Hermann Volrath Hilprecht

Hermann Volrath Hilprecht (July 28, 1859 – March 19, 1925) was a German-American Assyriologist and archaeologist.

Hilprecht was born in 1859 at Hohenerxleben (now a part of Staßfurt), Germany. He graduated from Herzogliches Gymnasium at Bernburg in 1880. Afterwards he went on to the University of Leipzig where he studied theology, philology, and law. In 1882, he spent two months in the British Museum studying cuneiform literature. He received his Ph.D. from Leipzig in 1883. He then spent two years in Switzerland for his health. From 1885 to 1886 he became an instructor in Old Testament theology at the University of Erlangen. In 1886, he left for the United States, where he became linguistic editor of the Sunday-School Times, and a professor of Assyrian at the University of Pennsylvania. The next year, 1887, he also became curator for the Semitic department of the University of Pennsylvania's museum. In 1894, Hilprecht took a D.D. degree from the University of Pennsylvania, and an LL.D. from Princeton in 1896.

As second Assyriologist in charge, he participated in the first campaign of excavations at Nippur (modern Nuffar, Iraq) in 1889. In the following two campaigns he was a member of the scientific committee in Philadelphia and eventually travelled to Constantinople to examine the portable finds and arrange the separation/acquisition of duplicate pieces for the newly constructed University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology in Philadelphia. He also rearranged the Imperial Ottoman Museum for which the director Hamdy Bey showed his gratitude with a favorable separation of the findings.

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