articles, by the way, and is perhaps the most important number which we have ever brought out.
Yours,
W. F. Albright
—
THE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY
BALTIMORE, MARYLAND
October 23rd, 1940
Dear Nelson,
Your letter of the 20th has just been received. Ruth and I want you to stay with us while you are in Baltimore, so let us know a few days ahead when you are coming and by what train.
I had completely forgotten (or possibly had not heard) about the meeting of the ASOR on Saturday, the 28th of December. If it is sufficiently late I can probably come, otherwise it may not be feasible, since I had made definite plans to be here during the entire meeting of the AIA (the first I have been able to attend for a number of years). Since you will be there and there is little pressing business to attend to, my absence won’t matter this year anyway.
I am much relieved to hear that you have not been teaching during the past month. I feared that you were busy teaching during the weeks when you should have been resting.
The current Bulletin was distributed several days ago and you have probably received your copies by the time this letter reaches you. It is an unusually important number.
Mrs. Dinsmoor was here Monday and reported that the Orientalists are represented again in force at the December meeting of the AIA. This is very gratifying. We expect an exceptionally interesting meeting, in spite of the world situation — or perhaps because of it.
Very cordially yours,
W. F. Albright
—
THE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY
BALTIMORE, MARYLAND
Nov. 9th, 1940
Dear Nelson,
Your letter of Oct. 29th was duly received. We have plenty of room for both Helen and you at our home and we also have room for your car, if you drive, in our big garage. However, I won’t deny that we are located about six miles from the headquarters of the AIA meetings, and we shall not be in the least offended if it seem more convenient for the two of you to take a room in the Lord Baltimore or a neighboring hotel. Nor can it be denied that we have four boys, though they are all parked upstairs while our guest-room is downstairs.
Do you think that you can get the article on the ostraca to me before the end of the month — or would you prefer to have it appear in the February Bulletin? Either alternative is quite satisfactory to me.
I sent you my latest book, From the Stone Age to Christianity, yesterday. This book deals with highly controversial subjects and will find very few readers who accept any considerable part of my views — unless they lack independence or happen to belong to my budding “school.” I hope it will be useful and will stimulate discussion. Ruth and I are paying for it and we have set the price low in order to encourage the widest practicable diffusion. Over a hundred copies have been sold in the first ten days — which is very good for a book of its kind, sold through the university press.
Very cordially yours,
W. F. Albright
—
THE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY
BALTIMORE, MARYLAND
December 21st, 1940
Dear Nelson,
Your letter of the 14th, with the corrected gallery proof of your article, was duly received. The number will be printed Monday, if nothing happens, and I expect to have copies for distribution at the meeting of SBL in New York.
Ostracon 2070 is very strange. I cannot believe that you have the right position of No. 2070, in spite of Torrey’s agreement, since the forms of letters become too strange for words. However, I cheerfully admit that I cannot explain the text if the ostracon is held my way. Line two would read š’lklk-, presumably containing š’l, “to ask.” May I urge you to show the material to Rosenthal and see whether he can make any suggestions. He is a very brilliant young scholar, in H.L. Ginsberg’s class. Ginsberg himself could not make any additional suggestions when he had the material last spring.
Send us a telegram stating the hour of your coming on the 27th. If Ruth cannot come I shall be at the Mount Royal Station to meet you. If this is not practicable we shall be ready for you when you turn up. Our home, 2305 Sulgrace Avenue, Mount Washington, is quite a way out, near the home of the Thalmeimers, so you may not want to come out before attending the meetings in the Lord Baltimore Hotel.
We shall have a great deal to discuss — so I shall not attempt to talk things over in this letter.
W. F. Albright
1941
THE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY
BALTIMORE, MARYLAND
February 23rd, 1941
Dear Nelson,
Sorry for the delay in replying to your letter of the 14th. I have been busy as usual and the February Bulletin has taken more time than usual. Since the April number will not be sent to Furst before April 5th you have another month before sending me your MS. I have examined the photo and hand-copy which you gave me in Washington with the greatest interest, but since I am writing at home I cannot give you exact details of my suggestions. Most of my proposals depend on assuming a certain number of ligatures. The script is very interesting and clearly points to a date not later than the early fifth century. I suspect a date toward the end of the sixth century.
As a matter of fact, the Festschrift suggestion is entirely new to me. Thanks for proposing my name as a collaborator. It is a little hard to see just where I can find the time, but in view of the obvious fact that a contribution should not be too technical, I will accept — assuming, of course, that the project does not fall through for lack of funds or for any other reason. As a title I propose “Canaanites, Phoenicians and Israelities.” A paper with this ttle would enable me to get many things off my chest; it would deal mainly with cultural influences, their development and diffusion.
I suppose you know by this time that Barrois has left the Catholic church and the Catholic University, has become a Presbyterian and has married?
Very cordially yours,
W. F. Albright
—
THE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY
BALTIMORE, MARYLAND
February 23rd, 1941
Dear Nelson,
During the past few weeks I have been studying the list of names, No. 6043 again and again, with intervals in between to clear my head. The script is new and difficult and the names are rare and obscure — and the surface is weathered. I have your paper and Torrey’s suggestions. Following are my readings. They diverge quite widely in places from Torrey’s and yours. The script belongs definitely to the first half of the sixth century (plus or minus); it is throughout earlier in type than the script of the Bauer-Meissner papyrus of 515 B.C. On the other hand it is later in type than the script of the ostracon published by Aime–Giron (No. 2), which belongs to the late seventh (plus or minus). This means that the sherd may have been used almost immediately after the cooking pot was broken, since this type of cooking pot went out in the course of the sixth century.
- My reading follows lines 5 and especially 9.
- I agree with Torrey here.
- I agree with you and Torrey.
- The name Qausba [nah] seems practically certain to me. Note Gr. Kosberos in inscriptions of second century B.C.
- Read Paga’qaus or more likely Pagi’qaus, “Qaus is entreated,” or the like. The gimel is clear here and explains the ligature in line 10.
- ?
- Skk or Skk. Possibly connected with Arab Sakika, “have no ears or little ones, be deaf.” There are many other etymological possibilities in Arabic.
- More likely graphically, I think, than ‘ph. The last letter is a little small for normal he but does not have the form of yodh.
- With you and Torrey. Hypocoristic for Qausnatan.
This is in any event a list of Edomite names and it precedes the settlement of the Edomites in southern Judaea in the closing decades of the sixth century according to Esdras. The list may thus be expected to contain Edomite names and it evidently does. It is, accordingly, a document of outstanding importance.
If you are still in any doubt as to my proposed date, compare the forms of samekh and aleph with available parallels between 700 and 400 B.C. and you will see that my date is the only possible one. Moreover it agrees with the pottery as well as with the names, which are in general not yet Arabic, as they later became.
Very cordially yours,
W. F. Albright
—
THE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY
BALTIMORE, MARYLAND
March 13th, 1941
Dear Nelson,
During the past few weeks I have been studying the list of names, No. 6043 again and again, with intervals in between to clear my head. The script is new and difficult and the names are rare and obscure — and the surface is weathered. I have your paper and Torrey’s suggestions. Following are my readings. They diverge quite widely in places from Torrey’s and yours. The script belongs definitely to the first half of the sixth century (plus or minus); it is throughout earlier in type than the script of the Bauer-Messner papyrus of 515 B.C. On the other hand it is later in type than the script of the ostracon published by Aime-Giron (No. 2), which belongs to the late seventh (plus or minus). This means that the sherd may have been used almost immediately after the cooking pot was broken, since this type of cooking pot went out in the course of the sixth century.
- My reading follows lines 5 and especially 9.
- I agree with Torrey here. Pronounce Addo(M. Iddo)?
- >I agree with you and Torrey. Pronounce Sallum.
- The name Qausba [nah] seems practically certain to me. Note Gr. [?] in inscriptions of second century B.C.
- Read paga’quas or more likely Pagi’qaus, “Qaus is entreated,” or the like. The gimel is clear here and explains the ligature in line 10.
- ?
- Skk or skk. Possibly connected with Arab. Sakika, “have no ears or little ones, be deaf.” There are many other etymological possibilities in Arabic.
- More likely graphically, I think, than ‘ph. The last letter is a little small for normal he but does not have the form of yodh.
- As in line 5.
- With you and Torrey. Hypocristic for Qausnatan.
This is in any event a list of Edomite names and it precedes the settlement of the Edomites in southern Judaea in the closing decades of the sixth century according to Esdras. The list may thus be expected to contain Edomite names and it evidently does. It is, accordingly, a document of outstanding importance.
If you are still in any doubt as to my proposed date, compare the forms of samekh and aleph with available parallels between 700 and 400 B.C. and you will see that my date is the only possible one. Moreover it agrees with the pottery as well as with the names, which are in general not yet Arabic, as they later became.
Very cordially yours,
W. F. Albright
—
Baltimore, March 15th, 1941
Dear Nelson,
Your Edomite name-list has again exercised me and I should like to add some remarks on lines 1 and 6. The first suggestion I made Pg ‘1, seems to be ruled out by the hand-copies which you have made, so I propose to read R 1, Hebrew (also the name of an Edomite clan); cf. also the place-name Rahi-ilu or Ra-ilu in the Middle Euphrates region, between 800 and 600 B.C. In line 6 I suggest Rtbn, i.e., presumably Rutban, though I have no parallel name; the teth is very like this letter in the Aramaic ostraca of the seventh centry. The tbn seem to me very probable.
