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The Ernst Herzfeld Papers at the National Museum of Asian Art, Smithsonian Institution: Identifying the Palmyrene Squeezes

Author: Eleonora Cussini orcid logo (Università Ca' Foscari Venezia)

  • The Ernst Herzfeld Papers at the National Museum of Asian Art, Smithsonian Institution: Identifying the Palmyrene Squeezes

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    The Ernst Herzfeld Papers at the National Museum of Asian Art, Smithsonian Institution: Identifying the Palmyrene Squeezes

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The National Museum of Asian Art at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC, houses a collection of about 30,000 documents originally belonging to the German architect and archaeologist Ernst Emil Herzfeld (1879–1948). They comprise photographs and negatives on glass plates, sketches, excavation journals, maps, and letters illustrating Herzfeld’s archaeological fieldwork in the Near East. Among them is a group of twenty-seven glass negatives documenting the work on Palmyrene epigraphy by one of his colleagues, the German semitist Moritz Sobernheim. Herzfeld and Sobernheim traveled extensively in Syria, Lebanon, and Jordan, collecting Islamic inscriptions. Their journeys and epigraphic survey are documented in photographs that are part of the Ernst Herzfeld Papers, and some of the images show their personal friendship and family relations. The photographs of the Palmyrene squeezes illustrate the use of three-dimensional replicas of inscriptions for study purposes and publication during that early phase of research. They are an invaluable record of Sobernheim’s pioneering epigraphic work and illustrate the productive working partnership between the two scholars. A careful analysis of the photographs, which present a reversed impression of the epigraphs on the paper squeezes, has allowed the identification of twenty-six Palmyrene inscriptions that are listed here according to the numbers on the negatives, with reference to text type and findspot, and are cross-referenced to the editio princeps and other major publications. The present identification provides a significant element to complete their inventory in the Ernst Herzfeld Papers.

Keywords: Palmyrene epigraphy, Palmyrene Aramaic inscriptions, Aramaic epigraphy, paper squeezes

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Cussini, E., (2026) “The Ernst Herzfeld Papers at the National Museum of Asian Art, Smithsonian Institution: Identifying the Palmyrene Squeezes”, Ars Orientalis 55: 2. doi: https://doi.org/10.3998/ars.9307

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Copyright to the content of the articles published in Ars Orientalis remains with the authors. Copyright to the images in the articles published in Ars Orientalis remains with the image rights owners.

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2026-02-17

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The Ernst Herzfeld Papers

The National Museum of Asian Art at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC, houses a collection of about 30,000 documents originally belonging to the German architect and archaeologist Ernst Emil Herzfeld (1879–1948). They comprise photographs and negatives on glass plates, sketches, excavation journals, maps, and letters. The documents illustrate many epigraphic surveys Herzfeld conducted together with his colleague and friend the German semitist Moritz Sebastian Sobernheim (1872–1933), as well as his archaeological fieldwork in the Near East.1 Following his retirement from Princeton University in 1944, Herzfeld sold his library containing rare books, his precious carpets and household furnishings, and his collection of ancient artifacts, and in May 1946 he returned to the Near East.2 He was first in Aleppo and Damascus, and in the fall he finally moved to Cairo. There he fell ill, and in 1947 he joined his sister Charlotte in Switzerland to undergo medical treatment in Basel, where he died on January 21, 1948. In 1946, upon the encouragement of his friend Richard Ettinghausen, then curator of Near Eastern art at the Freer Gallery of Art, Herzfeld had donated the bulk of his documents to the Freer Gallery and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery of what is now the National Museum of Asian Art.3 The rest of the documents were donated after his death by his heirs and friends to the same institution and to the Metropolitan Museum of Art.4 In the early 1950s, his sister Charlotte Bradford (formerly Brodführer) donated other documents to the Freer Gallery. The rest of Herzfeld’s papers and a manuscript that he had left at the French Institute in Cairo entered the Freer Gallery of Art Collection in 1952 and 1965.5 Additional documents were donated in 1960 and 1970 by one of Herzfeld’s friends, the leading American expert in Islamic numismatics Charles C. Miles.

While researching Moritz Sobernheim’s 1899 epigraphic survey of Palmyra, I consulted the online resources in the Ernst Herzfeld Papers, specifically the photographs of the paper squeezes of Palmyrene inscriptions from Herzfeld’s original negatives on glass plates measuring 13 by 18 centimeters, now housed at the National Museum of Asian Art. The images of the paper squeezes offer a glimpse of the early phases of epigraphic research at Palmyra.6 They also provide an invaluable record of inscribed artifacts now mostly lost after the destruction and plunder of the site and the Palmyra museum in 2015 and 2016. As the inventory notes accompanying Herzfeld’s glass negatives do not reference the inscriptions they illustrate, I identified each squeeze to provide the museum records with a significant element to complete the entries.

Among the images available for online consultation are family photographs that display Herzfeld and Sobernheim’s personal friendship and family relations. These last images, although not relevant to the discussion on the Palmyrene inscriptions and squeezes and their photographic reproduction, are important historical visual documents. Some of the family shots Herzfeld saved among his papers allow us to catch a glimpse into the world of renowned German Jewish scholars, patrons of the arts, and collectors, a world soon to be upset by persecution, flight, and relocation, and tragically disrupted.

Herzfeld’s Photographs and Early Epigraphic Surveys with Moritz Sobernheim

The Ernst Herzfeld Papers include glass negatives documenting the work on Palmyrene epigraphy by one of Herzfeld’s colleagues, Moritz Sebastian Sobernheim (1872–1933), a scholar with interests in Palmyrene and Islamic epigraphy who had visited Palmyra and nearby sites in 1899. Sobernheim surveyed the Palmyrene frescoed hypogeum known today as the Tomb of the Three Brothers, reexamined already known inscriptions, and made copies and paper squeezes of other new texts, which he published in an article in 1902.7 A larger collection of Palmyrene inscriptions appeared in a monograph he published in 1905.8 In preparing that contribution, Sobernheim worked on hand copies as well as on a group of paper squeezes he had received from Otto Puchstein (1856–1911), director of the German expedition to Baalbek, who made the squeezes during a field trip to Palmyra from Lebanon. From 1900 to 1914, Sobernheim, who was also a member of the archaeological expedition to Baalbek, made various epigraphic surveys in Syria, Lebanon, and Jordan. Herzfeld, who was also an architect and a skilled draftsman, collaborated with Sobernheim in preparing the architectural plans for the 1905 expedition to Baalbek.

In June and July 1908, Sobernheim and Herzfeld visited Aleppo, Hama, Homs, and other sites.9 A photograph taken in April 1908 shows them aboard a steamer in the Mediterranean on their way to Syria, with Maria Humann, wife of the German archaeologist Friedrich Sarre, with whom she was traveling to Egypt.10 Between March and May 1914, Sobernheim and Herzfeld continued their epigraphic mission in Aleppo and Damascus. They surveyed monuments and collected Islamic inscriptions as part of their ongoing project sponsored by the French Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, and directed by the Swiss Arabist Maximilien van Berchem (1863–1921). Their joint research project led to the publication of the series of monographs devoted to Islamic inscriptions from Egypt, Syria, Jerusalem, and Arabia, titled Matériaux pour un Corpus inscriptionum arabicarum: deuxième partie, Syrie du Nord; Inscriptions et monument d’Alep (1894–1985).11 Their research is documented in glass negatives and photographs that are also part of the Herzfeld Papers archive.12 In addition to details of inscriptions and their findspots, the negatives show images of the two scholars, sometimes accompanied by a colleague, local workers, or guides (see fig. 2b). Other photographs show Sobernheim at work, examining inscriptions and during visits to Aleppo and other sites (figs. 1a,b). In one picture, he sits pensively on a bench in the Great Synagogue in Aleppo, probably between 1908 and 1914 (fig. 2a). In 1916, Sobernheim, who was an active Zionist, became president of the Gesellschaft zur Förderung der Wissenschaft des Judentums (Society for the Promotion of Jewish Scholarship), and from 1918 to 1932, he was in charge of the departmente of Deutsch–Jüdische Beziehungen (German–Jewish Relations) at the German Foreign Office.13

