In Memory of E. A. SpeiserAuthor(s): Moshe GreenbergSource: Journal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. 88, No. 1 (Jan. - Mar., 1968), pp. 1-2Published by: American Oriental SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/597888 .

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IN MEMORY OF E. A. SPEISER

MOSHE GREENBERG

EPHRAIM AVIGDOR SPEISER was born on January 24, 1902 in Skalat, Galicia (then in Austrian Poland, now in the Ukrainian SSR). He gradu- ated from the Gymnasium of Lemberg (Lvov) in 1918, and came to the U. S. in 1920 where, under J. A. Montgomery and Max Margolis he earned an M. A. degree at the University of Pennsylvania in 1923 (thesis published as "The Hebrew Origin of the First Part of the Book of Wisdom"), and a Ph. D. at the Dropsie College in 1924 (thesis: "The Pronunciation of Hebrew according to the Transliterations in the Hexapla").' A Harrison Research Fellow in Semitics at the University of Pennsylvania from 1924-26, he then went to the Near East as a Guggenheim Fellow and Annual Professor of the Baghdad School of the American Schools of Oriental Research for the 1926-27 season. He surveyed northern Iraq (producing " Southern Kurdistan in the Annals of Ashur- banipal and Today"), and discovered and made preliminary excavations at Tepe Gawra. He also taught comparative Semitics at Jerusalem's He- brew University in 1927. Later, as field director of the Joint Excavation of the ASOR and the University Museum in 1930-32 and 1936-37 he thoroughly explored Tepe Gawra and nearby Tell Billa, establishing a reputation for scientific ex- cavation on the part of the Baghdad School (BASOR 183.5). The results were published in Excavations at Tepe Gawra, Vol. I (1935). His association with the ASOR continued as non-resi- dent director of the Baghdad School from 1934- 47, and as a vice-president of the Schools from 1948 to his death.

In 1928 Speiser joined the faculty of the Uni- versity of Pennsylvania as assistant professor of

I Full citation of all bibliographical items will be found on pp. 587-603 of J. J. Finkelstein and M. Green- berg, eds., Oriental and Biblical Studies: Collected Writings of B. A. Speiser (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1967). (Attention may be called here to supplementary items listed by J. A. Brinkman in Catholic Biblical Quarterly 30.282 f. and by W. W. Hallo in JAOS 88/3 [in Press].) That volume contains a fine appreciation of Speiser by J. J. Finkelstein (pp. 605-616), to which this notice is but an adjunct.

Semitics; three years later, at the age of 29, he became full professor. During the thirties he systematically published and integrated the data being uncovered at Tepe Gawra and Tell Billa into a new picture of the ethnic, linguistic and cultural composition of early Mesopotamia (Mesopotamian Origins [1930]). An abiding interest in the Nuzi tablets generated many studies, among which are the text publications of " New Kirkuk Documents Relating to Family Law" (1932) and (with R. H. Pfeiffer) One Hundred Selected Nuzi Texts (1936). Investigation of the Hurrian component at Nuzi and elsewhere led to a survey of " Ethnic Movements in the Near East in the Second Mil- lennium B. C." (1933) and to the organization of linguistic data culminating in the still standard Introduction to IHurrian (1941).

After the U. S. entered the Second World War, Speiser was called to Washington to serve as the chief of the Near East Section, Research and Analysis Branch of the Office of Strategic Services. At the termination of the war and his service he was awarded a Certificate of Merit whose cita- tion laid particular emphasis on his ability to anticipate where information would be needed well in advance of events. Reflecting this phase of his activity is his book on The United States and the Near East (1947, 1950), an insightful survey of the lands and peoples of the modern Near East in the light of their backgrounds.