Torrey has sent me an article on Ostracon 4069 with the same reading and interpretation he submitted before. I shall of course print it in the April BASOR; no scholar will be misled.
Very cordially yours,
W. F. Albright
—
Baltimore, March 17, 1941
Dear Nelson,
A letter from Torrey in which he adheres to all his readings in No. 6043 prompts me to attack the photo again. With the following modification of my previous efforts: (1) N 1 or R 1 — (2) Bd [1] = Budi-ilu of Ammon a century earlier of (cf. Phoen. – T1 which may appear as Bdyw in the ostraca of Samaria). I consider the reading of (2) as very likely.
Very cordially yours,
W. F. Albright
—
THE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY
BALTIMORE, MARYLAND
July 7th, 1941
Dear Nelson,
Your letter of the 2nd has been received. I have written to Mr. Schocken about Maisler, as you suggested. Poor fellow! I wish that a man like Sukenik would not stop on others once he has gained his position. After struggling the way he had to, he might at least have more consideration for others. Maisler does have less ability Sukenik, but he possesses industry and human qualities whichSukenik lacks. It is a great pity.
I heard from Rosenau and Herzfeld about your leave of absence to work at Princeton. I am very glad you will be able to spend several months on intensive scholarly work, preparing your material for publication. How about getting the article you promise ready in time for the December Bulletin, which will be ready for the typesetter about the end of November? By the way, as you go north in Transjordan and encounter more and more true mounds, it is going to be more and more difficult to say decisively whether a given period is present or not. At Tell Ya’mun and Irbid I have found LB, as well as at several sites in the vicinity. Nor must we forget that Northern T.J. figures prominently in the Egyptian lists and the Amarna Tablets. In Gilead proper, however, I expect very few MB
II – LB sites.
I shall be here nearly all summer, working on books and papers. The plates and text of TBM III are nearly finished, but I am slowing up my work on it, so as not to beat Speiser to the draw.
Yours,
W. F. Albright
—
THE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY
BALTIMORE, MARYLAND
December 4th, 1941
Dear Nelson,
I have just received a long letter from Dr. Kurt Leidecker, with regard to his proposed Dictionary of Archaeology. Among the editors of this work (in fact the only ones he names) are Mercer (Egyptology), Dr. John Alexander, and you. He wants me to be another.
I suspect that he got you into his scheme by direct misrepresentation (if you have accepted). Mercer is a hundred-percent faker; Alexander got his Ph. D. here are several years ago after an extremely mediocre record here, but has not published anything since (not even his thesis). You don’t want to be associated with a gang like this! I declined at once, without saying anything about you, expect that you were the only good many man in his list. Leidecker actually writes that Alexander is a member of the Johns Hopkins staff, which leads me to infer that you have replied to his proposal in non-committal vein.
The other day I received a query from Rockford, Illinois, about my alleged view that Hebrew is the oldest language, from which all other tongues are descended (!!!).
After you get to Princeton, perhaps you can send me material again for the Bulletin.
W. F. Albright
1942
THE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY
BALTIMORE, MARYLAND
Jan. 19th, 1942
Dear Nelson,
I was dreadfully sorry to learn from Drs. Haller and Silver about your accident a few days ago. I hope that your plans are not completely disarranged by the necessary medical attention, to say nothing of the shock. It is indeed lucky that you can have just the needed attention at home! I was assured that your injuries were all facial or at least superficial and that there were no internal injuries. I earnestly hope that this information is correct. I also hope that you do nothing imprudent.
For example, you have promised an article for the February Bulletin. Unless it is finished, just leave it for the April number.
I have not seen Ruth since my return from Cleveland this morning, but I know that she will join me to the fullest in expressing our joint regret and best wishes for speedy and complete recovery, without a trace of scar or a missing hair!
Very sincerely yours,
W. F. Albright
—
THE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY
BALTIMORE, MARYLAND
March 9th, 1942
Dear Nelson,
Yours of the 7th has been received. You have been busy, as well as partially incapacitated by injections! I am a little woozy this morning, after speaking to two Zionist groups yesterday in New York and reaching Baltimore by day-coach at 4:00 a.m. This makes eight Zionist talks I have made in two months, but I have declined all other invitations except two local ones. My point of view is novel, after so much repetition of the usual themes by others — hence the epidermal demand.
BASOR will be printed tomorrow, so I have asked Furst to send me ten extra copies besides the 25 which will go to your home in Cincinnati. Let me know where to send them (you asked that they be sent you at the Cosmos Club before the 12th, which is impossible).
My Archaeology and the Religion of Israel (cir. 250 pages) is almost ready for printing; another page-proof and the main index remain to be done, but since the latter will be ready to be set up in a few days, I should have no difficulty in meeting the dead-line April 15th.
Very sincerely yours,
W. F. Albright
—
THE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY
BALTIMORE, MARYLAND
October 4th, 1942
Dear Nelson,
The page-proof of BASOR ought to be back in a couple of days. I corrected the gallery proof carefully, checking all references with your MS. One mistake in the early part of the article, where I had substituted “walk” for the “horseback ride” of the original, feeling that the latter was not very relevant to a time when Israelites did not ride horses, has been corrected, changing “two” to “four.” It is, of course, about eight hours’ walk from Beisan to Tell Abu Kharaz and back. After consultation with Burrows I changed a number of sentences in the introductory remarks to tone down my over-emphasis on the informal nature of the Archaeological Conference. I was very careful to check the proofs of the text of the Conference resolutions with the original MS. If there are any other changes to be made I can still get them into the proof up to about the 10th of the month.
I have received the list of accessions to the library of the School in Jerusalem and will expect your report before the end of the month. I hope you can send me your article on Ramoth-gilead and perhaps a short reply to Filson’s objections to your site of Zaphon. I have the photo of Tell Ramith, which illustrates the importance of the site so nicely. I shall probably use a photo of Mrs. Nies, received not long ago by Burrows, for the cover. A new feature, “From the President Desk,” will be included in this number, and will be continued, I hope, in the February and later numbers. It will help to keep the Bulletin from losing touch with our clientele — a danger which becomes imminent whenever one begins to emphasize scholarship to the disadvantage of other considerations.
W. F. Albright
1943
October 9, 1943
Dear Nelson,
The galley proof has just arrived. I gave Furst the go-ahead sign a couple days ago, so it is too late to incorporate your corrections in this number. As you will see from the page-proof which I sent you, however, I only missed a couple of points which you have, and they were very minor. If you find any significant correction or additions to anything, we can print them in the next number. I have ordered 50 copies sent to your Cincinnati address, and this order can still be modified in any way you wish. I should like to have your article on Ramoth-gilead (I have the photo), your reply to Filson, and your annual report (I have the list of books) before the end of this month, if possible, since printing each number takes at least a month longer than formerly. — I don’t mean to suggest that you limit yourself to those items, however!
Cordially,
W. F. Albright
—
THE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY
BALTIMORE, MARYLAND
October 20th, 1943
Dear Nelson,
Many thanks for your promptness in sending “Ramoth-gilead” to me. I have already given it a through editorial revision and plan to send what copy I have, including the cuts (among which is the photo of Tell Ramith), to Furst tomorrow. To judge from my experience in June and now, it will take at least three weeks after the last page-proof is corrected before a number is out, hence my urgency. The October number is not out yet, though just two weeks have elapsed since furst received the last corrected page-proof. — It is a very interesting paper. I have added a further note explaining the linguistic changes which I mentioned to you before, and have cut out a sentence in which you suggest that Ramith may have been the fortress protecting Remtheh. For that it is not only too far but also away from the boundary instead of between Remtheh and the boundary. Of course, you can put it back if you want to. The name may have wandered in Aramaic times to Remtheh, displacing a list Israelite name, but I see no object in mentioning such a possibility.
The Oriental Seminary is larger than usual, with some ten candidates for a degree. There is one ex-chaplain (hay fever) and one man who hopes to be accepted for the chaplaincy during the year. Together with my geography I am carrying a much heavier load of teaching than ever before. In November I shall be lecturing for over a week at Oberlin. — Last week I returned a blank waiving any claim for compensation on account of my bad eyesight and crippled hand, but I certainly don’t expect to be offered a commission. Six months hence I may get a polite rejection!
W. F. Albright
1944
April 22, 1944
Prof. William F. Albright
John Hopkins University
Baltimore, Md.
Dear William,
Almost two months have passed since I have returned to Palestine, with over half that time being wasted as a result of a severe attack of flu. However, for several weeks now I have been quite on my feet again, and have begun working. I am assembling all the plates for the pottery section of the fourth part of my Explorations. The drawings of the most important sherds are finished, and the photographic plates are being pasted together now. They will, I believe, give a very full and very clear picture, particularly of the pottery of the Jordan Valley and of northern Transjordan.
I am hoping to leave tomorrow for a fairly extended trip in Transjordan. If I can, I want to complete what I have not yet done along the Yarmuk river, and then explore the rest of the Beni Hassan area, which I have not yet done, and finally, visit the easternmost desert area of northern Transjordan to see such sights as Burqu. If I can, I shall also attempt to do a more thorough survey of the north side of the Yarmuk than anyone has tied thus far. With that, inshallah, my survey will be finished. As a matter of fact, I think I could quit right now, and call it finished, because there is nothing, I believe, that I can find now which will change the picture I have already been able to recreate.
