SEMITIC PHILOLOGY' 



Interest in the Semitic languages has been a cherished 

 tradition in France. As Abel Lefranc tells us in his 

 valuable "Histoire du College de France depuis ses 

 origines jusqu'a la fin du premier empire," this institu- 

 tion started with two professors of Hebrew, and another 

 was added the next year. From that day to this, nearly 

 four hundred years, instruction in Hebrew has been 

 given continuously in this college. The diplomatic, 

 religious, and commercial relations of France with North 

 Africa and the Near East had been such that practical 

 considerations early called attention to the importance 

 of Arabic. It is true that not till 1587 do we find men- 

 tion of an Arabic chair at the College de France (the 

 incumbent of which was Arnoul DE L'!SLE); but nearly 

 fifty years earlier, in 1538, the celebrated Guillaume 

 POSTEL was appointed for " Penseignement des lettres 

 grecques, hebraiques et arabiques." It was a professor 

 at the College de France, Antoine GALLAND, who early 

 in the eighteenth century published his translation of 

 the Arabian Nights. This work was not only one of 

 great literary importance, but it has aroused and kept 

 alive an interest in things Oriental to an extent difficult 

 or impossible to estimate. 



But it was not till the nineteenth century that great 

 advances in Semitic philology were made. Napoleon's 

 expedition stimulated interest in the Near East, while 

 CHAMPOLLION'S discovery of the key to the Egyptian 



1 [Drafting Committee: J. R. JEWETT, Harvard University; 

 C. C. TORREY, Yale University. ED.] 



243 