A man sitting on a horse facing left in a desert landscape with a building and some trees in the background.
FIGURES 1A,B. (a) Moritz Sobernheim in Northern Syria (ca.1908–14). (b) Moritz Sobernheim on a ladder, examining an Arabic inscription in a fourteenth-century caravanserai, now destroyed, Khan al-Sabil, Idlib Governorate, Syria (ca. 1908–14). National Museum of Asian Art Archives, Smithsonian Institution, Ernst Herzfeld Papers, (a) FSA A.6 04.GN.3574; (b) FSA A.6 04.GN.3366
A group of men and women in formal dress.
FIGURES 2A,B. (a) Aleppo (Syria): Great Synagogue, Moritz Sobernheim seated, probably 1914. (b) Ernst Herzfeld (left) with Moritz Sobernheim (center) and an unidentified colleague and a local worker, probably 1914. To the right, detail of a wooden panel with geometrical motifs and Abu Bakr inscription (likely from the Takiyyat ash-Shaykh Abu Bakr), Aleppo. National Museum of Asian Art Archives, Smithsonian Institution, Ernst Herzfeld Papers, (a) FSA A.6 04.GN.3463; (b) FSA A.6 04.GN.3512

Herzfeld and His Friends: The Sobernheims and the Hahns

The Herzfeld Papers contain numerous records of Herzfeld’s archaeological fieldwork, which included the excavation of the Islamic site of Samarra on the Tigris that he conducted between January 1911 and July 1913 together with Friedrich Sarre (1865–1945), head of the Islamic department at the Kaiser-Friedrich-Museum in Berlin (now the Museum für Islamische Kunst). Once again, that project connected Herzfeld to Sobernheim and his family, and more precisely to Sobernheim’s sister Frida and her husband Georg Hahn.

Two photographs show a group of people in formal attire and are labeled “Professor Moritz Sobernheim family portrait, 1903/1904” (fig. 3a). Despite the lack of information, it seems probable that the photos were taken at a festive family celebration, perhaps an engagement or a marriage. Curiously, Moritz Sobernheim is not mentioned in the handwritten notes left by his son Rudolph in 1973 on a print from one of the two negatives.14 However, I suggest that Moritz Sobernheim can be identified as the young man on the right in the third row (standing behind an unidentified woman who looks down), behind and to the right of his brother Walter Sobernheim, who looks directly at the camera. Their sister Frida is in the front row, second from the left, in a dark gown with a long string of pearls, seated between a lady in a light gown and her uncle Rudolph Magnus, a renowned pharmacologist.15 Another glass negative (FSA A.6 04.GN.3572) shows an image of the same family group in slightly different poses, some having switched their positions. Perhaps the lady to the left of Walter Sobernheim (and behind him in photograph FS-FSA_A.6_04.GN.3572), covered by him in figure 3a, is his wife, Gertrud Schottländer.16 Frida’s husband, Georg Heinrich Hahn (1864–1953), was an art collector and heir of the company Hahnsche Werke AG, founded in 1890 in Großenbaum near Duisburg by his father, the steel entrepreneur Albert Hahn (1824–1898), who expanded it as Albert-Hahn-Röhrenwerke, and later as Hahnsche Werke. The family came from Breslau in today’s Lower Silesia, at the time part of Prussia, and their last name derived from the original form “Elchanan.”17 During the so-called Aryanization of Jewish-owned firms and properties, the process of confiscation that started in 1933, their company was sold to the Mannesman group and renamed Stahl und Walzwerke Großenbaum AG.18

The hallway of a synagogue with arched windows and a man seated on a bench against the wall.
FIGURES 3A,B. (a) Professor Moritz Sobernheim family portrait, 1903/1904: Georg Hahn (second row, at far left) and wife Frida Sobernheim (front row, second from left) next to her uncle Rudolph Magnus. Second row, between ladies: Walter Sobernheim; (behind him at right), Moritz Sobernheim (?). Top, center: Curt and Luise Sobernheim (?). (b) Moritz Sobernheim with Ernst Herzfeld’s sisters, Elizabeth (Boldt) and Charlotte (Bradford), between 1900 and 1907 (in Lebanon?). National Museum of Asian Art Archives, Smithsonian Institution, Ernst Herzfeld Papers, (a) FSA A.6 04.GN.3573; (b) FSA A.6 04.GN.3595

It is probable that Moritz Sobernheim’s research work inspired his sister Frida and brother-in-law Georg Hahn. They became collectors of ancient Near Eastern antiquities and patrons of the arts, and supported the excavations of Herzfeld and Friedrich Sarre at Samarra in Iraq, and Hugo Winckler’s work in Turkey at Boğazköy, where he discovered the ancient Hittite capital, Ḫattuša.19 In his capacity as a member of the board of the Vorderasiatische Gesellschaft, Georg Hahn generously contributed to the publications of relevant research.20 Thanks to his funding, eight cases with some of the Samarra findings were shipped to Germany in 1922 and displayed at the Kaiser-Friedrich-Museum in Berlin.21 As a token of appreciation for their financial support to the Boğazköy expedition, the Hahns received from Winckler two unique cuneiform tablets, the so-called Aleppo Treaty and the letter of the Egyptian Queen Nefertari, Ramses II’s wife, to the Hittite Queen Puduḫepa, wife of Ḫattušili III.22 Herzfeld’s expertise contributed to the expansion of the Hahns’ collection of Near Eastern and classical artifacts, displayed in their Berlin residence at Tiergartenstrasse 21, and in their summer home in Wannsee. The Tiergartenstrasse villa was destroyed by an Allied bombardment, and the modern building of the embassy of Turkey, completed in 2012, was built on a portion of the former lot. To mark the memory of a family member, a Stolperstein laid in 2009 by the German conceptual artist Gunter Demnig where the Hahns’ residence once stood commemorates Grete Sobernheim, daughter of Curt Joseph Sobernheim and Luise (Lilli) Rosenfeld (fig. 4).23 Curt and Lilli Sobernheim left for France in July 1933, where they were eventually arrested by the Gestapo and both died in 1940: Curt in the Cherche-Midi military prison and Lilli in unknown circumstances. Grete remained in Berlin and moved into an apartment in the Hahns’ villa until the whole residence was expropriated and she was forced to find different accommodations. On October 24, 1941, she was deported from the Grunewald train station to the Litzmannstadt ghetto in Łódź, where she died on March 9, 1942. An exquisite ex-libris with the names of Curt and Luise Sobernheim on a book looted from their library was discovered in the Württemberg State Library in Stuttgart, through an inventory of books looted from Jewish homes.24 This, together with the family photographs in the Herzfeld Papers, are faint traces of their former lives in Berlin.

A metal plaque inlaid among cobblestones. The text, in German, reads: Hier wohnte Grete Sobernheim, JG. 1894, Deportiert 24.10.1941, LODZ, Ermordet 9.3.1942.
FIGURES 4. Stolperstein for Grete Sobernheim, Tiergartenstrasse 20/21, Berlin (© Stolpersteine Coordination Center, Berlin)

Among the Near Eastern artifacts in the Hahns’ collection were cuneiform tablets, including the two donated by Winckler, a piece of Old Babylonian jewelry (a gold necklace from Dilbat), a notable collection of 428 cylinder and stamp seals, Islamic glasses, and Palmyrene funerary reliefs.25 At the end of 1938, when the Hahns left Germany, they managed to take a great part of their collection with them. After a period spent in England, they eventually settled in Latin America, first in Mexico and then in Rio de Janeiro, where Georg Hahn passed away at the age of ninety in 1953, followed by Frida at eighty-one in 1955.26 In 1947, the Dilbat gold necklace was sold to the Metropolitan Museum of Art through an art dealer on behalf of Georg Hahn, who, later that year, also donated four late–Old Babylonian or Kassite small cylinder seals dated to roughly the seventeenth or sixteenth century BCE.27 The collection of Mesopotamian seals was eventually donated to the State of Israel in 1965 by the Hahn-Voss family after the death of Anna Marie Hahn Voss in 1962. It is now kept on long-term loan at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem.28

The friendship and closeness between Ernst Herzfeld and the Sobernheims is also illustrated by other negatives in the Herzfeld Papers, which show cherished moments of happiness in their life, among them: Moritz Sobernheim and Herzfeld’s sisters (fig. 3b); Moritz’s wife, Klara Nelly Gitta Schiff, sitting in the nursery with a baby, perhaps their firstborn Rudolph; and her mother, Emma Clothilde Schiff, holding a baby, again, possibly Rudolph.29