There is little that is new in Jerusalem that I have not mentioned in the Newsletter I sent off several weeks ago, and a copy of which you will have received before now. We regularly receive several copies every couple of weeks of your From the Stone Age to Christianity, and they are snapped up immediately by the bookstores here. The other publications, including Burrows’ and mine were sold as soon as they arrived. 50 unbound copies of The Other Side of the Jordan were sent here some months ago. Mrs. Pommerantz had them bound, and they have all been sold.
With best regards to you and Ruth,
Sincerely yours,
Nelson Glueck
—
THE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY
BALTIMORE, MARYLAND
August 25th, 1944
Dear Nelson,
I have just got back from a trip to Columbus and South Bend (annual meeting of the Catholic Biblical Association), and find your letter of the 20th awaiting me.
I suggest that you say “neanthropic European” of something of that sort in the passage in question, since McCown obviously forgot for a second that Neanderthal man is an even more primitive European. It would probably be still better to say “to a man with some strikingly modern characteristics.” It was this skeleton which was responsible for Weidenreich’s facetious remark about the Palestinian origin of Nordic man which brought an exodus of his Nazi colleagues from the hall, during the Copenhagen meeting of anthropologists.
I can’t explain why “Baalbek” has kaf, since I have never succeeded in finding an etymology. The “Ba’al – biq’ah” idea is pre-philogical. The Arabic speeling (Yaqut on to our own day) is [xxxxx]. By the way, I do have an etymology, but it is so uncertain that I have never published it, and don’t expect to unless some contemporary corroboration is found.
I am delighted to hear about the article for the National Geographic. It shows what a favorable response they received from their readers to your first article. I look forward eagerly to the Bulletin article which I should like to have in six weeks if possible — before the end of September if not inconvenient.
At my brother-in-law’s Columbus home I met the metallurgist Richardson, whom you know already. We had a grant visit. He is a valuable man to have available for consultation on our problems.
Cordially,
W. F. Albright
—
Cincinnati, Ohio.
24 September 1944.
Dear William:
Enclosed is the article I promised to get done this week. I am sending with it the following photographs, some of which you may want to use for the Bulletin to accompany the article:
- Water-hole at ‘Amri in WadiSirhan.
- Burqa’ah.
- IbnWardeh Arabs of the eshSherareh, from Saudi Arabia, in W. Sirhan
- Jebel Dhewayil near WadiKhadraj in Transjordan.
- Water-hole in WadiKhadraj.
- Nabataean inscription.
- Raimwater collected in a natural depression in desert east of Muwaqqar.
- Herd of camels at ‘Amri in WadiSirhan.
- Reservoir at Umm ej-Jemal.
- Cars stuck in hamad desert of WadiSirhan.
Will you please return the photographs you don’t use, because some of these are the only copies I have here? This is the only copy I have of Nabataean inscription. What happens to the cuts you use in the Bulletin? I could use them, or those of my photographs, sooner or later for my next Annual volume. I am beginning now to write up the pottery for that volume. I have over a hundred plates of sherds that I want to publish in it. It will have to be a large double volume.
According to my present information, I am scheduled to return to Jerusalem at the end of October.
Millar Burrows writes me that he has sent you the ms. of THE JORDAN. I shall be very interested in your reactions, and criticisms. Thanks for reading it. I have never done anything like it before, and I am afraid that the tenor of your opinion will be that I ought never to do anything like it again. However, it wrote itself rapidly, and I did much of it on boat trips, when I could not have done anything else, so I don’t feel that I shall have wasted too much time, even if your and Burrows’ opinions are adverse.
Sincerely, NG
—
Cincinnati 20, Ohio.
4 October 1944.
Dear William:
I sent you a short article the other day, together with some photographs. I am starting on another also for the Bulletin, in which I propose to discuss the Chalcolithic pottery and period in the Jordan Valley. That period is much more generally represented than has thus far been revealed. I am, however, greatly hampered by a lack of books here.
A letter received today from Millar Burrows tells me that Random House has written to him asking to see the manuscript of THE JORDAN. Little, Brown and Co. is reading one copy, and you have the other, I believe, which Burrows sent you. After I receive the one you have, I shall want to incorporate many or probably all of the suggestions and corrections you and Burrows will have made and then have the manuscript completely retyped before sending it to Random House. I may possibly be starting on my way back to Jerusalem “on or about November 1”. That is the latest word I have received from Washington. Even if my departure is delayed beyond then, I have to figure on being here only a few weeks more. So I should greatly appreciate it if you could send me the corrected copy of my manuscript as soon as possible. Perhaps you can send me immediately such sections as you already have finished reading. Thanks a million for all the trouble!
The National Geographic is apparently rushing with the printing of my article, because I have already received and returned the first page proof for it. Mr. Hildebrand wrote me thathe was sending you a copy for your criticisms at the same time. Again, many thanks for the time and effort you are expending in my behalf!
With best regards,
Sincerely, NG
—
THE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY
BALTIMORE, MARYLAND
October 7th, 1944
Dear Nelson,
Your air-mail letter of the 4th did not arrive until this morning. My mail was collected yesterday, so I know that this is the case. I have just come from two weeks in the hospital for treatment and observation (nothing serious; my back has fialed me and a tonsillectomy is indicated). Meanwhile I shall be rather restricted in my movements, I suppose.
I am delighted to hear about your Chalcolithic article. Ernest Wright is here now and we can, between us, add references or revise details, if you like.
The paper on the WadiSirhan arrived duly, in ample time for the December BASOR (which will be delayed a couple of weeks). Many thanks. I’ll return the extra photographs to you as soon as I have made up the number.
The MS of your Jordan book arrived while I was in the hospital. I will take it home with me and try to read it over the week-end. — I read the page-proof of the N.G. article in the hospital and returned it. So it will be available. All my suggestions were minor. Naturally there are points where my own point of view would be different, but there seemed to be no object whatever in mentioning them.
By the way, I suggest that you put two photos in a single Annual plate, as I generally do in my volumes, because of the shortage of plate-paper, etc. The sherds show up just as well for all practically significant purposes if they are on half the scale.
Cordially,
W. F. Albright
—
THE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY
BALTIMORE, MARYLAND
October 9th, 1944
Dear Nelson,
On Sunday I read the first third of your Jordan MS. You have something there. Many paragraphs are brilliantly written, and the vividness of your descriptions and the simplicity of narrative would be hard to beat. In fact I am so pleased by it that I am revising it with a fine comb (in pencil, of course), as though it were material for the Bulletin. I think it is admirably suited for commercial publication.
Since you are in a hurry, I suggest that I mail you what I have already done — or will have done — on Thursday, so you can start with your definitive revision and retyping. Then I will try to send you the rest not later than the beginning of next week. I say try because of the parlous state of my health at the moment, which may force me to return the rest without correction. If you are so pressed that this arrangement will not be practicable, I suggest that you telegraph me as soon as you get this letter. The book is so promising that I think you should put off your sailing a few weeks in order to get the MS into the best possible condition. Whether you can postpone sailing is something else about which I can only guess.
Cordially,
W. F. Albright
—
THE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY
BALTIMORE, MARYLAND
November 6th, 1944
Dear Nelson,
I am very much ashamed of myself. The last six weeks have been spent mainly in bed, and I am still very weak and unable to do much. Hence your MS has only just been finished. I have taken it very much in earnest, going through it with as much care as I would one of my own. I hope you don’t mind the extremely detailed revision much of which you may find either no longer useful or just superfluous. I have tried to prune without in any way subduing your vivid style, which will be one of the chief attractions of the book. The MS will go to you tomorrow, D.V.
Owing to the same illness, I have only just now finished putting the December Bulletin copy (containing your article on the WadiSirhan) into shape for Furst, to whom I hope to give it tomorrow (three weeks later than planned). Fortunately, Kramer, Sacha and May rallied to my aid, so I have a first-class number without having to contribute anything.
I am cutting out practically all outside activity this year, including particularly outside speaking engagements. Owing to shortage of staff at the University and a large enrollment in the Oriental Seminary, I am teaching fifteen hours a week, with 77 in one class outside my department, and 12 to 18 in each of four lecture courses within the department. This pressure of work makes it lucky for me that I am having to cut out other activities as much as possible.
The tonsillectomy went off very well, with no unpleasant after-effects. However, immediately afterwards I came down with a very stubborn case of influenza, which has seriously retarded my recovery.
I see that there is a dreadful monograph my Lewy in the current HUCA — one of the very worst things he has ever done. The sun-godHammu is 100% imaginary.
Cordially,
W. F. Albright
—
Baltimore, Nov. 8th, 1944
Dear Nelson,
Yours of the 6th has just been received. I send the revised MS of THE JORDAN to you yesterday by express; it should arrive within a few days. I am decidedly relieve to know that you won’t be leaving within the coming few weeks, so there will be time for you to rewrite it and at least begin negotiations for publications. Copy of the December Bulletin went to Furst yesterday.
Since yesterday I am feeling definitely better, though a long way from up to par. Wright is with me now, so we are having very interesting discussions.
I think that your new book will have a popular appeal which will surprise some publishers’ readers. Event my FSAC, which was incomparably less suited for a wide audience of readers, has sold more copies than any other book published by the Johns Hopkins Press.
