Puritans in Babylon: The Ancient Near East and American Intellectual Life, 1880-1930

by Bruce Kuklick

Overview

From the 1880s through the 1920s a motley collection of American scholars, soldiers of fortune, institutional bureaucrats, and financiers created the academic fields that give us our knowledge of the ancient Near East. Bruce Kuklick's new book begins with the story of the initial adventure of these determined investigators--a twelve-year dig near the Biblical Babylon, at Nippur, conducted at intervals from 1888 through 1900 and bankrolled by the Babylonian Exploration Fund. To unearth tens of thousands of cuneiform tablets, the leaders of this venture faced harsh living conditions in the desert and an academic war of each against all that was quickly begun at the site itself. As their knowledge increased, they risked their personal religious beliefs in the search for historical truth. Kuklick discusses their tribulations to illuminate two other contemporary developments: first, the maturation of the American university, particularly in contrast to its German counterpart; and second, the influence of religious-secular conflict on the ways in which Western scholarship appropriated or appreciated other cultures.

The Nippur expedition spawned unseemly (and entertaining) fights among the University of Pennsylvania, Johns Hopkins, Yale, Harvard, and Chicago for leadership in the study of the ancient Near East--not to mention disagreements with their own developing museums and an international scandal called the Hilprecht controversy. More significant than these quarrels was the concern for the meaning of history displayed in this period of Near Eastern scholarship. The field was linked to Biblical criticism and Judeo-Christian interests, and many of the orientalists originally possessed strong religious commitments--which some put aside as they struggled for objectivity. As recent critics have shown, "orientalism" was an example of the West's ability to appropriate the "other" for its own purposes. However, Kuklick's study demonstrates that the censure of orientalism hinges on modes of argumentation that scholars of the ancient Near East helped to legitimate, and at no small cost to themselves.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780691656564
Publisher:	Princeton University Press
Publication date:	12/04/2018
Series:	Princeton Legacy Library , #5224
Pages:	272
Product dimensions:	8.00(w) x 10.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

Bruce Kuklick is Killebrew Professor of History at the University of Pennsylvania. Among his books are To Every Thing a Season: Shibe Park and Urban Philadelphia, 1909-1976 (Princeton), Churchmen and Philosophers: Jonathan Edwards to John Dewey, and The Rise of American Philosophy: Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1860-1930.

Table of Contents

	List of Maps and Illustrations	xi
	Acknowledgments	xiii
	Introduction	3
Part 1	From the United States to Babylonia	11
	Main Characters in the Story	17
1	The Boys of Sumer, 1876-1888	19
2	In Their Ruins, 1889-1892	35
3	A Tale of Two Cities, 1893-1896	58
4	Hilprecht's Triumphs, 1897-1902	78
Part 2	From Babylonia to the American Ancient Near East	93
5	The Organization of Knowledge	99
6	The Peters-Hilprecht Controversy, 1903-1910	123
7	Archaeology and Objectivity	141
8	Intellectual Property	158
9	Orientalists and Their Civilizations	176
	Conclusion	196
	Abbreviations	204
	Notes	205
	Essay on Methods and Sources	235
	Index	247

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"The author brilliantly captures the characters, institutions, discoveries, and debates that accompanied the social and intellectual history of Near Eastern archaeology in the United States."—C. C. Lamber-Karlovsky, Harvard University

Editorial Reviews

"The author brilliantly captures the characters, institutions, discoveries, and debates that accompanied the social and intellectual history of Near Eastern archaeology in the United States."—C. C. Lamber-Karlovsky, Harvard University

From the Publisher