Photographing the Palmyrene Paper Squeezes

As was commonly done at the time, the paper squeezes Sobernheim used to prepare his 1905 text edition were made by placing moist paper sheets on the stones, making sure that the paper filled the carved inscriptions. When the paper had dried, the squeezes offered a three-dimensional replica of the inscription, and provided a reliable physical reproduction of the texts.30 The twenty-seven glass negatives of the Palmyrene paper squeezes are an invaluable record of Sobernheim’s (and Puchstein’s) pioneering epigraphic work. They illustrate a technique of reproduction of the epigraphs quite common at the time, and document the productive working partnership between Sobernheim and Herzfeld. Moreover, Herzfeld’s glass negatives offer insight into the process of photographing the paper squeezes, which was probably carried out in Berlin around or after 1905, perhaps at Herzfeld’s home, either at Schaperstraße 37 or at Nürnberger Platz 5 (both in Wilmersdorf, Berlin), where he moved in 1909.31

A print from one of Herzfeld’s negatives offers a wider view of what surrounded the wooden easel on which the squeezes were pinned to be photographed (fig. 5a; a reverse image of the negative, allowing the inscription to be identified). The image preserves the atmosphere of a room decorated with elegant flower-motif wallpaper, a bourgeois interior turned into a photographer’s studio. To the left are labeled bottles probably containing chemicals used in the process of fixing the negatives and printing photographs, placed in orderly rows on two shelves. A pair of scissors and two large keys hang next to the bottles and, from the ceiling, a suspended oblong lightbulb, probably a red darkroom light used in the developing process. Behind the easel, pinned to the background wall is a sheet of paper and, in a frame, possibly a (university?) certificate, with elegant Jugendstil decoration, both unfortunately illegible. On the floor, below the easel, are two white enamel metal buckets and a jar. On the easel, ready to be photographed, is the paper squeeze of the left portion of a bilingual honorific inscription of 203 CE, in Greek and Palmyrene script (PAT 0316).32 The inscription was carved on a door lintel, and this allowed for long lines, especially of the Greek text, to appear on the stone. It is likely that the lintel was originally placed above a monumental gate in a public building, but in this as in many other cases, it had been reemployed in a later structure, a Byzantine church. There it was found by Otto Puchstein, as one reads in the introductory notes to this inscription in the Corpus inscriptionum semiticarum.33 As in other photographs of the Palmyrene squeezes taken by Herzfeld, one can see cardboard sheets of various sizes pinned on either side of the easel to extend its surface in order to unfold and display the entire squeeze. In 1905, Sobernheim published his edition of a group of Palmyrene inscriptions accompanied by photographs (of the same squeezes) made by “Frl. Ch. u. E. Gusserow,” whom he wholeheartedly thanked.34 I suggest identifying the two photographers as Charlotte (later von Bodeker, 1884–1953) and her sister Elisabeth Marie Emilie (later Schlepegrell, 1885–1968), daughters of the renowned Berlin gynecologist Adolph Ludwig Sigismond Gusserow (1836–1906) and Clara Margarethe Oppenheim (1861–1944), and at the time in their twenties. Although the paper squeezes are the same, there is no doubt that the images published in the 1905 edition and the set of negatives by Herzfeld resulted from different photo sessions. In the photographs by the Gusserow sisters, one may observe another setting: the squeezes are placed (or pinned?) on another support or background, different from the easel always seen in Herzfeld’s pictures. To confirm the possibility that Herzfeld photographed the squeezes after the 1905 edition was published, the museum notes to this section of the Herzfeld Papers, perhaps by Joseph M. Upton, an archaeologist and former collaborator of Herzfeld’s, read:

Glass negative related primarily to an expedition to Palmyra (Syria), carried out by Moritz Sobernheim in 1899, when he photographed and made squeezes of some of the inscriptions. A few years later, while in Berlin, Ernst Herzfeld collaborated with M. Sobernheim by drafting architectural plans for the 1905 expedition to Baalbek. At that time, he might have gained access to the squeezes of the Palmyrene inscriptions that are the subject of this series of glass negatives.

A room containing shelves with rows of bottles and an easel holding paper with raised indents of text across its surface.
FIGURES 5A,B. Paper squeezes of Palmyrene inscriptions, photographed in Herzfeld’s study (?), Berlin. (a) Right portion of a Greek and Palmyrene honorific text on door lintel. PAT 0316, CE 203. (b) Palmyrene honorific text on column bracket. PAT 0265, CE 117 (on smaller squeeze to the left, concluding portion of same text). National Museum of Asian Art Archives, Smithsonian Institution, Ernst Herzfeld Papers, (a) FSA A.604.GN.3429, photo file 12, image no. 95; (b) FSA A.604.GN.3427, photo file 12, image no. 75

In contrast, as Sobernheim pointed out in the 1905 edition, the squeezes photographed by the Gusserow sisters (and later by Herzfeld) were made by Puchstein and not by him. It seems likely that Herzfeld’s photographs were not yet available to Sobernheim when he submitted his Palmyrenische Inschriften for publication with the images provided by Charlotte and Elisabeth Gusserow. Later, Herzfeld photographed the squeezes again to preserve an important epigraphic record. The paper squeezes were in fact extremely fragile, and as the photographs show, they look quite worn out and damaged both in Herzfeld’s negatives and in the earlier images. It is unknown whether the process of reproduction was carried out by Herzfeld alone or if Sobernheim participated as well. Fifteen negatives are marked by sequential inventory numbers (3078–3095), and eight have another sequence (3427–3434), possibly an indication of two different photo sessions (figs. 6a,b). Finally, the negative with the image of a map of Palmyra has yet another inventory number (0840), as does the one of a paper squeeze with an inscription—not identified here—with remains of a line in Palmyrene script.35 In addition to cardboard extensions to accommodate squeezes of different sizes, the easel was turned vertically, and sometimes it held two or even three squeezes. At times, squeezes of different inscriptions were grouped and photographed together (e.g., figs. 7b, 12). Different squeezes reproducing parts of the same inscription appear together (fig. 5b), or were assembled, although not always according to the original layout of the epigraphs (fig. 8b). One negative shows a squeeze with a Greek inscription, and four lines in Palmyrene, below the Greek text originally from an altar (PAT 0344, CE 132; fig. 10a). Another inscription in Palmyrene, six lines, carved on another side of the same altar, appears on another squeeze, photographed alone (fig. 10b). A Greek and Palmyrene honorific inscription on a stone tablet (PAT 0260, CE 175) was copied onto two different paper squeezes because of its long lines, and each squeeze was photographed alone (figs. 11a,b).

A piece of paper with raised indents of text across its surface.
FIGURES 6A,B. Paper squeezes of Palmyrene inscriptions, photographed in Herzfeld’s study (?), Berlin. (a) Palmyrene honorific text on statue base. PAT 0315, 18 BCE. (b) Palmyrene honorific text on statue base. PAT 0314, CE 135. National Museum of Asian Art Archives, Smithsonian Institution, Ernst Herzfeld Papers, (a) FSA A.604.GN.3430, photo file 12, image no. 96; (b) FSA A.604.GN.3428, photo file 12, image no. 76
An easel supporting a piece of paper with raised indents of text across its surface.
FIGURES 7A,B. Paper squeezes of Palmyrene inscriptions, photographed in Herzfeld’s study (?), Berlin. (a) Palmyrene dedicatory text on altar. PAT 0334, after CE 89. (b) Palmyrene dedicatory texts on altars: (left) PAT 0361, CE 207; (right) PAT 0448, fragment, date lost. National Museum of Asian Art Archives, Smithsonian Institution, Ernst Herzfeld Papers, (a) FSA A.6 04.GN.3433, photo file 12, image no. 99; (b) FSA A.6 04.GN.3081, photo file 12, image no. 80
Two pieces paper on a board with raised indents of text across their surface.
FIGURES 8A,B. Paper squeezes of Palmyrene inscriptions, photographed in Herzfeld’s study (?), Berlin. (a, top) Palmyrene and Greek honorific text on column bracket. PAT 0267, CE 120. (a, bottom) Palmyrene dedicatory text on stela. PAT 0335, CE 135. (b) Greek and Palmyrene honorific text on column bracket (Greek, bottom squeeze, on front face of bracket; Palmyrene, top squeeze, on left side of bracket). PAT 0296, CE 179. National Museum of Asian Art Archives, Smithsonian Institution, Ernst Herzfeld Papers, (a) FSA A.6 04.GN.3434, photo file 12, image no. 100; (b) FSA A.6 04.GN.3078, photo file 12, image no. 77
A piece of paper with raised indents of text across its surface.
FIGURES 9A,B. Paper squeezes of Palmyrene inscriptions, photographed in Herzfeld’s study (?), Berlin. (a) Palmyrene and Greek honorific text on column bracket. PAT 0266, CE 127. (b) Palmyrene honorific text on column bracket. PAT 0306, CE 157. National Museum of Asian Art Archives, Smithsonian Institution, Ernst Herzfeld Papers, (a) FSA A.6 04.GN.3082, photo file 12, image no. 81; (b) FSA A.6 04.GN.3091, photo file 12, image no. 90
A piece of paper with raised indents of text across its surface.
FIGURES 10A,B. Paper squeezes of Palmyrene inscriptions, photographed in Herzfeld’s study (?), Berlin. (a) Greek and Palmyrene dedicatory text on altar. PAT 0344, CE 132. (b) Palmyrene dedication on another side, same altar. PAT 0344. National Museum of Asian Art Archives, Smithsonian Institution, Ernst Herzfeld Papers, (a) FSA A.6 04.GN.3085, photo file 12, image no. 84; (b) FSA A.6 04.GN.3083, photo file 12, image no. 82
A piece of paper with raised indents of text across its surface.
FIGURES 11A,B. Paper squeezes of a Palmyrene inscription, photographed in Herzfeld’s study (?), Berlin. Greek and Palmyrene honorific text on a stone tablet, divided into two squeezes. PAT 0260, CE 175. National Museum of Asian Art Archives, Smithsonian Institution, Ernst Herzfeld Papers, (a) FSA A.6 04.GN.3087, photo file 12, image no. 86; (b) FSA A.6 04.GN.3086, photo file 12, image no. 85
Three long pieces of paper with raised indents of text across their surface, mounted on a board with a studio in the background.
FIGURE 12. Paper squeezes of Palmyrene inscriptions, photographed in Herzfeld’s study (?), Berlin. (top) PAT 0554, CE 204; (center) PAT 0307, date lost; (bottom) PAT 0311, date lost. National Museum of Asian Art Archives, Smithsonian Institution, Ernst Herzfeld Papers, FSA A.6 04.GN.3088, photo file 12, image no. 87