Cordially,
W. F. Albright
—
THE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY
BALTIMORE, MARYLAND
November 14th, 1944
Dear Nelson,
Your letter of the 11th has been received. I am very happy that you can use most of my suggestions for revision of your text. I agree entirely with Burrows (in his letters to me) about the intrinsic merit of your book; we both feel sure that it will have wide [?] and interest a great many people who do not usually care for archaeology or geography. — I have just received the December number of N.G., containing your paper; the illustrations are superb, making a very interesting presentation which will certainly attract many readers to the book.
I am a little better, though I am going slow and don’t expect to do very much this year. Classes are largest, with 12 to 18 in my lectures courses and 77 in one class in ancient history, so my work here is alone enough to keep me very busy.
Poor old Aage Schmidt keeps bombarding me with duplicate air-mail letters, which must eat dreadfully into his meager resources. There is nothing I can do except to write me once or twice a year acknowledging them and expressing my sympathy. I am certainly not going to burden Burrows by sending them along to him. Every letter contains a printed entreaty from the censors to be brief and write a clear hand (!).
W. F. Albright
1945
Harvard Press
January 17, 1945
Miss Eleanor K. Vogel
c/o Mr. Nelson Glueck
162 Glenmary Avenue
Cincinnati, Ohio
Dear Miss Vogel:
I am most regretful to let you know that at the meeting of the Syndies yesterday it was decided not to offer publication for Dr. Glueck’s book on The Jordan. This decision, however, must not be taken as a criticism of the book for it is most interesting, written most acceptably and with full respect for facts. We believe that its usefulness will extend far beyond the academic audience which is our main province.
My personal advice is that Dr. Gluecksubmit the book to a general house which has a certain religious following as well, such as Harper’s or Fleming Revell. Of course the illustrations are a strong attraction and whatever house does publish the book should make generous use of them.
With my personal regret and my apologies for the length of time it has taken for arriving at a conclusion, please believe me,
Sincerely yours
Sgt. Roger L. Scaife
—
February 12, 1945
Prof. William F. Albright
John Hopkins University
Baltimore, Md.
Dear William,
I am sending by the same mail a second newsletter to Burrows, and therefore need not repeat much of the material it contains. You will want to know, however, that Pere Vincent is safe and well in Paris, and is working in getting out a continuation of The Revue Biblique. When the next number appears, it will cover the span of several years.
My secretary in Cincinnati, Mrs. Vogel, wrote that she sent you my article on the Chalcolithic pottery of Tell Umm HamadSherqiyeh, and the manuscript on the WadiArabah sent to me by Dr. Lohnberg. I have just finished the basic work on another article, which will deal with the MB I pottery of Tell Umm HamadGharbiyeh, and of the rest of the Jordan Valley. All in all, with the exception of the forms published in Guy and Engberg’s Megiddo Tombs, and in your own publications, there is not so much material published from this period as I would like to have for comparative purposes. There is a number of forms of what I am sure belongs to MB I pottery, which I have from this Umm HamadGharbiyeh site, which I cannot parallel elsewhere.
My Cincinnati secretary writes that she also sent you the preface of “The Jordan”, which I should like to have you look at and send to me. She sent a revised copy of “The Jordan”, completely retyped with a complete set of the photographs to the Westminster Press. If the Westminster Press does not decide to publish the manuscript, I should like the Schools to publish it. I definitely do not intend to submit it to anybody else. I have taken the liberty of asking Dr. Trinterud of the Westminster Press to communicate with you concerning the book. It takes too long to write to me and to get an answer. I shall be satisfied with whatever arrangements you make with him on my behalf, incase the Westminster Press should decide that it wants to publish the book. In case the decision is a negative one, It should be very happy if the ASOR press will issue it.
Maisler and Stekelis have started excavations at Khirbet Kerak, but the incessant rains have made it impossible to do very much work thus far. A very interesting mudbrick wall and revetment have been exposed, with another stone wall belonging to a later period also being found.
With best regards,
Sincerely yours,
NG:IP
—
February 27, 1945
Prof. William F. Albright
John Hopkins University
Baltimore, Md.
Dear William,
It snowed so hard the day before yesterday, that the hills of Jerusalem were white and looked more like those of Cincinnati than anything else. It has been sleeting, hailing and snowing for the last few days. I have never known anything parable to the rainy season of this year, not apparently has anyone else in Palestine and Transjordan. According to the papers, the road to Hebron the other day was actually blocked because of snowdrifts. It has been impossible on quite a number of occasions recently to cross the stretch of road directly in front of Allenby Bridge because it was covered with water.
Perforce I have staying at home and working on literary materials, particularly I have been tackling the writing up of the pottery for Explorations IV. I have just been going over the pottery and plates of the very rough article on Tell Umm HamadSherqiyeh which I left at home when I suddenly had to return here, and which I asked my secretary to send to you. Going over this article I am sorry that I did have her send it to you, because I see that it amounts only to my first notes on the material. Particularly, I notice that Plate 13:1-7, consisting of flat bases from Tell Umm HamadSherqiyeh, was assigned by me in that article to MB I. When I took a look at the sherds from that particular bag this morning, I decided that I must have gone crazy to make such a statement. With one possible exception which may be MB I, all the sherds on the plate are EB I. If you have not published the article yet, or have not yet set it up in type, would you please designate this plate as being EB I. I see I was led to my error by my pottery notes which said that one of the sherds might possibly be MB I. I shouldn’t be surprised but that you caught the error anyway.
I have a copy of a letter from the Harvard Press, which I am sending you. “The Jordan” is too scholarly for Random House and too popular apparently for the Harvard Press. As I think I told you, the corrected manuscript, in which I entered almost all your annotations, plus the entire set of photographs, were sent to Dr. Trinterud of the Westminster Press. I had written him in American just before leaving, saying that I was about to send the manuscript to him, and that I would accept no offers from any publishing house until I had heard from him through you. It will probably take a month or two yet before he communicates with you, and I wonder what his reaction will be. If the Westminster Press does not accept the book, I have no intention of submitting it to any other press except our own ASOR press. If you and Burrows and whoever else is on the Board of the press still feel that it is worth publishing, I shall be very happy to have the Schools do it. The more I think of it, the more pleased I would be if the School would publish it as a complement to my “The Other Side of the Jordan”.
Otherwise there is little to relate. It is impossible to get about. A large number of people keep on passing through Jerusalem and dropping in at the School. The latest was Cyrus Gordon, who is now a captain and stationed at Teheran. I was pleased to learn from him that
he had been given a Professorship at Dropsie College. He will have to do a lot of brushing up on his Assyriology.
The excavations at Khirbet Kerak have made practically no progress whatsoever because of the incessant rains.
With best regards, and looking forward to hearing from you,
Sincerely yours, NG
—
19-
15 April 1945
Dear William:
I was perturbed to learn recently from Ben Dor that you had long been ill this winter. I am terribly sorry, and hope that you have long before this fully recovered. I like to believe that your letter to Ben Dor means that you were already then well on the road to recovery. I can imagine that you have been swamped with letters and more important matters which you had to postpone attending to during the period of your illness. When you have time, I shall be happy to hear from you.
You will know more than I do about my book THE JORDAN. I had a long letter about three weeks ago from Dr. Trinterud, telling me that the Westminster Press wanted to publish the book, was prepared to print 104 plates alone in a book of some 320 pages, which would sell for about $3.00 to $3.50, and which they wanted to publish some time this fall. However, they asked me first to revise the last two chapters, saying that they thought they did not measure up to the rest of the book. When I read over those two chapters, after not having looked at them for about 6 months, I found myself in complete agreement with them. I immediately sat down, and radically revised the last two chapters, incorporating the material into one chapter, and making it conform, I believe and hope, to the rest of the book.
In response to a question put in his letter by Rev. Trinterud, I replied that I would agree in advance to any small editorial changes in the manuscript which you approved of. I trust that you will not be burdened too much. After all, I had already entered practically every correction and change which you had suggested in your previous, extremely careful reading of the original manuscript, so there ought not to be much that they should bother you with. Thanks a million in advance. I sometimes wonder how you ever have time to do all the scholarly work you do while answering the correspondence of a host of scholars and other friends, reading their manuscripts, and discussing their problems.
I shall await with much interest what Rev. Trinterud and his associates have to say with regard to the revised section I returned to him. I gathered from his letter that it was only a matter of receiving that material before he sent me a contract for the book. Any terms that you think are all right for such a contract, are certainly all right with me. I don’t care whether I make any money out of the book. I shall be happy to see it published. I think that that collection of photographs deserves publication. I hope that the Westminster Press can find the proper glossy, chrome paper to print the photographic plates properly. The only criticism I have of the new Bible Atlas is that the photographs seem to have soaked into the paper, and are not nearly as clear as they would have been had they used glossy or chrome paper. However, that is probably a matter of wartime exigencies.
My heartiest congratulations on the Bible Atlas. There is thus far only one copy in the country, which Ernest sent directly to Maisler, so I have had it in my hands for only a few minutes. I read your contribution, which forms a splendid first chapter to the book. I haven’t had a chance to go through the rest of the Atlas yet. The maps are superbly printed. There are somethings I do not agree with, such as the locations of Abel-meholah and Mahanaim and the territory assigned to Gad, but those are minor criticisms I really haven’t had a chance yet properly to check the maps.
