Professor Lyon's Year in Palestine

During the year 1906-1907 Professor Lyon was in Jerusalem as Director of the American School for Oriental Study and Research in Palestine. This school, which is now seven years old, was established in order to do for Semitic and Biblical scholarship what the schools in Athens and Rome do for classical scholarship. There were six students last year, of whom two were from Harvard and two from Yale. As a rule the students of this school expect to become clergymen or teachers of Semitic. The school is supported mainly by contributions from a variety of institutions of learning, and the director is chosen from among these institutions. The work of the school varies according to the special interests of the director and the students. All have an opportunity for the study of the country, its peoples, languages, and modern conditions. There are usually several trips with tents in the course of the year, when the members of the school visit many historical sites, and make the acquaintance of peasant and bedouin life. Occasionally there are adventures with the bedouin, as where the party of two years ago was robbed on the border of the Dead Sea. But travel is ordinarily safe in Palestine. The members of the school last year made many short trips, not requiring tents, and three of greater length with tents. These were to the southern end of the Dead Sea in company with the Dominican School of Jerusalem; to Beersheba and the country of the Philistines; across the Jordan and to Banias, one of the sources of that river, thence to Sidon and down the coast to Haifa, thence over Mt. Carmel to Nablus where the celebration of the Samaritan Passover was witnessed.

It is hoped that the school may some time be able to carry on excavations. In the absence of permission to dig, the school visited the sites where others have been digging, English, Germans, and Austrians.

As curator of the Semitic Museum, Professor Lyon was able to acquire many new specimens, Babylonian, Palestinian, Egyptian, and Arabian. These have nearly all arrived and will be placed on exhibition in the course of the autumn and winter