Palmyrene Inscriptions in Herzfeld’s Glass Negatives: Identifying the Records

The paper squeezes provide a “negative” three-dimensional image of the inscriptions; therefore, all of the available images have been reversed here in order to allow Greek and Palmyrene inscriptions to be read. For this reason, the handwritten inventory numbers appear reversed in the images presented here. Present whereabouts of the original Palmyrene squeezes are not indicated in the museum notes to the Herzfeld Papers.36 The examination of Herzfeld’s photographs of the squeezes, based on consultation of the online resources, has allowed me the identification of the following twenty-six Palmyrene inscriptions, listed here according to the number on each glass negative. In the case of no. 27, it was not possible to read and identify the inscription on the basis of the remains of one line. The process of making two squeezes to reproduce one inscription took place on the field, and depended on the length and dimensions of given inscriptions (e.g., fig. 11). When the inscription was rather long, the epigraphists used two separate sheets of paper. During the photographic session, the two parts of the original inscription were sometimes reassembled, although not always, according to the original layout. One negative shows the squeeze with a Palmyrene inscription pinned on top, and that with the Greek text below it (fig. 8b). In contrast, the Greek inscription was carved on the front face of that column bracket, and the Palmyrene text, in longer lines, on its left side as one can see in PAT 0296, CE 179 (no. 1, below).

The present identification of each inscription has been a relatively complex process. In the first place, each photograph had to be reversed in order to obtain a positive image and enlarged as a whole and in its details, allowing for easier examination. Second, it was possible to read and cross-reference each text. Only at a later point did it became evident that the same squeezes appeared in the photographs accompanying Sobernheim’s 1905 edition. A comparison between the texts and images in that publication to those in the Herzfeld Papers confirmed the correct identification of each Palmyrene inscription. Today, however, as the literature shows, several readings in Sobernheim’s first edition have been improved and completed. The negatives in the Ernst Herzfeld Papers archive illustrate the following inscriptions, still in situ or part of the collection of the former Palmyra museum until 2015.

  1. FS-FSA A.604.GN.3078 (photo file 12, image no. 77):37 Sobernheim 1905, XIII, 28 = PAT 0296, CE 179 (IGLS XVII.i, 11638). Greek (six lines) and Palmyrene (four lines) honorific inscription on a column bracket from the Transversal Colonnade (fig. 8b).

  2. FS-FSA A.604.GN.3079 (photo file 12, image no. 78): Sobernheim 1905, XI, 24 = PAT 0309, date formula partly lost, between 89 and 188 CE (IGLS XVII.i, 244). Greek (two extant lines) and Palmyrene (four lines) honorific inscription on a wall bracket from the agora.

  3. FS-FSA A.604.GN.3080 (photo file 12, image no. 79): Sobernheim 1905, VI, 10 = PAT 0268, CE 28 . Palmyrene honorific inscription (three lines) on a column bracket from the Temple of Bel.

  4. FS-FSA A.604.GN.3081 (photo file 12, image no. 80): two squeezes; (on left) Sobernheim 1905, VII, 13 = PAT 0361, CE 207. Palmyrene dedicatory inscription (seven lines) on an altar dedicated to the so-called Anonymous God, in the former Palmyra Museum; (on right) Sobernheim 1905, XVIII, 37 = PAT 0448, date lost. Palmyrene dedicatory inscription (remains of two lines) on an altar fragment, now lost (fig. 7b).

  5. FS-FSA A.604.GN.3082 (photo file 12, image no. 81): Sobernheim 1905, V, 8 = PAT 0266, CE 127 (IGLS XVII.i, 28). Greek (four lines) and Palmyrene (four lines) honorific inscription on a column bracket found reemployed in a later Muslim wall. In the former Palmyra Museum, in storage (fig. 9a).

  6. FS-FSA A.604.GN.3083 (photo file 12, image no. 82): Sobernheim 1905, XVII, 34b = PAT 0344, CE 132 (IGLS XVII.i, 13039). Greek and Palmyrene dedicatory inscription on an altar found reemployed in the Diocletian Camp area. The squeeze has a second Palmyrene dedication (six lines) carved on another side of the altar, offered by a son or descendant of the first dedicant (fig. 10b). The first inscription in Greek (five lines) and Palmyrene (four lines) appears on another squeeze; see no. 8 (fig. 10a).

  7. FS-FSA A.604.GN.3084 (photo file 12, image no. 83): Sobernheim 1905, XIV, 29a = PAT 0312, CE 64 (IGLS XVII.i, 124). Greek (nine lines) and Palmyrene (eight lines) honorific inscription on a column, framed by a tabula ansata, also visible on the squeeze that displays the Greek inscription and the beginning of the Palmyrene section (first and part of second line). The complete Palmyrene inscription appears on another squeeze; see no. 23.

  8. FS-FSA A.604.GN.3085 (photo file 12, image no. 84): Sobernheim 1905, XVI, 34a, XVII, 34b = PAT 0344, CE 132 (IGLS XVII.i, 130). Greek (five lines) and Palmyrene (four lines) dedicatory inscription on an altar found reemployed in the Diocletian Camp area (fig. 10a). For the other Palmyrene dedication on another side of the same artifact; see no. 6 (fig. 10b).

  9. FS-FSA A.604.GN.3086 (photo file 12, image no. 85): Sobernheim 1905, I, 1a = PAT 0260, CE 175 (IGLS XVII.i, 2140). Greek (eight lines) and Palmyrene (five lines) honorific inscription on a stone tablet from the Temple of Bel. The inscription was carved in long horizontal lines, and the squeeze contains a partial vertical section of both parts: roughly the second half of the Greek text and the first part of the Palmyrene. For the other portion, see no. 10. For an image of both squeezes, see fig. 11.

  10. FS-FSA A.604.GN.3087 (photo file 12, image no. 86): Sobernheim 1905, II, 1b = PAT 0260 CE 175 (IGLS XVII.i, 21). Greek (eight lines) and Palmyrene (five lines) honorific inscription on a stone tablet from the Temple of Bel. This squeeze completes the previous one, no. 9. The inscription was carved in long horizontal lines and contains a partial vertical section of both parts: the first half of the Greek text, and the second part of the Palmyrene text. Both squeezes appear in fig. 11.

