IV OBITUARY NOTICES. 



been elected to the professorship to the College de France. It was 

 a most ambitious vmdertaking — a " Histoire Ancienne des Peuples 

 de rOrient," covering Egypt, Babylonia, Assyria, Palestine and Syria 

 — but it was carried out with the sure touch of a master. As a sum- 

 mary of what was then known of the Ancient East it acquired a 

 high rank, as is indicated by the eight editions through which it 

 passed, and by being translated into English and German. The work 

 was an indication of the wide range of Maspero's studies even at 

 that early age, and it was characteristic of the bent of his mind that 

 while never losing sight of his special field of Egyptology, he cor- 

 related Egyptian history, religion and art with the history and 

 achievements of the peoples with which Egypt had come into con- 

 tact. In 1875, when Maspero's "Ancient History" appeared, it was 

 still comparatively easy to master the entire field, because the his- 

 torical and literary and archaeological material recovered from the 

 seats of the ancient empires of the East had not yet reached such 

 large proportions, but with the steady course of excavations in 

 Egypt, Mesopotamia and later in Palestine, Syria and Asia Minor, 

 material of all kind increased rapidly. Scholars in all countries of 

 Europe were attracted to the field, new journals to embody the re- 

 sults of detailed investigations were established, and as a result 

 within each section of the field specialization led to further sub- 

 divisions. Under such circumstances it was well that there should 

 be a few scholars with the courage, the learning and the ability to 

 drive abreast through the whole field — men like Eduard Meyer in 

 Germany, Sayce in England and Salomon Reinach in France. Mas- 

 pero was a scholar of this broad type. 



The new editions of his history, as called for, showed evidence 

 of, his keeping pace with new discoveries. Numerous investigations 

 from him in the form of monographs and articles appeared in the 

 technical journals and proceedings of learned societies of Europe and 

 this country. The final upshot was the production at the time of the 

 maturity of his intellectual powers of a monumental work in three 

 large volumes appearing in French and English, which aimed to 

 give a continuous narrative from the beginnings of civilization in the 

 East to the close of the Persian Empire. The general title of this 

 work — published in 1895-1897 — was enlarged to " Histoire An- 



