New ISAW Library Titles: April 2015
A list of books added to the ISAW Library in April 2015 is now available online both on the ISAW Library website and our Zotero library of new items. The titles are sorted in the website version according to thematic topics (e.g., "East Asia" and "Ancient Near East & Asia Minor"); and within each topic, the titles are organized according to Library of Congress classification. Beginning with this month's list, we have separated Egypt from the Ancient Near East into its own category, which includes materials on Egypt from the pre-Dynastic through the Roman period.
The 254 volumes added in April include a number of classical texts and secondary works on Greek literature from the library of Pieter Sijpesteijn (obituary by Director Roger S. Bagnall). The library was distributed between the various NYU libraries, but the entire collection can be found via a Bobcat search for "Sijpesteijn Collection." Many of the other items added to the ISAW Library collection during this month come from the library of Hayim and Miriam Tadmor, including a number of Hebrew-language titles that are sparsely held in American libraries. These titles are similarly findable in Bobcat with the term "Tadmor Collection."
One title added this month from the Tadmor Collection reveals a web of interconnected Assyriological provenance: a copy of A. T. Olmstead's Western Asia in the Days of Sargon of Assyria, 722-705 B. C. bearing the bookplate of noted Assyriologist Theophilus G. Pinches (ISAW Small Collection DS73.8.O46 1908). Pinches was a curator at the British Museum from 1878 to 1900, and was a lecturer in Assyriology at the University of London until 1934. He bequeathed much of his large personal collection of cuneiform tablets to his student, Archibald Cecil Chappelow, and this copy of Olmstead's work on Sargon bears the ownership inscription of his brother, Eric Barry Wilfred Chappelow. The inscription states that E.B.W. Chappelow "bought [the book] at [London bookseller Bernard] Quaritch from the library of my dear master, T.G. Pinches" in 1940. Chappelow, a poet, wrote poetry on classical themes (e.g. his 1957 work The Tale of Perseus), but also contributed several Assyriological articles to the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society and the Journal of the Transactions of the Victoria Institute in the 1930s. He is also notable for having been a conscientious objector during World War I: when the government attempted to force him into a non-combat position, Bertrand Russell, W.B. Yeats, and George Bernard Shaw campaigned in his support, and he was jailed for noncompliance in 1916. The book also bears the bookseller stamp of Luzac & Co., a London-based specialist in Orientalist titles, and a third inscription in the book notes that Hayim Tadmor purchased the book there in 1964. To this wealth of provenance information has now been added the Tadmors' own ISAW bookplate.
As always, the titles added to the ISAW Library for the entire 2014-2015 academic year may be found both on our website and in our Zotero library.
If you have any comments or suggestions about our recent acquisitions or the associated Zotero library, please feel free to contact us. Until then, please follow our progress on Facebook and Twitter.