  11. FS-FSA A.604.GN.3088 (photo file 12, image no. 87): Sobernheim 1905, XXIV, 42b = PAT 0554, CE 204 (top squeeze): Palmyrene funerary inscription, fragmentary (remains of three lines, lower portion of original text) probably recording the sale of a tomb section. In the former Palmyra Museum. Another portion of this inscription is on another squeeze; see no. 12. The same negative shows two other squeezes: (center squeeze) Sobernheim 1905, X, 22 = PAT 0307, date lost. Palmyrene honorific inscription on a column bracket from the agora (remains of four lines); (bottom, smaller squeeze) Sobernheim 1905, XII, 27 = PAT 0311, date lost. Palmyrene honorific inscription on a column bracket, from the agora (remains of one line). See fig. 12.

  12. FS-FSA A.604.GN.3089 (photo file 12, image no. 88): Sobernheim 1905, XXIV, 42a = PAT 0554, CE 204 (top squeeze, poor quality). Palmyrene funerary inscription, fragmentary, with remains of three or four lines, upper portion of the original inscription. The lower portion of the same inscription is on another squeeze; see no. 11. In the former Palmyra Museum. On the same negative, the bottom squeeze displays another epigraph: Sobernheim 1905, XII, 26 = PAT 0310, date lost. Palmyrene honorific inscription on a column bracket, from the agora (remains of one line).

  13. FS-FSA A.604.GN.3090 (photo file 12, image no. 89): Sobernheim 1905, VII, 11 = PAT 0269, CE 51 (IGLS XVII.i, 18). Greek (eight lines) and Palmyrene (five lines) honorific inscription on a column bracket, Temple of Bel, second column in eastern portico (top squeeze with central tear, smaller than the bottom squeeze, Palmyrene section only). The negative shows another squeeze, larger in size. This is another inscription: Sobernheim 1905, X, 23 = PAT 0308, date lost (IGLS XVII.i, 208). Greek (remains of three lines) and Palmyrene (remains of four lines) honorific inscription on a column bracket, from the agora (bottom squeeze).

  14. FS-FSA A.604.GN.3091 (photo file 12, image no. 90): Sobernheim 1905, IX, 21 = PAT 0306, CE 157 (IGLS XVII.i, 248). Greek (remains of seven lines) and Palmyrene (eight lines) honorific inscription on a column bracket, from the agora. The squeeze has the Palmyrene inscription only. See fig. 9b.

  15. FS-FSA A.604.GN.3092 (photo file 12, image no. 91): Sobernheim 1905, XXV, 43a = PAT 0316, CE 203 (IGLS XVII.i, 15741). Greek (remains of five lines) and Palmyrene (two lines) honorific inscription, found reemployed in a Byzantine church in Palmyra. The squeeze, almost illegible from Herzfeld’s negative, records the left portion of the inscribed lintel. The right portion appears on another squeeze; see no. 21 and fig. 5a.

  16. FS-FSA A.604.GN.3093 (photo file 12, image no. 92): Sobernheim 1905, III, 5 = PAT 0263, CE 108 (IGLS XVII.i, 23). Greek (two lines) and Palmyrene (seven lines) honorific inscription on a column bracket from the Temple of Bel, ninth column in southern peristyle: (top squeeze) Greek text, and Palmyrene (three lines); (bottom squeeze) Palmyrene (four lines).

  17. FS-FSA A.604.GN.3094 (photo file 12, image no. 93): Sobernheim 1905, XXII, 40 = PAT 0323 A, date lost. Palmyrene dedicatory inscription on stone fragment (remains of four lines). Another fragment, B (remains of two lines), is not documented by a squeeze. From the Diocletian Camp area.

  18. FS-FSA A.604.GN.3095 (photo file 12, image no. 94): Sobernheim 1905, VIII, 14 = PAT 0304, CE 181. Palmyrene honorific inscription on a column bracket, from the temple of Baalshamin (remains of seven lines; only ll. 4–7 of the original inscription on stone are partly legible).

  19. FS-FSA A.604.GN.3427 (photo file 12, image no. 75): Sobernheim 1905, IV, 7 = PAT 0265, CE 117. Palmyrene honorific inscription on a column bracket, Temple of Bel (five lines). The concluding part of ll. 1–5 appears on a separate squeeze, smaller in size, pinned next to the larger one. See fig. 5b.

  20. FS-FSA A.604.GN.3428 (photo file 12, image no. 76): Sobernheim 1905, XXI, 39 = PAT 0314, CE 135 (IGLS XVII.i, 12342). Greek (remains of one of two lines) and Palmyrene (remains of six lines) honorific inscription on a statue base, from the Diocletian Camp area. See fig. 6b.

  21. FS-FSA A.604.GN.3429 (photo file 12, image no. 95): Sobernheim 1905, XXV, 43 = PAT 0316, CE 203 (IGLS XVII.i, 157). Greek (remains of five lines) and Palmyrene (two lines) honorific inscription on a door lintel found reemployed in a Byzantine church. The squeeze has the right part of the Greek inscription, and the Palmyrene text (two lines) (fig. 5). For the left and initial portion of the Greek text, see no. 15.

  22. FS-FSA A.604.GN.3430 (photo file 12, image no. 96): Sobernheim 1905, XXIII, 41 = PAT 0315, 18 BC. Palmyrene honorific inscription for a woman, on statue base (five lines). Found by Puchstein near the ‘Afqa spring. In the former Palmyra Museum.43 See fig. 6a.

  23. FS-FSA A.604.GN.3431 (photo file 12, image no. 97): Sobernheim 1905, XV, 29b = PAT 0312, CE 64 (IGLS XVII.i, 124). Greek (nine lines) and Palmyrene (eight lines) honorific inscription on a column framed by a tabula ansata, from the Diocletian Camp area. This squeeze, partly damaged, only has the Palmyrene inscription. Another squeeze (no. 7) shows the Greek section and the first and part of the second line of the Palmyrene text.

  24. FS-FSA A.604.GN.3432 (photo file 12, image no. 98): Sobernheim 1905, XX, 38 = PAT 0313, CE 150 (IGLS XVII.i, 12844). Greek (remains of two lines) and Palmyrene (three lines) honorific inscription on two stone fragments, from the Diocletian Camp area. The squeeze has the Palmyrene text only.

  25. FS-FSA A.604.GN.3433 (photo file 12, image no. 99): Sobernheim 1905, XIX, 36 = PAT 0334, date formula partly broken. Palmyrene dedicatory inscription on altar (three lines). Found reemployed in the Diocletian Camp area. See fig. 7a.

  26. FS-FSA A.604.GN.3434 (photo file 12, image no. 100): (top squeeze) Sobernheim 1905, VI, 9 = PAT 0267, CE 120 (IGLS XVII.i, 2045). Greek (three lines) and Palmyrene (three lines) honorific inscription on a column bracket, found reemployed in a medieval Muslim wall. In the former Palmyra Museum. The bottom squeeze in the same image illustrates another text: Sobernheim 1905, XVIII, 35 = PAT 0335, CE 135. Palmyrene dedicatory inscription on stela, from the Diocletian Camp area (four lines). See fig. 8a.

  27. FS-FSA A.604.GN.3612 (photo file 12, image no. 74): squeeze fragment, with remains of Palmyrene letters, one line. Unidentified inscription. The squeeze is pinned upside-down on the easel.

Concordances

  • PAT = D. R. Hillers and E. Cussini. Palmyrene Aramaic Texts. Publications of the Comprehensive Aramaic Lexicon Project 3. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996.