I sit here with heavy heart today over the death of our President Roosevelt. It is one of the greatest losses of this entire war. God help us particularly in the year or two to come, when we so desperately need [?] leadership, and grant that our new President may in some measure be able to rise to the needs of the time.
The weather has prevented all field work of any kind, and still does. It is a year, the like of which has not been encountered in living memory. So I have been sitting home, plugging away on preparing my pottery plates for part 4 of my Explorations. I am definitely able to insert for the Jordan Valley an additional period between Jericho IX and VIII and another one between VIII and VII. Ben Dor was here the other day and is in full agreement with my results. I have no idea whether or not you are going to use any of the T. Umm HamadSherqi material I had sent to you just before I left or perhaps just after I left Cincinnati this time. I shall not be unhappy if you have decided to postpone publishing it for the present. I have completely reworked those materials.
I am getting homesick again, or rather desperately lonely for Helen and our boy. In any event, the course of events is making me think of going home again, — sometime late this summer or early this fall. I think then I shall know what the immediate future is to be like, what demands are to be made upon me, and I feel that in all probability, insofar as I can foresee, I shall be able to remain home.
There is nothing I would rather do, everything else being equal, than remain on here for the rest of my academic careers Director of this School. I love this place, I love my work, I love this kind of life. I am deeply rooted and at home here. However, everything is not equal by a long shot. Aside from numerous considerations which do not depend upon me, I have obligations to my family and to the Hebrew Union College, which sooner or later require my remaining in America. I want my boy to go to American schools, and have my own American background. My wife has a right to continue her medical career in which she is so successful. I have promised to return to the Hebrew Union College.
A new Director of the School will therefore have to be thought about or chosen within the coming months. I should like to retain the title of Director of this School say till the end of 1945. I suggest that a new Director be appointed effective from the beginning of January 1946. I am writing to Millar Burrows that we can discuss the time to terminate my salary later. I think at the present moment that it ought to be possible to terminate it at the end of September 1945.
I think the new Director should be in Jerusalem about January 1946, although I am sure that it will not be possible to commence our normal academic work till the war with Japan is over. And I cannot see that ending till possibly somewhere in 1947. I hope I am wrong and that it ends sooner. In whatever interval, however, there may be between my eventual departure from here and the arrival of the new Director, we can all rest assured that the School’s hotel and grounds and servant staff will be managed efficiently by Mrs. Pommerantz with the aid of her husband. She has repeatedly demonstrated her ability to run this place during long periods when no Director was present.
I am afraid the post-war years are going to be difficult and dangerous ones. We need not only a competent scholar and archaeologist here, but a person who at the same time will be able to keep his head and steer the School safely through experiences which I am afraid are going to be similar to those we lived through here during 1936-40. I wish I could stay on. I make bold to think I could handle the troublesome situation as it may affect our School, which I think is going to develop. Forgive me if this sounds egotistical. It arises not from self-praise of my past here at the School but out of concern for the future welfare of the School.
It would be wonderful if you could come back here for at least a couple of years, and could be followed them by Millar Burrows. I should like to see Ernest Wright here sooner or later. If he can’t come, I should like to see Ingholt here. Perhaps we have a commitment to Robert Engberg. I do not think he is of the same caliber as either of these last two, but if he is appointed, I shall be for him with might end main. I am deeply attached to this School. I owe it a great deal. I shall always want to serve it to the best of my ability in whatever capacity it is given me to work for it and the cause it represents.
It is hard to think of the immediate future without the presence of our great President. God help America and the world.
With best regards to you and Ruth, and again with the hope that you are well and are taking care of yourself, as ever, yours, NG
—
THE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY
BALTIMORE, MARYLAND
September 28th, 1945
Dear Nelson,
Many thanks for the welcome article, which is in plenty of time for the December number. It takes 2 ½ months instead of the former three weeks to get a number of the Bulletin out, though the average paging has been decreased from 40 to 28 pages and may have to be cut down further — hence the SUPPLEMENTARY STUDIES, the first of which has just appeared. The October number will probably be out about the middle of the month or a little later, though it was begun early in August and contains only 24 pages and a chart.
The article is fine, and the pottery illustrations are also very good. This will make up most of the December number, aside from the reports. I shall need the reports early in November in latest, if there is any chance for the number to be out before Christmas. I can’t get at the number before November in any case, since I am going to the Sinai Hospital here for an “emergency” operation on my spine (intervertebral disk) which I hope will prove as successful in ridding me of the trouble which has crippled me during the past twelve months as my surgeon seems to be sure it will. The surgeon is Dr. Otenesek, who is taking over most of Dr. Dandy’s work in this field. (the operation is Dr. Dandy’s, as Helen will not doubt tell you, and it enjoys a vogue somewhat comparable to appendectomy in the first few years after it was introduced.) I shall leave for the hospital Oct. 8th, and may be back at home ten days later, but I shall not be back at the University in any case before Nov. 8th, I am told.
Trinterud is getting enthusiastic about THE JORDAN. I hope to see him here on Monday. My FSAC will be exhausted before Christmas, and we are securing bids for photo-offset reproduction. Baumgartner and Stamm have arranged with a Bern publisher for a German translation.
And now for the real point — I am delighted to learn that you are going to stay with the School in Jerusalem. This relieves all of us immensely.
I should like to get an Index of the Bulletin out for the 100th number, but my illness precludes this, and I shall have to await the 101st or a later number.
Cordially,
W. F. Albright
—
October 19th, 1945
Dear Nelson,
Many thanks for your report, to which Burrows report and the financial report have now been added. I turned the copy for BASOR over to Furst this morning; it contains also your paper on the M.B. I site and a short one of mine. Galley proofs should be distributed about a month hence.
The news about the new book is exciting. If it pans out as seemed likely a few days ago, the book should exert considerable influence in several directions along which we of the ASOR are interested. It will also facilitated your work considerably.
The financial report made good reading. We have been economical and so we have some money to spend on archaeology as soon as the situations eases up. It is such a relief to have you at Jerusalem. – Don’t forget about the paper for the February BASOR, which I should like to [end of transcription]
—
Baltimore, Dec. 22nd, 1945
Dear Nelson,
Not having any idea where you may be now, I am writing to catch you before I leave for Chicago (Dec. 30). If you find it impossible to get the MS of your article for the February BASOR off to me by Wednesday of next week, I suggest that you send it to me at the Oriental Institute, where I shall be working every possible day of the week beginning Dec. 31st. Since I am counting on having it, let me know in case you won’t be able to get it done for any reason, so I can plan to substitute something else.
The December number went to Furst for printing the beginning of the week, but I don’t suppose it will be distributed before the first week of January. Reprints may reach you before the number, since the New Haven office is tied up pretty tight with work.
I am improving steadily and am quite a different man.
Cordially,
W. F. Albright
—
Baltimore, Dec. 27th, 1945
Dear Nelson,
Owing to the Xmas closing, I did not received your article for the February Bulletin until yesterday, but I got at it at once and it is now in Furst’s hands. I have utilized all but the three least instructive prints, including of course the flat bottoms. Owing to my absence in Chicago for the next three months, the number may be somewhat retarded in appearance, especially since labor is still [?] and paper is growing scarcer in some respects than ever.
The projected arrangement about your tenure is most intriguing. I wish that I could have attended the N.Y. meetings, but it would have been very unwise. As it is, I am finishing a part of what has to be done and not running any risks. My health continues to improve.
1946
THE ORIENTAL INSTITUTE
THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO
CHICAGO, ILLINOIS, USA
Feb. 1st, 1946
Dear Nelson,
Your letter of the 30th reached me yesterday, and today I receive the galley proof of the February Bulletin, which I am sending on herewith. I hope you won’t find too many mistakes in it. I am keeping the MS, as usual, in order to check in detail before sending on to Baltimore. This number of the Bulletin will contain 36 pages, instead of the usual (new order) 24 or 28, but the following numbers will be kept down in size. Many thanks for the new material, which I shall draw on for the next two or three numbers, unless displaced by new material sent by you later. I shan’t feel obliged to contribute anything to the Bulletin this year, as things look now.
This times I have included practically all the cuts you sent me, since they provide a very adequate picture of this class of ware. These numbers of the Bulletin will be found very convenient vade mecum’s for future ceramic explorers in Palestine.
I should have written you already and would have thanked you for the copy of the Hebrew edition of your JORDAN, but I took for granted that you had left already. I suspect that you put off attending to the passport too long! I have done that more than once. I have just received an invitation to attend the “international” O. T. meeting planned for England this coming September, with an offer of partial defrayment of expenses, which is exceedingly generous on the part of our British friends. I don’t know whether I can even consider going, but I shall certainly return the payment as a gift to the British Society for O.T. Study, since funds are very scanty in Great Britain nowadays.
The actions taken in New York sound good throughout. I hope we will have an interlude of real work and study before the next international disturbance makes its appearance.
I am having the time of my life here, teaching and learning, especially the latter. The cooperative attitude here is splendid, and I am enjoying associations with able and often brilliant young colleagues in many fields, in all of which I am interested. In my lectures on ancient history we have a real seminar, since six or eight of my colleagues attend and I can ask questions of experts in Assyriology, Egyptology, archaeology, etc., etc., whenever I find myself at a loss for the latest unpublished evidence! I have seen a lot of Ernest Wright, of course. I shan’t be able to do much of any work or serious study here — there are too many distractions. But as a most useful interlude it is great. All the same I’ll be glad to get back to my familiar haunts at Johns Hopkins, where I can lay my hand on practically every needed volume in a minute. Here hunting books takes a great deal of my time.