Returning to academic life, Speiser took on the chairmanship of the Department of Oriental Studies at the University of Pennsylvania in 1947, a responsibility he discharged to his death. In 1954 he was appointed the first A. M. Ellis Pro- fessor of Hebrew and Semitic Languages and Literatures. Now his synthetic interests, always lively, came increasingly to the fore. Mesopo- tamian culture received his attention in the trans- lations of "Akkadian Myths and Epics " in Pritchard's Ancient Near Eastern Texts (1950, 1955) and in such studies as "The Idea of His- tory in Ancient Mesopotamia." Linguistic studies kept pace: articles on Akkadian lexicography and comparative Semitic morphology issued from his

1

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2 GREENBERG: In Memory of E. A. Speiser

pen. An outcome of his earlier work on Nuzi legal texts was a growing emphasis on the importance of law as a central feature of Mesopotamian civilization and a key to its understanding. Char- acteristic was his assertion that "A direct study of [Hammurabi's laws] can be far more revealing than scores of books about Hammurabi's Baby- lonia." 2

From 1955 on, Speiser's longstanding attach- ment to biblical studies (after Montgomery's death in 1949 he annually taught the course in a book of the Bible) was harnessed to the Jewish Publication Society's Bible translation project. He became a member of its translation committee, and his intense work for the next ten years on this project-he once estimated that fully a third of his time was devoted to it-overflowed in a series of learned and popular articles on biblical themes through the decade. At the same time he was both editing and contributing to the first volume of the World History of the Jewish Peoplee, At the Dawn of Civilization (1964), covering the Near Eastern background of biblical history. His last book, an introduction, translation and com- mentary to Genesis in the Anchor Bible (1964) was the fruition of this lifelong interest. " Sooner or later," he once wrote, "the intellectual fortunes that we amass in peripheral areas get to be wisely invested in the Bible." 3

Such a broad conception of Near Eastern civili- zation could not fail to inspire both colleagues and students. Speiser was a mainstay of the depart- mental seminar in "Interconnections of Oriental Civilizations" that for years bound together di- verse men and fields in an absorbing, common effort at enlarging horizons. Students in increasing numbers came to study under him, and his re- sponse to them was unstinting. To the end, and even amidst the pains of his last illness, he main- tained a gruelling teaching schedule, which in some years amounted to 12 hours a week and more. His lectures were models of lucidity and pointedness, based on full, carefully prepared notes which bear the marks of periodic revision, not only for substance but for language, wit and style.

He was generous in attention to individuals: colleagues and students found him ready to help

2 Oriental and Biblical Studies, p. 538. 8 Cited by Finkelstein from a letter, ibid. 606.

in personal and scholarly problems; with his worldly wisdom and academic expertise, he was repeatedly called upon for both types of advice. He had a sharp tongue and (as he was fond of saying) "did not suffer fools gladly." If he mis- prized a man, he did not mind letting him know it; yet upon those he regarded as deserving he bestowed unmeasured attention. His close combing of work submitted to him for criticism by veteran scholars as well as novice students was a standing kindness to men in the field. He was for a time an editor of this Journal, and served on the editorial committee of the ASOR; but his direct and indirect contribution to standards of scholar- ship and writing far outrun these specific services.

Speiser's eminence in his field was nationally recognized. He had been president of the Ameri- can Oriental Society and a member of its Execu- tive Board; vice-president of the American Asso- ciation for Middle East Studies, and of the Lin- guistic Society of America; he was a fellow of the American Academy for Jewish Research. The Hebrew Union College honored him with a Doctor of Hebrew Letters and later named him to the Board of Overseers of its Archeological School in Jerusalem. His reputation in humanistic circles earned him membership in the American Philo- sophical Society and on the Advisory Board of the Guggenheim Foundation. In 1959 the Ameri- can Council of Learned Societies awarded him a prize for outstanding scholarly achievement in the humanities. And in 1964 the University of Penn- sylvania named him University Professor, a title reserved for distinguished scholars who have con- tributed to more than one discipline.

Speiser exerted a rallying influence on those who worked with and under him. He looked for and found coherence, and was able to impart the sense of it to others. He had a gift for bringing out one's strengths and spurring one to his best effort-chiefly through his own example of ex- cellence and his ability to teach of what excellence consists. The many students who, by his death on June 15, 1965, had come to study under him felt he was the embodiment of healthy scholarship.

For those who knew him, the memory of E. A. Speiser is a call to style and standards, to integrity and breadth of outlook, to the acceptance of responsibility for the advancement of knowledge.

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E. A. SPEISER (1902-1965)

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