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Barton, George Aaron (12 November 1859–28 June 1942), Assyriologist and biblical scholar, was born in East Farnham, Quebec, Canada, the son of Daniel Barton, a farmer and blacksmith, and Mary Stevens Bull. He attended the Oakwood Seminary, Poughkeepsie, New York, becoming a minister of the Society of Friends in 1879, and graduated from Haverford College with an A.B. in 1882 and an M.A. in 1885. Around 1883 he moved to Boston, where he worked in insurance for a year, then from 1884 to 1889 taught mathematics and classics at the Friends School in Providence, Rhode Island. In 1884 he married Caroline Brewer Danforth; they adopted one child. In 1889 he entered Harvard Graduate School (M.A. 1890), where he studied Assyriology with David G. Lyon and Semitics and the Bible with Crawford H. Toy and Joseph H. Thayer. In 1891 he received his Ph.D. for a study, “The Semitic Ishtar Cult,” later published in the ...

Clay, Albert Tobias (04 December 1866–14 September 1925), Assyriologist, was born in Hanover, Pennsylvania, the son of John Martin Clay, a machinist, and Mary Barbara Sharpe. He graduated from Franklin and Marshall College in 1889 and from the Lutheran Theological Seminary, Mount Airy, Pennsylvania, in 1892, with ordination in 1893. He then went to the University of Pennsylvania as the first fellow there in Assyriology to study with ...

Gelb, Ignace Jay (14 October 1907–22 December 1985), Assyriologist, was born Ignace Jerzy Gelb in Tarnow, Poland, the son of Salo Gelb, a soldier, and Regina Issler. He attended the Gymnasium in Tarnow from 1917 to 1925, when he went to Florence, Italy, to study Renaissance art but became interested in Near Eastern studies and historical geography. From 1926 to 1929 he studied Near Eastern languages at the University of Rome under Giorgio Levi della Vida, the Semitist and Arabist, Carlo Nallino, the Arabist, and others, receiving his doctorate summa cum laude in 1929. Invited shortly thereafter by ...

Goetze, Albrecht (11 July 1897–15 August 1971), Assyriologist, was born in Leipzig, Germany, the son of Rudolf Goetze, a prominent psychiatrist, and Elsa Roemmler. He began his university education at Munich and Leipzig in 1915. The following year he fought in the German Imperial army on the western front. Thrice wounded, once critically, he was decorated for heroism and received a field commission. In 1918 Goetze began the study of Indo-European linguistics and Semitics at Berlin and Heidelberg, receiving his doctorate in linguistics at Heidelberg in 1922 on the subject of Italian phonology. His first monograph, ...

Haupt, Paul (25 November 1858–15 December 1926), Assyriologist and biblical scholar, was born in Görlitz, Germany, the son of Carl Gottlieb Haupt, a police officer, and Elise Hülse. He dropped his two original first names, Hermann Hugo, early in life. Graduating from the Gymnasium Augustum in Görlitz, he prepared for a career in music, but after entering the University of Leipzig, he concentrated in Semitic languages. He received his Ph.D. in 1878, under Friedrich Delitzsch; his dissertation was published in 1879 as ...

Hilprecht, Herman Vollrath (28 July 1859–19 March 1925), Assyriologist, was born in Hohenerxleben (Anhalt), Germany, the son of Robert Hilprecht, a tax official, and Emilie Wielepp. He spelled his name differently at various periods of his life, preferring “Hermann” for his first name in Germany but “Herman” in America; his middle name is spelled “Volrath” or “Vollrat” in some sources. After attending local schools in Hecklingen and Hoym and the Herzogliches Karls Gymnasium in Bernburg, Hilprecht entered in 1880 the University of Leipzig, where he studied theology, law, and Semitic languages. He received his doctorate under Friedrich Delitzsch in Assyriology in 1883 with a dissertation on a Babylonian boundary stone of the time of Nebuchadnezzar I in the British Museum. After spending two years in Switzerland for health reasons, he was appointed teaching assistant in Old Testament theology at the University of Erlangen. The following year he moved to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to become oriental editor of the ...