News from European scholars, including Germans, is pouring in, and I am being rapidly swamped by my foreign correspondence, which took a vacation for several years, giving me much more time than I should otherwise have.
Cordially,
W. F. Albright
P.S. Please return corrected proof to Chicago
—
THE ORIENTAL INSTITUTE
THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO
CHICAGO, ILLINOIS, USA
February 9th, 1946
Dear Nelson,
Thanks for returning the proof to me so promptly, I have just finished correcting the duplicate copy of the galley proof for mailing together with this letter. The number contains only your article and that of Gaster, besides the usual material in the February number (report of meetings and lists of members, etc.). I inserted notes and N.B.s to call the readers’ attention to the points you mention, so I hope that no confusion will be created. Of course, any ceramic expert would see the mistake in writing 10 cm instead of 5 cm. as soon as he started measuring the sherds, but I don’t think the slip would ever have been discovered if you had no done so, since few ever have occasion to measure sherds of this kind.
I have just received word from Maisler that he has had to give up the Khirbet Kerak excavation, which his being carried on by Stekelis and AviYonah. I was very sorry to hear this, and can hope only that the new combination works and produces solid scholarly results. He writes enthusiastically about the clear division between phases of EB (I-III) made possible by the work here, assigning three strata to EB I, two to EB II and three again to EB III. This is all very interesting indeed and promises well for our future understanding of the evolution of material culture in Palestine.
News from Germany continues to filter through. I am in direct touch with two scholars, the Baron Oppenheim (still alive in his sister’s castle in Bavaria — bless his wicked but kindly old heart) and a young Egyptologist-cuneiformist named Edel, who is sweating out his penance for having joined the party in order to ensure his Ph. D. by serving as a Bauernknecht (which sounded very attractive to an old Bauernknecht like myself). Eissfeldt is rector of the University of Halle; Hempel is said to be in durance vile for his sin in joining the party; Jirku has been fired from Bonn and his great enemy Noth has been put there in his place; Holscher is teaching at Heidelberg; v. Rad is at Jena — and so on. There is no direct word from Alt yet. My eldest son is in Berlin as a transport officer, and he is trying to track some old acquaintances and friends. Gerhard Kittel is said to be in a French jail, where I hope he dies (he was frail to begin with).
Life at the Oriental Institute continues to be stimulating and slightly tiring, what with all the outside activities. However, I am declining all invitations taking me outside of the immediate vicinity of Chicago.
Cordially,
W. F. Albright
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THE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY
BALTIMORE, MARYLAND
May 27th, 1946
Dear Nelson,
Your airmail letter of May 17th arrived May 27th. You are dead right about poor Dr. Schmidt, who ought not to be allowed back in Palestine. I think you should ask the Department of Antiquities to act officially, if possible, in the interest of archaeology. Meanwhile I will write him as you request at the Copenhagen address, though I doubt whether my words will have any effect. Schmidt is too old to go wandering about, and he would only be a burden on his friends.
The River Jordan is becoming known. I don’t think it will prove a bad investment for the Westminster Press. Meanwhile I have written three popular notices and am writing a fourth which will include it along with your other work in a kind of descriptive article for the Jewish Frontier. From various experiments and reports I am certain that it has a genuine popular appeal, and that people who would balk at anything at all technical or schoolbookish enjoy reading it very much.
I had forgotten entirely about my saddle, etc. I am afraid the leather is no good any more. If I am wrong and there is anything sealable there, just get rid of it and apply the “proceeds” (?) to the credit of the School’s account with Dr. Schmidt. Have the garments, such as they are, given to the poor, but keep the books and records (if any) for me. I suggest that the Department of Antiquities be asked to select any sherds it may wish from my collections in the attic, and the rest may be returned there to await my attention when I do come out, which will probably not be for several years, if then. When I left I expected to return in the summer of 1937, but with the riots and the subsequent war all my plans have gone astray. For the next few years I have such an intensive program of writing that I want to stay here anyway, quite aside from the impossibility of organizing excavations under present circumstances.
I am quite all right again. The April Bulletin will be out soon; it contains nothing of yours, since the 24-page limit I have no set on it did not allow anything additional of any consequence and I finally gave up the idea of trying to make a short article out of the miscellaneous assemblages of sherds whose description you had sent me at my request. The main item in this number is Maisler’s interesting paper on the Canaanites.
At the April meeting of the Trustees the Journal of Cuneiform Studies was established, with Goetze as editor and Sachs and Jacobsen as associate editors. It will appear in photo-offset process, according to present plans. You will have quite a job on your hands next year, and I hope all goes well and you don’t become disgusted with your job!
The proposal to appoint a field secretary has fallen through, to my great relief, and no money will be wasted on that. It is much too soon to organize this sort of thing, before we are ready to provide news and opportunities for travel and study to persons and agencies whose interest may be attracted.
Cordially,
W. F. Albright
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THE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY
BALTIMORE, MARYLAND
October 28th, 1946
Dear Nelson,
Since I wrote you on August 26th, I have received your letters and enclosures of Sept. 17, 23, and Oct. 10th. Since the October BASOR is out at last I have prepared copy for the December number, which will contain your annual report and paper on the “Chacolithic Pottery of Northern Gilead.” There is no room for the papers of Sukenik (Yigael) and Kirkbride in this number, since I am trying to hold the average number of pages down to 24. Printing is increasing rapidly in cost, and I suspect we shall have to turn to offset work entirely before long. The New Haven printers are said to be planning a strike, demanding $3.00 an hour!
I have not seen Sukenik yet, but hope to do so before long. I understand that he is having a good time, and getting in a considerable number of lectures. Kraeling is at Washington, but I have no seen him yet either. I did see E.N. Mohl, who spent the night with us a few days ago; he had been on the same plane as Helen Glueck and Fr. O’Callaghan (as far as Rome).
I hope that nothing happens to the plan to get Burrows over there for next year while you are on leave of absence in this country. I feel that it is exceedingly important to have a safe, experienced person at the head of the School in these difficult years. Now that the shipping strike is about over, I hope that communications will slowly but steadily improve, and that we may expect them to be almost back to pre-war normal two years hence.
The new material on chalcolithic sites in Gilead is very interesting despite a certain vagueness of chronological outline, unavoidable at this stage. But then we are still without clear stratigraphic evidence for the phases antedating the upper Ghassulian levels. Incidentally, the accounts of the Tell el-Farcah work published in American newspapers are hardly intelligible at all.
I am having to slow up again, though happily nothing is wrong with my back. But I worked too hard apparently through September, and so I have a bout with my old enemy, low blood pressure, which has knocked me out several times in the past month, though I am carrying on as usual.
The world situation is so discouraging that the Palestine phase of it doesn’t seem so bad over here as it must to you. After all, India and China are in substantially the same impasse, with 200 times the population, while Europe is in a very bad way indeed. And the less said about the U.S.A. the better!
Once things do get back to some sort of normal, I am certain that there will be considerable archaeological activity on the part of Americans, though I hope we shall be content with smaller and more careful undertakings than was true of the pre-war years. McCown hasn’t has heard from for some time, and Tell-en Nasbeh, followed by Bethel, is resting quietly in proof, I mention Bethel because work on that is strictly dependent on the publication of the form, whose pottery is naturally identical with it for any given period.
Cordially,
W. F. Albright
P. S. I never did get around to write my article promised to the Jewish Frontier. I promised much too many things during the past year, after recovering from my operation!
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THE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY
BALTIMORE, MARYLAND
November 28th (thanksgiving), 1946
Dear Nelson,
Yours of the 17th has been received. I probably wrote you by regular mail in replying to your letter of Oct. 10th (which I do not have here, since I am writing at home), a fact which would account for your not having heard. Now that air-mail rates have been so drastically reduced, it will be easier to write.
I have just returned the corrected galley proof of the December BULLETIN, which contains your article on “Chalcolithic Pottery in Northern Gilead” as well as your annual report. There was no room for the Sukenik article, which I hope to include in the February number, deferring the index to places mentioned in Nos. 81-100. Printing is still exceedingly tight, and Furst has recently lost five of his best men, apparently infected by the same unrest which is playing havoc with reconstruction in this country. The BULLETIN has been reduced one-third in size, and will probably have to be cut to half before we are through, since I want to see the price kept at $1.00 if at all possible.
Naturally, I am very much pleased by your prospective turning down of the presidency of HUC, and hope that you will not regret the action. Of course, it will mean a considerable pecuniary sacrifice, but you will be happier, since I really don’t think that you would enjoy the life of a seminary president and spokesman for Reformed Judaism. I can understand that your friends in American have applied heavy pressure to persuade you to accept. I think it is now pretty definite that Burrows will go out to Palestine to take your place. I urged him to do it, pointing out that we had no one else in sight (my own commitments for 1947/8 make it impossible for me to go out). I am hoping that it may be possible for me to go out in the summer of 1949 (1948 is too soon, though I shall scarcely turn an invitation down); I do not plan to go out as director of any expedition henceforth, but rather to go along as archaeological advisor or possibly as joint director, in case the organizer of the expedition is someone whom I know well. However, all of this is highly uncertain, and I have no plans at all in mind at present. I have so much work to do here that I shan’t be sorry if I am forced to wait for an even later summer.
