John P. Peters (1852-1921) devoted considerable energy, determination and leadership to creating support for American involvement in archaeological excavations in Mesopotamia. After securing sponsorship from the University of Pennsylvania and initial funding, he faced daunting tasks of negotiating with the ruling Turkish government and maintaining local tribal cooperation with archaeological explorations of the massive site of Nufar, ancient Nippur.
Here is a photograph of Peters standing beside the Director of the Ottoman Imperial Museum. The tablets and other artifacts found by Peters and his team at Nippur were divided between the Ottoman Turkish authorities for their Museum and Peters for the newly established University Museum in Philadelphia.
An excellent photograph of John Peters, from files of the Yale Babylonian Collection, is reproduced by Bruce Kuklick, Puritans in Babylon: The Ancient Near East and American Intellectual Life, 1880-1930, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996, p. 96.
This photograph is taken from John Punnett Peters, Nippur or Explorations and Adventures on the Euphrates: The Narrative of the University of Pennsylvania Expedition to Babylonia in the Years 1888-1890, New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1897, Volume II, p. 8.
The site of Erasmus Compositor has sharpened its focus onto issues of modern business communications, including guidelines for résumé development. Most of the material on ancient Sumerian communications has been moved and updated at Dubsar the Cuneiform Scribe. Please continue your tour of Nippur in the center of Sumer and Akkad with Dubsar the Cuneiform Scribe.
