718 



SIMROCK, KARL. 



SOCOTRA. 



and has received there the honor of election to 

 a professorship in the Academy of San Luca. 

 He has achieved an artistic fame second to that 

 of no other American sculptor. 



SIMROCK, KARL, a German poet and au- 

 thor, born August 28, 1802 ; died July 18, 1876. 

 In 1823 he entered the Prussian judicial service, 

 but was dismissed in 1830 on account of a 

 poem on the July revolution in France. Since 

 that time he devoted himself to literary labors, 

 and in 1850 was appointed Professor of Ancient 

 German Literature at Bonn. He possessed an 

 extensive knowledge of the earliest German 

 literature, and mastered like no other the na- 

 tional epic poetry of Germany, of which he 

 partly furnished translations into modern Ger- 

 man, and partly produced excellent imitations. 

 He became famous by his translation of the 

 "Nibelungenlied" (1827; thirty-second edition, 

 1876). Among his other excellent translations 

 are those of the works of Walther von der 

 Vogelweide (2 vols., fourth edition, 1869) ; of 

 "Der arme Heinrich," by Hartmann von der 

 Aue (1840); of "Parzival" and "Titurel," by 

 Wolfram von Eschenbach, (third edition, 1875) ; 

 of the " Tristan," by Gottfried von Strassburg; 

 the " Wartburgkrieg," and "Minnelieder." Be- 

 sides these translations of works of mediae- 

 val German literature, he also furnished excel- 

 lent translations of the u Edda" (fourth edition, 

 1871), of " Beowulf," and "Heliand." Among 

 his own poetical works " Wieland der Schmied" 

 is the most important. A complete represen- 

 tation of the German heroic tales he presented 

 partly by translations and partly by original 

 poems in the " Heldenbuch " (thirty-second 

 edition, 1876), which contained "Gudrun," 

 the " Nibelungen," "Das kleine Heldenbuch," 

 and " Amelnngenlied." Among his scientific 

 works, the most important are "Handbuch der 

 deutschen Mythologie" (fourth edition, 1874) 

 and "Ueber die Nibelungenstrophe " (1858). 

 He also published "Die Rheinsagen " (seventh 

 edition, 1874), " Deutsches Kinderbuch" (sec- 

 ond edition, 1857), " Das malerische und ro- 

 mantische Rheinland " (fourth edition, 18(>5), 

 "Deutsche Miirchen " (1864), and the "Deut- 

 sche Volksbiicher" (55 vols., 1839-'67). To 

 the German Shakespeare literature he contrib- 

 uted " Die Quellen des Shakespeare in Novel- 

 len, Marchen und Sagen" (3 vols., new edi- 

 tion, 1872), and a translation of the poetical 

 works of Shakespeare. 



SMITH, GEORGE, a British Oriental scholar, 

 born in 1840; died August 19, 1876. He was 

 originally an engraver; but having carefully 

 followed the researches of Sir Henry Rawlin- 

 son and others in the field of Assyrian antiqui- 

 ties for several years, he commenced, in 1857, 

 the study of the inscriptions, and pursued it so 

 unremittingly that at the time of his death his 

 knowledge of Assyrian texts was unequaled. 

 Believing that the chief difficulty in the recon- 

 ciliation of Biblical and Assyrian chronology 

 lay in the arrangement of the annals of Tiglath- 

 pileser II., he undertook a careful examina- 



tion of the monuments of this king deposited 

 in the British Museum. The result of these 

 researches were given in a series of papers in 

 the Zeitschrift fur Aegyptische Sprache. In 

 1867 he was appointed to assist Sir Henry 

 Riiwlinson in the preparation of the third 

 volume of the "Cuneiform Inscriptions of 

 Western Asia." In 1866 he began the copy- 

 ing of inscriptions relating to the Assyrian 

 king Assurbanipal, the Greek Sardanapalus, 

 for the purpose of publishing his annals. This 

 work he gave to the world in 1871. There is 

 no work on the Assyrian inscriptions which 

 has done so rn^ch as this to place the decipher- 

 ment of the texts on a firm and accurate foot- 

 ing. In 1872 he discovered an important se- 

 ries of tablets in the British Museum. These 

 tablets were part of a cycle of early Chaldean 

 legends, consisting of twelve tablets relating 

 to the adventures of a mythical king called Is- 

 dubar. In the same year he was engaged by 

 the proprietors of the London Daily '1 elegraph 

 to conduct an expedition to excavate on the 

 site of Nineveh. He left England in January, 

 1873. His excavations at Kouynnjik were most 

 important in their results, in enabling him to 

 complete many imperfect texts already in the 

 collections. In the fall of 1873 he visited 

 England, bringing with him a large and impor- 

 tant collection of objects. He returned to 

 Mosul, and, having completed the period of his 

 firman and being unable to get a renewal from 

 the authorities, he came back to England. The 

 account of these investigations he published in 

 his work, "Assyrian Discoveries." In March, 

 1876, he again set out for the East, but being 

 unable to excavate on account of the preva- 

 lence of the plague and the unsettled state of 

 the country, he was about to return to Eng- 

 land, when he died at Aleppo. In 1875 he pub- 

 lished a small "History of Assyria," and left 

 the complete manuscript for a " History of 

 Babylonia." 



SOCOTRA, or SOCOTORA, an island in 

 the Indian Ocean, about 130 miles east-north- 

 east of Cape Guardafui, the eastern extremity 

 of Africa, came in 1876 into prominent notice. 

 The area is 1,309 square miles ; tlie population 

 is estimated at 4,000, of whom 1,000 live on the 

 coast, and the remainder in the interior as cattle- 

 raisers. (See Behm and Wagner, Berdtt-ennig 

 der Erde, iv., Gotha, 1876.) According to Eng- 

 lish accounts, the Khedive of Egypt had, last 

 year, the intention of taking possession of the 

 island, but was forestalled by the English Gov- 

 ernment. In January, 1876, General Schnei- 

 der, the British political resident at Aden, paid 

 a visit to Keshin, on the coast of Arabia, and to 

 Socotra. He concluded a treaty with the Sul- 

 tan of Keshin, the proprietor of Socotra, which 

 was signed by the latter, his heirs, and the other 

 members of his family, never to sell Socotra tc 

 a foreign power, nor to permit a settlement to 

 be made there without the consent of the Brit- 

 ish Government. For this he received $1,000, 

 and a smaller sum is to be paid annually to the 