Your news-letters are exceedingly interesting and form my principal link with Palestine. I certainly don’t envy your situation there, in the midst of so much actual and potential unrest, with the virtual certainly that an Arab revolt will break out as soon as the Jewish revolt has subsided. I shouldn’t be at all surprised to see a three-cornered struggle on soon, with a kind of civil war between he factions of the Jewish underground raging simultaneously. Not a bright prospect — but the darkest prospect is always just before the dawn.
Sukenik spent Monday event and night with us, returning the following morning to New York. He brought a good deal of material with him, all very interesting. That numismatic corpus of Roman Palestine promises to be an undertaking of very great historical, topographical and archaeological value, and I earnestly hope that he can somehow raise the money to complete and publish it. In New York I saw Ehud Ben Yehuda, who has changed immensely, even though the Hebrew Dictionary project remains essentially the same. At $21.00 a volume I advised our library to wait until the projected cheaper edition comes out.
Tell en-Nasbeh has been lying on the coldrums for the past six months, but I hope the dex will be finished soon and that the two volumes will appear next summer. Printing began in the summer of 1944! My Bethel is waiting patiently for the appearance of T.N., since the pottery of the same periods is identical and it would be foolish not to combine the material of the two volumes in elucidating the Bethel material.
Since Europe has been restored to relatively free postal intercourse I have been very busy corresponding with my old European friends. I hear from a German friend that an international congress of Orientalists is being planned for Paris in 1948. After the last war it took ten years before scholars got together for a congress in our field. But now all European scholars realize the necessity of close international collaboration, and nobody seems to expect a return (just like that) to pre-war conditions, as was confidently expected after the first world war. Certainly there is a great deal of friendliness among scholars, even including the Germans. You have done yeoman service toward international collaboration yourself to late. I haven’t tried to do anything except show friendship to individuals. Even some of the men whom I considered as rather hostile have been friendly. Mowinckel got me an honorary degree from Oslo; the Belgians gave me a foreign membership in the Royal Flemish Academy and the Parisians an honorary membership in the SocieteAsiatique.
I don’t know whether I mentioned the enthusiastic reception which your JORDAN has received from Dr. Harris Kirk, our leading Baltimore clergyman and bibliophile; he sings its praises to everyone all the time. Says it is not only fascinating but full of sermon material. I haven’t heard anything about sales, but hope that they are keeping up. I am delighted to hear about the Hebrew and Arabic editions.
1947
THE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY
BALTIMORE, MARYLAND
February 17th, 1947
Dear Nelson,
Your letter has just been received. By all means come whenever you can; our latch-string will always be out, and except for an out-of-town trip the middle of this week I except to be home for several weeks, without interruption. This spring I shall cut out engagements and decline others right along, since I shall otherwise have no time at all for work of scholarly type.
I am delighted to know that your energetic intervention forestalled the evacuation of the Jeffreys. That would certainly have been a blow to us.
I can sympathize with your predicament. However, I must say that it comes at a time when further explorations in Palestine would probably be blacked and when a few years in this country would not hurt. I can easily see the difficult situation in which the Hebrew Union College finds itself. Quite aside from your personal qualifications, you are, thanks in large part to your long association with the School in Jerusalem, the only outstanding candidate (malgrevous) who is strictly neutral in the Zionist squabble which has again split Reform Jewry into two parts. Moreover, you are the only Jewish biblical scholar with both feet on the solid rock of fact and common sense, again because of your many years of excavation and exploration. This means that you are not going to found your philosophy of life and religion on preconceived speculative premises, but rather on pragmatic reality — and on a historical reality which is harnessed to ideals rather than to party slogans.
Anyway, you are only forty-six, whereas I am fifty-five — and still I expect to be back digging in Palestine in a few years, though not in the capacity of director of an expedition. All I want is to guide the methods and aims of a dig, not to get the doubtful kudos of “directing’ it.
I must warn you: when you come you are certain to get from Ruth a sermonette on your duty to your wife and family! In other words, Ruth will throw herself vigorously on the side of the friends who are pushing you to accept election as president of the College. If you do accept, no one with the slightest knowledge of the facts can say that you played politics in order to get the job! And you are the only man of whom this could possibly not be said fairly.
Cordially,
W. F. Albright
—
THE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY
BALTIMORE, MARYLAND
March 22nd, 1947
Dear Nelson,
Your card of the 19th has just reached me. I referred to Miss Kenyon’s review in BASOR 90, pp. 17 f., n. 77a and discussed the same point in FSAC 31 (without, however, mentioning Miss Kenyon’s name).
Speaking of Miss Kenyon, Wendell Phillips spent the night with us on Thursday and went up to Philadelphia with me yesterday. (He is the young Californian who has single-handed raised $200,000 in cash and equipment for the South-African Expedition of the University of California.) He saw Miss Kenyon at the Institute of Archaeology in Regent’s Park, London, a week ago and found her well, but bigger around than ever. She is a first-class archaeologist, but too much disposed to regard herself as the final arbiter of everything archaeological.
Cordially,
W. F. Albright
P. S. I turned over the preliminary copy for the April BASOR to Furst on the 14th. Included in it were the two papers by Kirkbride and YigaelSukenik, both of which had to be gone over very carefully several times before editing. I’ll send you the galley proofs of both to glance over; there just isn’t time to send them to Palestine, especially since the chances that they would not be delayed considerably are meager. Besides, I don’t want to give young Sukenik any excuse for rewriting his paper in the galleys! Since the number will be limited to 24 pages, these two papers practically make up the number.
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THE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY
BALTIMORE, MARYLAND
June 29th, 1947
President Nelson Glueck,
Hebrew Union College,
Cincinnati, Ohio.
Dear Nelson,
Many thanks for your letter of June 13th, about the two fellowships being offered to Christian graduation theological students. I have been thinking about the matter again and again, but so far I have not thought of any good candidate. Half of my students are either Catholic or of Jewish origin (both Jewish and Chrstian in religion); the better students among those remaining are pretty well tied down at the moment with jobs or with dissertations which they want to finish. However, I’ll keep thinking and if any candidate turns up I will certainly let you know. What is the dead line for applications? If the offer is circularized there should be a number of good applicants. I think it is a grand idea.
In this connection I want to congratulate you on the two honorary degrees, about which I heard from Neuman. You will have many more, I assure you, before you are through!
Busy are you are, I don’t want to bother you with ASOR business, but this matter of Shukri’s pension troubles me. A copy of a letter from Burrows to Kunhardt says that Shukri was offered 5L.P. a month or 200 L.P.quittance and that he chose the latter. Now I receive a letter from Shukri saying that he was offered 5 L.P. a month or 500 L.P. in a lump and that he has accepted the latter sum, with which he plans to buy a taxi for his son, so the latter can support him. Regardless of the amount (which is absurdly large in Shukri’s version), I am certain that if Shukri receives the large sum, the taxi will be wrecked or stolen, or the income from it will be squandered, and Shukri will be back on our shoulders penniless in no time. What do you think? Burrows seemed in a hurry to get the 200 L.P. sent over, but this seems to require more consideration.
Cordially,
W. F. Albright
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THE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY
BALTIMORE, MARYLAND
June 29th, 1947
Dear Nelson,
Thanks awfully for going to so much trouble so promptly! I have just had another letter from Dr. Scott, who is evidently worried. I am going to suggest to Burrows by air-mail that he pay Shukri a pension of five pounds a month until I get there next summer, and that he pass the buck to me. I have known Shukri much longer. By showing Shukri a special letter which I will send him, he can make it clear to Shukri that he (Burrows) is not responsible for our reaction. I suspect that Burrows was simply overwhelmed by Shukri’s enemies before he had a chance to settle down. Not that I consider Shukri as honest in our sense, but I don’t believe he is quite a crook. If he is, he certainly should not receive such a bonus as a reward, since our future servants will be tempted to out-herod Herod. I shouldn’t be at all sun rised if a year of cooling his heels plus some medical attention if necessary wouldn’t make him anxious to get back to his old job. I don’t agree with Burrows that we must not be paternalistic in cases like Shukri’s. Anyway, that ASOR budget must come down next year, when I am there.
I’ll keep you abreast of plans for excavation, etc.
Cordially,
W. F. Albright
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THE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY
BALTIMORE, MARYLAND
July 16th, 1947
Dear Nelson,
I hate to bother you again, especially after your good letter of the other day, but I should like to have you glance over the enclosed copies, just received this morning from Mr. Kunhardt. I am sorry that he is being bothered by such trifles (from the standpoint of our real purpose) so early in his period of office at treasurer. You need not answer at length; I have your opinion in your previous letters. But if there is any point that troubles you please le me have the works!
This expenditure of $2000 looks like a danger signal for the future. We might as well give up our archaeological program entirely if we are to have such a constant drain on our treasury.
I have been inundated with long letters and copies of letters of Aage Schmidt. At last he sent me a typed copy which I could read. You can imagine the contents. Over half of the letter is devoted to the complex intrigues and activities of the servants at the School, on behalf of Shukri (I mean, Schmidt supports Sh.).
