REPORT ON THE SECTION OF ORIENTAL ANTIQUITIES 

 IN THE U, S. NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1892. 



By Cyrus Adlek, Assistant Curator, 



111 the absence in Europe of Prof. Paul Haupt, honorary curator of 

 the section, I beg to submit the following- report for the past year: 



Tbe scope of an oriental department fully organized may be seen 

 from the division into sections which was adopted by a committee of 

 the American Oriental Society, organized tor the purpose of drawing 

 up a programme to be submitted in the event of the assembling of an 

 International Congress of Orientalists in America. The sections were 

 as follows: 



I. Aryan section. II. Semitic section (Hebrew, Arabic, Syriac, 

 etc.). HI. Cuneiform section, including all languages using cuneiform 

 characters. IV. Egyptian section, comprising the other African lan- 

 guages with the exception of Ethiopic and Arabic. V. Section of the 

 extreme Orient (China and Japan) and of Central Asia. 



The Section of Oriental Antiquities, in view of the limitations upon 

 its scope and resources, is practically devoted to Biblical archaeology, 

 to the archaeology, history, languages, arts, and religions of the peo- 

 ples of western Asia and Egypt. Material is chosen which especially 

 illustrates Biblical history, and labels are prepared from this point of 

 view. 



The fact must be emphasized that before the organization of this sec- 

 tion was contemplated, much of the material which would find place in 

 a department of oriental antiquities had been collected for the Museum 

 and installed in other departments, where it still remains. 



In the report for 1880 the hope was expressed that from the policy 

 inaugurated by the Museum of preparing copies of A ssyro-Baby Ionian 

 objects for a study collection, there would grow a catalogue of all the 

 Assyro-Babylonian objects in this country. This plan, it is expected, 

 may shortly be realized. At the meeting of the American Oriental 



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