  • PAT 0260 = Sobernheim 1905, I, 1a, II, 1b (FS-FSA A.604.GN.3086; FS-FSA A.604.GN.3087)

  • PAT 0263 = Sobernheim 1905, III, 5 (FS-FSA A.604.GN.3093)

  • PAT 0265 = Sobernheim 1905, IV, 7 (FS-FSA A.604.GN.3427)

  • PAT 0266 = Sobernheim 1905, V, 8 (FS-FSA A.604.GN.3082)

  • PAT 0267 = Sobernheim 1905, VI, 9 (FS-FSA A.604.GN.3434, top squeeze)

  • PAT 0268 = Sobernheim 1905, VI, 10 (FS-FSA A.604.GN.3080, top squeeze)

  • PAT 0269 = Sobernheim 1905, VII, 11 (FS-FSA A.604.GN.3090, top squeeze, Palmyrene text only)

  • PAT 0296 = Sobernheim 1905, XIII, 28 (FS-FSA A.604.GN.3078)

  • PAT 0304 = Sobernheim 1905, VIII, 14 (FS-FSA A.604.GN.3095)

  • PAT 0306 = Sobernheim 1905, IX, 21 (FS-FSA A.604.GN.3091)

  • PAT 0307 = Sobernheim 1905, X, 22 (FS-FSA A.604.GN.3088, center squeeze)

  • PAT 0308 = Sobernheim 1905, X, 23 (FS-FSA A.604.GN.3090, bottom squeeze)

  • PAT 0309 = Sobernheim 1905, XI, 24 (FS-FSA A.604.GN.3079)

  • PAT 0310 = Sobernheim 1905, XII, 26 (FS-FSA A.604.GN.3089, bottom squeeze)

  • PAT 0311 = Sobernheim 1905, XII, 27 (FS-FSA A.604.GN.3088, bottom squeeze)

  • PAT 0312 = Sobernheim 1905, XIV, 29a; XV, 29b (FS-FSA A.604.GN.3084, Greek text and two lines of Palmyrene text; FS-FSA A.604.GN.3431, end portion of Palmyrene text)

  • PAT 0313 = Sobernheim 1905, XX, 38 (FS-FSA A.604.GN.3432, Palmyrene text only)

  • PAT 0314 = Sobernheim 1905, XXI, 39 (FS-FSA A.604.GN.3428)

  • PAT 0315 = Sobernheim 1905, XXIII, 41 (FS-FSA A.604.GN.3430)

  • PAT 0323 = Sobernheim 1905, XXII, 40 (FS-FSA A.604.GN.3094)

  • PAT 0334 = Sobernheim 1905, XIX, 36 (FS-FSA A.604.GN.3433)

  • PAT 0335 = Sobernheim 1905, XVIII, 35 (FS-FSA A.604.GN.3434, bottom squeeze)

  • PAT 0344 = Sobernheim 1905, XVI, 34a, XVII, 34b (FS-FSA A.604.GN.3085, Greek text and four lines of Palmyrene; FS-FSA A.604.GN.3083, six lines of Palmyrene. This is another inscription, later than the bilingual text.)

  • PAT 0361 = Sobernheim 1905, VII, 13 (FS-FSA A.604.GN.3081, squeeze on left)

  • PAT 0448 = Sobernheim 1905, XVIII, 37 (FS-FSA A.604.GN.3081, squeeze on right)

  • PAT 0554 = Sobernheim 1905, XXIV, 42, photos a,b (respectively: FS-FSA A.604.GN.3089, top squeeze; FS-FSA A.604.GN.3088 top squeeze)

  • M. Sobernheim. Palmyrenische Inschriften. Mitteilungen der Vorderasiatischen Gesellschaft 10, Heft 2. Berlin: Wolf Peiser, 1905.

  • Sobernheim 1905, I, 1a, II, 1b = PAT 0260 (FS-FSA A.604.GN.3086; FS-FSA A.604.GN.3087)

  • Sobernheim 1905, III, 5 = PAT 0263 (FS-FSA A.604.GN.3093)

  • Sobernheim 1905, IV, 7 = PAT 0265 (FS-FSA A.604.GN.3427)

  • Sobernheim 1905, V, 8 = PAT 0266 (FS-FSA A.604.GN.3082)

  • Sobernheim 1905, VI, 9 = PAT 0267 (FS-FSA A.604.GN.3434, top squeeze)

  • Sobernheim 1905, VI, 10 = PAT 0268 (FS-FSA A.604.GN.3080, top squeeze)

  • Sobernheim 1905, VII, 11 = PAT 0269 (FS-FSA A.604.GN.3090, top squeeze, Palmyrene text only)

  • Sobernheim 1905, VII, 13 = PAT 0361 (FS-FSA A.604.GN.3081, squeeze on left)

  • Sobernheim 1905, VIII, 14 = PAT 0304 (FS-FSA A.604.GN.3095)

  • Sobernheim 1905, IX, 21 = PAT 0306 (FS-FSA A.604.GN.3091)

  • Sobernheim 1905, X, 22 = PAT 0307 (FS-FSA A.604.GN.3088, center squeeze)

  • Sobernheim 1905, X, 23 = PAT 0308 (FS-FSA A.604.GN.3090, bottom squeeze)

  • Sobernheim 1905, XI, 24 = PAT 0309 (FS-FSA A.604.GN.3079)

  • Sobernheim 1905, XII, 26 = PAT 0310 (FS-FSA A.604.GN.3089, bottom squeeze)

  • Sobernheim 1905, XII, 27 = PAT 0311 (FS-FSA A.604.GN.3088, bottom squeeze)

  • Sobernheim 1905, XIII, 28 = PAT 0296 (FS-FSA A.604.GN.3078)

  • Sobernheim 1905, XIV, 29a; XV, 29b = PAT 0312 (FS-FSA A.604.GN.3084, Greek text and two lines of Palmyrene text; FS-FSA A.604.GN.3431, concluding portion of Palmyrene text)

  • Sobernheim 1905, XVI, 34a, XVII, 34b = PAT 0344 (FS-FSA A.604.GN.3085, Greek text and four lines of Palmyrene; FS-FSA A.604.GN.3083, six lines of Palmyrene. This is another inscription, later than the bilingual text.)

  • Sobernheim 1905, XVIII, 35 = PAT 0335 (FS-FSA A.604.GN.3434, bottom squeeze)

  • Sobernheim 1905, XVIII, 37 = PAT 0448 (FS-FSA A.604.GN.3081, squeeze on right)

  • Sobernheim 1905, XIX, 36 = PAT 0334 (FS-FSA A.604.GN.3433)

  • Sobernheim 1905, XX, 38 = PAT 0313 (FS-FSA A.604.GN.3432, Palmyrene text only)

  • Sobernheim 1905, XXI, 39 = PAT 0314 (FS-FSA A.604.GN.3428)

  • Sobernheim 1905, XXII, 40 = PAT 0323 (FS-FSA A.604.GN.3094)

  • Sobernheim 1905, XXIII, 41 = PAT 0315 (FS-FSA A.604.GN.3430)

  • Sobernheim 1905, XXIV, 42, photos a,b = PAT 0554, CE 204 (FS-FSA A.604.GN.3089, top squeeze; FS-FSA A.604.GN.3088, top squeeze).

Author Biography

Eleonora Cussini, PhD (The Johns Hopkins University), 1993, participated in the Comprehensive Aramaic Lexicon project, codirected by Delbert R. Hillers, working on the lexical analysis of Palmyrene Aramaic (1986–96). Since 1999, she has been teaching semitic philology at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, and has offered courses in Aramaic and Palmyrene epigraphy at the University of Warsaw. Her research interests focus on Aramaic legal language, Aramaic and Palmyrene epigraphy, and Palmyrene social history, with attention to the role and representation of Palmyrene women, and on Jewish identity in first- to third-century Syria. She has published extensively on Aramaic legal language and Palmyrene epigraphy. With Hillers, she published Palmyrene Aramaic Texts (1996). Cussini also edited A Journey to Palmyra: Collected Essays to Remember Delbert R. Hillers (2005) and published a monograph on Palmyrene epigraphy, Tadmorena: Documenti per lo studio della cultura e dell’aramaico di Palmira (2022).