This summer I am trying to get through a terrific mess of commitments, including about 600 pages of manuscript. About a third of the latter is done, but I am pretty far behind on other matters. Luckily I am in better health than I have been for years.
Plans for excavation in 1948/9 are coming along. Sellers, Kelso and Wright all want to do some work, so I shall probably be kept busy as archaeological adviser. There are also nibbles from other quarters.
I hope that your work is developing satisfactorily and that you are not too homesick!
Cordially,
W. F. Albright
—
NELSON GLUECK
162 GLENMARY AVENUE
CINCINNATI 20, OHIO
30 August, 1947
Dear William:
We got back last week from Colorado, after having a wonderful vacation. It is the first time in a number of years that Helen and Charles Jonathon and I were together in this country. It was a rough camp in the mountains. We slept in a small tent on the ground, and did a great deal of horseback riding.
I found the card with the two alternatives on the Shukri matter, and checked the one suggesting that he be given five pounds a month till July 1948. I have been thinking about the matter since then, and would like to suggest that a definitive settlement be made now. I believe it will create an impossible situation among the servant staff if you take Shukri back next year. He was receiving what was, comparatively speaking, an excellent wage. He has been increasingly guilty of stealing during the last years, and the main reason I instituted the severe checks in the kitchen that I did was to put more and more controls over him. His “percentages” were getting completely out of bound. You may recall from my letters or reports, that I instituted the practice of weighing the meats, vegetables, etc., and of checking in other ways. And he had constantly to be watched. That is true of almost any one who may take his place, although at the present, Omar, who has succeeded him is absolutely honest.
The morale and comparative efficiency of the servant stair has been maintained by a series of balances and counterbalances among the servants. I never permitted one clique or members of one family to rune the place, because that meant that there were no checks on each other through mutual jealousies, and no one who could do anything he or she wanted without being reported on. If Shukri is reinstated, it means that he will rule the roost. That won’t matter too much if you are there next year, or if I, inshallah, am the year after, although it will make things with the rest of the servants very difficult. It will definitely make Mrs. Pommerantz’s position most difficult, if not untenable, because Shukri would like to have her removed, for the sake of having that check also removed. I am afraid that Omar and Helene who have been with us for years would leave, because he would attempt to tyrannize them. The situation might become completely unmanageable, should someone be director for a while who hasn’t a great deal of experience at the School.Shukri has attempted to tyrannize Omar and Helene, and not succeeding has tried to get them removed. He has accused them of sleeping together. I doubt it, but my answer has always been that I didn’t care what the servants did outside of the School grounds, as long their conduct and work inside our compound was proper and satisfactory.
In a word, what my thought is, is this. Perhaps, too large a sum may have been offered to Shukri as a final pay-off of all obligations on the part of the School. But having once been dismissed, I feel that it would be a mistake to take him back, even when you return to Jerusalem, inshallah, next year. There is no question in my mind but that he would be better off if he accepted the L.P. 500 offered him and purchased land with it. He did not take it in one lump sum, but rather at the rate of L.P. 5 a month. It is perfectly ridiculous to think that he can purchase a taxi for L.P. 500. Any halfway decent car in Palestine today costs on the Black market from 1500 to 2000 pounds, and so few cars are being imported for legal sale, that they are distributed by the Government, – allocations being determined probably by pull or by bribes.
Shukri is not badly off. He has a two story house in Jifneh, some land there, and he is still able to get a job. And, furthermore, the demands which his sons and his wife’s family are going to continue to make on him increasingly will make it more and more difficult for him to remain comparatively honest.
I think I wrote in a previous letter, that having taken the action, I thought we would have to back up what Burrows decided to do. Upon thinking over the matter, I feel that from many points of view, that is the correct thing to do. May I suggest that you urge Shukri to take the L.P. 500 and buy some more land in Jifneh with it. Land prices being what they are, he won’t be able to buy much, but he will have more in the long run than he will have financing his sons, who, I am afraid, have become Effendis. I don’t think Shukri should now or next year be taken back into employment at the School.
As for myself, I am commencing the new work, and will work with all my might, but my heart is in the School in Jerusalem. I abide by my intention to return, inshallah, permanently two years hence. And I am planning now to return immediately for four or five months, beginning next June. I have talked the matter over thoroughly with Helen, and she is agreed with me that I am to go back for such a period beginning, next summer. I am organizing things here now, with that in view, and with my laying down of this new work here completely several years hence. An executive assistant has been appointed, who already is being given authority to do mostof the inner administrative work. He is very capable. Blank has been appointed Chairman of the Faculty, and will tend to all student records, arrangements of classes, credits, etc. He is very good at that, and likes that kind of work. In a word, the machinery is being set up that is needed at the College today. I have no fear of delegating authority, and I don’t propose to be an office executive. I have oversimplified in presenting the situation, but that is the general picture.
What I should like, if possible, when returning to Jerusalem next summer, is to be appointed Professor of Archaeology at the School. I should then work several months in T.J., finishing some sectors I missed, and going over some sites, about which questions have arisen in the course of my writing them up, that I can’t answer without a reexamination, if possible. However, I am not going to the ms. of Explorations IV, on that account. I have taken out the materials again today, and will start working on them again this week. Since my return from Colorado last week, I completely rewrote the articles on Edom and Moab for the Brittanica. S.A. Cook’s articles which they sent me could not be revised. If you and Sellers do any digging next summer, I should like to join you, and could do my T.J. work afterwards. I want to spend a minimum of 4 months, and hope to arrange it so that I can spend 5 months in Palestine and Transjordan.
With best regards,
Sincerely, NG
—
THE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY
BALTIMORE, MARYLAND
September 2nd, 1947
Dear Nelson,
Many thanks for your letter of the 30th August, which crossed mine of September 1st. I am glad that you have changed your mind about the Shukri matter, since I recommended in this letter that the Executive Committee reverse its previous decision, in the light of new correspondence from Burrows. What you say relieves my conscience completely about this reversal. I feel sure that you have already voted to reverse our decision and have sent the material on to Sellers.
It is increasingly likely that I will go out to Egypt this winter for three months to work with Wendell Phillips African Expedition of the University of California. It has not been made official yet, but apparently things are working out nicely. I have known the boys for years; he is the whiz-bangest (quoting Harlow Shapley, who ought to know) promoter of research that ever was. I wrote Burrows some time ago asking him to designate some one to replace me as acting president during my absence. The offer came only the middle of August.
I am delighted to hear about your reorganization of the administrative set-up at HUC, which means that you are not going to be overwhelmed with office work. I am sure that Blank is the right man to be chairman of the faculty. The appointment of an executive assistant is also a step in the right direction. Morgenstern worked much too hard.
I hope that the situation in Palestine will not be chaotic this coming summer, but I fear the worst, with the Arabs attacking the Jews and Jewish terrorists provoking the Arabs and both sets of extremists assassinating all the moderate leaders of both peoples whom they can. Anyway, Sellers and I are proceeding with plans for Beth-zur. We shall be more than happy to have you with us as much and as long as you can; I shall have to spend part of my time at the School anyway, if I go out as director. Wright can’t go out this year.
I should have added that the projected work in Egypt will be archaeological exploration from Tanis to the Palestine frontier and from Raphia to Sinai. Huzayyin and Henry Field are also expecting to join, with the search for prehistoric settlements in the foreground. I also hope to make a few surroundings. If the proposed expedition doesn’t
blow up in our faces I hope it can be resumed or continued later.
I am beginning to feel the effects of too severe application this summer. I have finished some 450 pages out of a program of 600 (much of it extremely hard going), but I must slow up now and hope that I can finish it before leaving for Egypt (if I do!).
Keep up the good work on Explorations IV! We are way behind on our Annuals – quite aside from wanting to see your T.J. explorations under cover. Then you have Tannur and Kheleifeh to write up, while I have Bethel and a series of smaller digs. After this summer I shall have several volumes of lectures to write.
Give my best to Helen. Ruth had a toe cut up and was unable to walk for a fortnight after the operation, but she is rapidly improving and put on ordinary shoes this morning for the first time.
Cordially,
W. F. Albright
—
Baltimore, Oct. 22nd, 1947
Dear Nelson,
Many thanks for the Annual Report of the School, just received. I don’t think a separate report by Jeffery is needed. I had a good visit with him last Thursday, when I was at Union for some time. I have a definite reservation for a plane (Pan Am.) leaving New York on Nov. 19th and arriving in Damascus the following evening (barring unfavorable weather). I am to return the same way Feb. 9th, arriving here about the 11th. We are having trouble about the proper form of election, but Kraeling has promised to take my place and to act as second vice-president, so the procedure should be susceptible of solution. I am trying to finish up my P&P Archaeology of Palestine, working against time, with very inadequate aid, since it is impossible to find good assistance under resent circumstances. However, I hope to get through, in spite of these very irritating injections, etc.
W. F. Albright
1949
Baltimore, 2nd December, 1949
Dear Nelson,
Yours of the 29th at hand. The reference to Eduard Meyer’s pessimistic description of the lower Jordan Valley in the second millennium B.C. is found in his Geschichte des Altertums, Vol. II, 12 (1928), p. 96. This was written under the impulse of his first autopsy of Palestine, in 1926. He would have done better to have studied the geographers on the subject. Besides, his visit came in the autumn, before the rains began.
Cordially,
W. F. Albright