Notes

  1. On the history of the collection, see Colleen Hennessey, “The Ernst Herzfeld Papers at the Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery Archives,” Bulletin of the Asia Institute, n.s., 6 (1992): 131–41. The items are arranged in seven series: 1: Travel journals; 2: Sketchbooks; 3: Notebooks; 4: Photographic files 1–42; 5: Drawings and maps; 6: Squeezes; 7: Samarra Expedition. The collection documents Herzfeld’s field activity and excavations at Samarra, Persepolis, Pasargadae, and Aleppo: https://www.si.edu/object/archives/sova-fsa-a-06?destination=object/archives/components/sova-fsa-a-06-ref28381. On Herzfeld and his work, see Ann C. Gunter and Stefan R. Hauser, eds., Ernst Herzfeld and the Development of Near Eastern Studies, 1900–1950 (Leiden: Brill, 2005). This work contains only brief mentions of Sobernheim and Georg Hahn (see below). Therefore, it seemed important to highlight and discuss here the ties, the significant working partnership, and the friendship between them, using the visual documents in the Herzfeld Papers. ⮭
  2. His library was acquired by the Metropolitan Museum of Art. In 1938, Herzfeld sold part of his collection of artifacts to the British Museum. In 1945, he sold other parts of it to American museums and to a New York art gallery. See Ann C. Gunter and Stefan R. Hauser, “Ernst Herzfeld and Near Eastern Studies,” 3–44, esp. 37–38, in Ernst Herzfeld and the Development of Near Eastern Studies. ⮭
  3. In the 1970s, Herzfeld’s papers were catalogued and organized by Joseph M. Upton, his former collaborator at the Kuh-i Khwaja excavation in Iran. See Elizabeth S. Ettinghausen, “Ernst Herzfeld: Reminiscences and Revelations,” in Gunter and Hauser, Ernst Herzfeld and the Development of Near Eastern Studies, 609. ⮭
  4. For these materials, see https://www.metmuseum.org/art/libraries-and-research-centers/watson-digital-collections/manuscript-collections/ernst-herzfeld-papers; and Margaret Cool Root, “The Herzfeld Archive of the Metropolitan Museum of Art,” Metropolitan Museum Journal 11 (1976): 119–24. ⮭
  5. The manuscript was published posthumously in 1968: Ernst Herzfeld, The Persian Empire: Studies in Geography and Ethnography of the Ancient Near East, ed. Gerold Walser (Wiesbaden: F. Steiner, 1968). On the complexities of the publication process, see Ettinghausen, “Ernst Herzfeld: Reminiscences and Revelations.” 607. ⮭
  6. For recent research on archives of early leading scholars in the field of Palmyrene studies, see Jennifer A. Baird, “The Site of the Archive: Responsibility and Rhetoric in Archival Archaeology of the Middle East,” in Archival Historiographies: The Impact of Twentieth-Century Legacy Data on Archaeological Investigations, ed. Olympia Bobou, Amy C. Miranda, and Rubina Raja, Archive Archaeology 3 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2022), 161–73. For the archives of Harald Ingholt housed at the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, see The Ingholt Archive: The Palmyrene Material, Transcribed with Commentary and Bibliography, ed. Olympia Bobou, Amy C. Miranda, Rubina Raja, and Jean-Baptiste Yon (Turnhout: Brepols, 2022). For the archive of Paul Collart at the Université de Lausanne, see Patrick M. Michel, “Digital Treatment of Paul Collart’s Archives on the Temple of Baalshamin: Challenges and Results (2018–2021),” in Archival Historiographies, 129–44. ⮭
  7. Moritz Sobernheim, “Palmyrenische Inschriften,” Beiträge zur Assyriologie und semitischen Sprachwissenschaft 4 (1902): 207–19. ⮭
  8. Moritz Sobernheim, Palmyrenische Inschriften, Mitteilungen der Vorderasiatischen Gesellschaft 10, Heft 2 (Berlin: Wolf Peiser, 1905). ⮭
  9. For images of their fieldwork: https://www.si.edu/object/archives/components/sova-fsa-a-06-ref28708. ⮭
  10. Jens Kröger, “Ernst Herzfeld and Friedrich Sarre,” in Gunter and Hauser, Ernst Herzfeld and the Development of Near Eastern Studies, 86, fig. 4. As noted by Kröger, the photograph was probably taken by Sarre himself. ⮭
  11. Sobernheim contributed to the Corpus with a volume on Islamic inscriptions from northern Syria: Matériaux pour un Corpus inscriptionum arabicarum: deuxième partie, Syrie du Nord (Cairo: Institut français d’archéologie orientale, 1909); and Herzfeld dedicated three volumes to inscriptions from Aleppo: Matériaux pour un Corpus inscriptionum arabicarum: deuxième partie, Syrie du Nord; inscriptions et monument d’Alep (Cairo: Institut français d’archéologie orientale, 1954–56). In 1973, van Berchem’s daughter Marguerite, an archaeologist and art historian, created the Fondation Max van Berchem Genève: https://maxvanberchem.org/fr/. ⮭
  12. For other images of Herzfeld’s work in Lebanon: https://www.si.edu/search?edan_q=sobernheim%2Bbaalbek&. ⮭
  13. On this aspect of Sobernheim’s career and commitment, see the relevant collection of documents at the Center for Jewish Studies, Leo Baeck Institute, New York: https://archives.cjh.org/repositories/5/resources/20058. ⮭
  14. According to Rudolph, the man seated at the far right in the front row is Curt Sobernheim, Moritz’s brother. This seems unlikely, however, for at the time Curt was in his thirties, while that man looks much older. I would suggest that Curt is the one in the top row, center, and the woman next to him is his wife Luise Rosenfeld (1872–1940). In contrast, Rudolph identified the woman in the second row, center, as Luise. Again, this seems unlikely because she looks to be in her sixties. Cf. two photographs of Curt and Moritz Sobernheim in their sixties, in 1931 and 1932, right before Curt’s escape from Germany and Moritz’s death: https://www.gettyimages.it/immagine/sobernheim. ⮭
  15. According to Rudolph, the woman in the first row next to Frida was her mother, Anna Landau. However, in 1903 she was in her fifties, and the woman in the photograph looks much younger. Anna Magnus (1846–1908) married the banker Adolph Sobernheim (1840–1880), and they had four children: Georg (1865–1963), a physician and microbiologist, professor at the University of Bern; Walter (1869–1945), owner of the Schultheiss-Patzenhofer brewing company; Curt (1871–1940), deputy director and then director of the Reichsbank, and until 1931 a member of the board of the Commerz and Disconto Bank in Berlin; Moritz (1872–1933); and Frida (1874–1955). After the death of her husband, in 1883 Anna Sobernheim married Eugen von Landau (1852–1935), a successful banker and businessman, founder of AEG and of the Schultheiss-Patzenhofer brewing company, later inherited and directed by his stepson Walter Sobernheim. ⮭
  16. Walter Sobernheim and his family expatriated in 1933. Among the properties they were forced to sell was “Haus Waltrud” (from their names), their villa at Inselstrasse 16/18 on Schwanenwerder island, in southwestern Berlin, designed and decorated by the architect Bruno Paul, and documented in the 1920s by the photographer Waldemar Titzenthaler. In 1971 the magnificent mansion was demolished. On the house, see Heike Stang, Familie Sobernheim und das “Haus Waltrud” auf Schwanenwerder, Jüdische Miniaturen 163 (Berlin: Hentrich & Hentrich, 2015). Gertrud Schottländer died in 1938 in Paris, where the family had found refuge. Walter and their children Frida Eugenie (Frigene) and Martin went to New York in 1939, and resettled in the United States and the United Kingdom. ⮭
  17. Breslau, today Wrocław, originally belonged to the Kingdom of Poland; it then became part of the Kingdom of Bohemia, then of Hungary, and later of the Habsburg Empire, of the Kingdom of Prussia, and of the Third Reich. From 1945, it was returned to Poland. ⮭
  18. In 1952, through the restitution process, the Hahn family received 55 percent of the shares of their former company as compensation. The rest remained with Mannesmann AG, which took over the entire company in 1958. ⮭
  19. On Georg Hahn and his collection, see the brief yet very informative obituary by Ernst Weidner, “Georg und Frida Hahn,” Archiv für Orientforschung 17 (1954–56): 493–94. That article provided the basis for the biographical notes on the Hahns in Irit Ziffer, “The Akkadian Seals in the Hahn-Voss Collection,” in Edith Porada: zum 100. Geburtstag; A Centenary Volume, ed. Erika Bleibtreu and Hans Ulrich Steymans, Orbis Biblicus et Orientalis 268 (Fribourg: Academic Press; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2014), 45–74. ⮭
  20. On the Vorderasiatische Gesellschaft, see Johannes Renger, “Die Geschichte der Altorientalistik und der vorderasiatischen Archäologie in Berlin von 1875 bis 1945,” in Katalog: Berlin und die Antike; Architektur, Kunstgewerbe, Malerei, Skulptur, Theater und Wissenschaft vom 16. Jahrhundert bis heute, Berlin, Schloss Charlottenburg, Grosse Orangerie, 22. April bis 22. Juli, 1979, ed. Willmuth Arenhövel and Christa Schreiber (Berlin: Deutsches Archäologisches Institut, 1979), 151–92. Renger briefly mentions Georg and Frida Hahn and their role as patrons. ⮭
  21. The bulk of the Samarra finds, eighty-five cases, were shipped to London in 1921. Kröger, “Ernst Herzfeld and Friedrich Sarre,” 55. For the digitized files of the roughly 1,500 Samarra photographs by Herzfeld at the Museum für Islamische Kunst, Staatlich Museen zu Berlin: https://www.smb.museum/museen-einrichtungen/museum-fuer-islamische-kunst/sammeln-forschen/forschung-kooperation/digitalisierung-der-fotografischen-dokumentation-der-ausgrabungen-des-museums-fuer-islamische-kunst-in-samarra-heute-irak-1911-1913/. For the exhibition Samarra Revisited: Grabungsfotografien aus den Kalifenpalästen neu betrachtet, held at the Pergamon Museum, Berlin, March 4, 2022–August 28, 2022: https://www.smb.museum/ausstellungen/detail/?L=1&tx_smb_pi1%5Bexhibition%5D=4486&cHash=0fdfea2d0e6b8e923d72c5ca7d8d22a1. ⮭
  22. The first, Keilschrifttexte aus Boghazköi, KBo 1 6 (Catalog der Texte der Hethiter, CTH 75.A), ca. 1300 BCE, was acquired in 1989 by the British Museum from the Hans Erlenmeyer collection, to whom it had been sold by Frida Hahn. For an image and acquisition notes, see BM 140856. The second, KBo 1 29 (CTH 167), 1275–1250 BCE, is now at the Museum of Anatolian Civilizations, Ankara. For this text: https://www.hethport.uni-wuerzburg.de/CTH/index_en.php. ⮭
  23. https://www.stolpersteine-berlin.de/de/tiergartenstr/20-21/grete-sobernheim. ⮭
  24. https://www.wlb-stuttgart.de/die-wlb/ns-raubgutforschung/funde/curt-und-lilli-sobernheim/. From 2016 to 2019, the Württemberg State Library searched its inventory for books looted from Jewish private libraries. The discovery of the Sobernheims’ ex-libris is one such example. ⮭
  25. An inventory of their Palmyrene artifacts is unavailable. The Hahns owned a male bust relief, today at the São Paulo University Museum (with epitaph PAT 0650), and a double portrait of a mourning mother and her son, now in a private collection (with epitaph PAT 0934). A female bust with a fake inscription originally from the Hahn collection was donated in 1964 by Clara Sobernheim to the Liebighaus Skulturensammlung, Frankfurt a.M. A reference to the Hahn collection is found in Harald Ingholt, Studier over Palmyrensk Skupltur (Copenhagen: C. A. Reitzels, 1928), 148, PS 490; English translation: Olympia Bobou et al., eds., Studies on Palmyrene Sculpture: A Translation of Harald Ingholt’s Studier over palmyrensk skulptur (Turnhout: Brepols, 2021). Moreover, a small fragmentary decorative banquet scene on a stone slab, also published by Ingholt (“Inscriptions and Sculptures from Palmyra II,” Berytus 5 [1938]: 99, pl. XXXVI), and described as “formerly in the Sobernheim collection, Berlin,” was either sold when Clara left Germany or left behind. It was auctioned at Christie’s, New York, December 18, 1997, to a private collector. ⮭
  26. Weidner, “Georg und Frida Hahn,” 493–94. Their children also left Germany with them. Peter, Hans Georg, Anna Marie Voss, and Brigitta (later Bridget Martha Emerson) relocated to the United States and the United Kingdom. Only Anna Marie returned to Germany; she died in Düsseldorf in 1962. ⮭
  27. On the acquisition of the Dilbat necklace, see Christine Lilyquist, “The Dilbat Hoard,” Metropolitan Museum Journal 29 (1994): 5–36. For a description and images of the four seals, see the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s website: acc. nos. 47.115.1, agate (2.9 cm); 47.115.2, agate (2.3 cm); 47.115.3, carnelian (2.21 cm); and 47.115.4, feldspar (2.2 cm). ⮭
  28. Ziffer, “Akkadian Seals,” 45–74. ⮭
  29. See, e.g., FSA A.6 04.GN.3571 and FSA A.6 04.GN.3570. After the death of Moritz Sobernheim, in 1933 Klara (later Clara) and her daughter Marianne left Germany and eventually settled in the United States, joined by the other sons Rudolph and Manfred. The family lived in Rye, New York, at 21 Brown Avenue, in a 1920 colonial-style mansion, still existing today. Both brothers enlisted in 1943 and served in the US Army during World War II; Veterans of Rye, New York: https://www.ryevets.org/. Moritz Sobernheim’s brother Georg, a leading bacteriologist who had accompanied him to Syria in 1899, survived the Shoah in Switzerland, where he had been a professor at the University of Bern since 1918. ⮭
  30. For examples of early squeezes made by other epigraphists from the 1880s onward, see Jean-Baptiste Chabot, ed., Corpus inscriptionum semiticarum, pars secunda, tomus III: inscriptiones palmyrenae (Paris: Imprimerie nationale, 1926). One of the earliest and more complex of the squeezes, considering its length, was that of the epigraph recording the municipal law of Palmyra, known as the Tariff (PAT 0259, CE 137), made under the direction of the Georgian Prince Semyon Semyonovič Abamelek-Lazarev in 1882. ⮭
  31. For an image of Herzfeld’s study in his last Berlin apartment, showing his desks with papers and part of his library, see Kröger, “Ernst Herzfeld and Friedrich Sarre,” 87, fig. 5. Unfortunately, that image does not match the details of Herzfeld’s photographic studio one sees in figure 5 here. As noted by Kröger (p. 50), although Herzfeld spent most of his time abroad, he “kept this apartment from 1909 until he was forced to leave Berlin in 1935.” German scholars of Jewish descent had to leave their positions as of 1933. Herzfeld was dismissed from the University of Berlin two years later, in 1935, thanks to his World War I records. From 1936 to his retirement in 1944, he was a member of the Institute for Advanced Studies in Princeton, New Jersey. ⮭
  32. The siglum PAT refers to Palmyrene inscriptions in Delbert R. Hillers and Eleonora Cussini, Palmyrene Aramaic Texts, Publications of the Comprehensive Aramaic Lexicon Project 3 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996). In order to make a squeeze of the whole inscription, Puchstein used two different sheets of paper; see nos. 15 and 21 below. ⮭
  33. Chabot, Corpus inscriptionum semiticarum, 149, CIS 3970. Another squeeze of the same text was made in 1914 by the French epigraphists Antonin Jaussen and Raphaël Savignac, who collated this and other inscriptions for the Corpus inscriptionum semiticarum. ⮭
  34. Sobernheim, Palmyrenische Inschriften, 17n2. ⮭
  35. See no. 27 below. The squeeze is nearly illegible, and only some letters can be identified. It does not appear among the images in Sobernheim’s 1905 edition and perhaps it was not part of Puchstein’s original group of squeezes. ⮭
  36. Among the various items in the collection, there are almost 400 paper squeezes of cuneiform, Middle Persian and Arabic inscriptions gathered by Herzfeld and Sobernheim. In 2011, the archives and the Smithsonian’s Museum Conservation Institute initiated a project aimed at creating a digital version of the squeezes by means of the RTI imaging technique, in order to preserve them and make those precious epigraphic resources available to researchers. ⮭
  37. Each entry includes the negative number and photo file reference assigned by the National Museum of Asian Art Archives, Smithsonian Institution: https://sova.si.edu/record/fsa.a.06/ref29304?t=W&q=palmyra. ⮭
  38. The siglum IGLS XVII.i refers to Jean-Baptiste Yon, Inscriptions grecques et latines de la Syrie: Palmyre, Bibliothèque archéologique et historique 195 (Beirut: Ifpo, 2012). ⮭
  39. With an image of the squeeze from Sobernheim’s 1905 edition. ⮭
  40. With an image of the later squeeze by Jaussen and Savignac in Chabot, Corpus inscriptionum semiticarum, CIS 3914, table V. ⮭
  41. See Yon, IGLS XVII.i, 2012, 166, with a hand copy of the Greek text after Sobernheim 1905, and photographs of the same squeezes discussed here, after Sobernheim 1905, and a later partial squeeze with two lines of the Greek text by Jaussen and Savignac. ⮭
  42. With a clearer early image of the squeeze, with a central fold mark and other less detectable vertical fold marks, easily visible on the 1905 photograph as well as on Herzfeld’s negative. Impossible to locate by Yon during his survey. ⮭
  43. Apparently not on display for it does not appear in the museum catalogue: Khaled al-As‘ad and Michał Gawlikowski, The Inscriptions in the Museum of Palmyra: A Catalogue (Warsaw: Kontrast, 1997). ⮭
  44. With an image of the squeeze. Impossible to locate by Yon during his survey. ⮭
  45. With a better-quality squeeze by Jaussen and Savignac, CIS 3921. Not in the Palmyra museum catalogue. ⮭