Fragment: Isn't he sweet?

From Bowra, Cecil Maurice. Memories: 1898-1939. London: Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 1966.

When he [Gilbert Murray] was eighty-seven he sent me a postcard on a point of scholarship, and after dealing with it, added a postscript 'I'm getting terribly old, but don't tell anyone.' On his ninetieth birthday some of his old pupils gave him a lunch. I had written about him as a teacher in the Oxford Mail, and in proposing his health Dodds told of his own debt to Murray and how Murray had tamed him in his youth. Murray in his answer said, 'I think that, as Bowra says, I was a good teacher, and I think that I tamed Professor Dodds, for a young lady said to me the other day, "Isn't he sweet?"'

p. 227

Fragment: venomous dislike of certain of his archaeological colleagues

From: Caton-Thompson, Gertrude. Mixed Memoirs. Gateshead, Tyne & Ware: Paradigm Press, 1983.

'The Prof' greeted me with a low bow and showed my my tent. His over-courteous manner was rather irritating and obscured depths of venomous dislike of certain of his archaeological colleagues. His distinguished appearance deserves a word. At 73 he was aging but still indefatigable. His splendid head well-carried, with aquiline features, very wide apart eyes of penetrating quality, and plentiful silky grey hair and beard was off-set by a loosely-framed body with an ungainly stride. His contempt for reasonably good living was proverbial. Food and drink to him were an unfortunate necessity to be endured as swiftly and cheaply as possible; a raw carrot was a meal. His mode of life was aided by a devoted wife, who would have been conspicuously good-looking if given the chance. She supported her husband in his economies with sometimes unforseen results from the long-suffering students. One day the frequent herring was served out of the tin. One of the young men delayed clearance of the plates by fiddling with his fish. Mrs. Petrie said impatiently "Mr. Walker hurry up, we are waiting." To which he replied "I am trying to take the skin off without breaking it. I thought you like to return it to the makers to be refilled!"

p. 83

Fragment: "pretty self-explanatory"

Fragment from: Katz, Karl. The Exhibitionist: Living Museums, Loving Museums. New York: The Overlook Press, 2016.

Based on my brief visit [to Israel] in 1950, I thought I knew what to expect. True, I'd never done archaeological fieldwork, but digging things up seemed pretty self-explanatory. During my stopover in London, en route to Israel, I went to Picadilly Circus and bought the perfunctory archaeologist outfit at Lilywhites: boots, khakis, a hat with a peak, shirts with at least twelve pockets. Armed with the proper uniform, I boarded a plane to Tel Aviv via Cyprus, ready to start digging up Israel's past.

The Rabiowitz Fellowship would hold many twists and turns - excavating on secret air bases, sneaking into Egypt, accidentally getting engaged to an Iranian. But the biggest surprise of all was that along with my excavations into Israel's long history, very soon I would start building its future.

p. 27

Fragment: Home schooled...

Fragment from: Ward, William Hayes. What I Believe and Why. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1915.

I think my first unrecognized doubt as to the historical certitude of the Bible came in the three years between the ages of six and nine, during which my father required me to read the Bible through in Hebrew, he being my teacher. He believed, I am glad to say,  that Hebrew was an easier language to learn than Greek or Latin, and with three years for each, and in this reverse order, he required me to read the whole Bible in the original tongues, with the Old Testament also in Greek, and the New in Hebrew, and both in Latin. It was during those years given to Hebrew that I learned from my Gesenius's "Lexicon" that Babel in Arabic means the gate of God, Bab-Il, and not confusion as the Genesis story tells us...

p. 6-7

Fragment: Lonely? Not a bit of it!

Fragment from: Fairclough, Henry Rushton. Warming Both Hands: The Autobiography of Henry Rushton Fairclough Including His Experiences under the American Red Cross in Switzerland and Montenegro. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1941.

 It was a good many years after our first meeting that I had the honor of appearing on the same platform with Dr. Breasted.  This was in St. Louis in 1916, on the occasion of the annual  banquet of the Archaeological Institute of America. Chicago's great Hellenist, Paul Shorey, had returned from California, and on his way East had prepared for this event an address on "The Loneliness of the Scholar." The tone was distinctly morbid, but we auditors were hardly prepared for the heat shown by Dr. Breasted, who as next speaker denounced his colleague's views with all the fire of a Hebrew prophet. "I suppose," he said, "that there are not half a dozen men in this country working along the same lines as I do. But am I lonely? Not a bit of it. If I can dig out a scrap of fresh knowledge to give to the school-children of America, I am as happy as a king."

p. 198-199

Fragment: Gordon on Kramer and Poebel

 Fragment from: Gordon, Cyrus H. A Scholar’s Odyssey. Biblical Scholarship in North America 20. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2000.

He [George Aaron Barton] also published Sumerian texts and gave courses on Sumerian in which Samuel Noah Kramer and I were the only students. Interestingly enough Barton's repelled Kramer and discouraged him from pursuing the language. Years later, however, when he was at the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, Kramer decided to study Sumerian with Arno Poebel, a great Sumerologist. When Poebel told him "Unless you admit that all your previous education is worthless, I cannot accept you as a student," it was precisely the shock treatment Kramer needed.He studied with Poebel for only a few months, but the experience was so intense that it proved to be the foundation on which Kramer's career as a famous Sumreologist was built.

p. 18

Fragment: A terrible teacher

Fragment from: Kramer, Samuel Noah. In the World of Sumer. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1986.

Pedagogically speaking Peobel was a terrible teacher, no better in some ways than my Talmud teachers of yeshivah days who chose to teach the laws of divorce before those of marriage. But in other respects he was stimulating and inspiring, at least for me - and I was at times the only one attending his classes. His speech was rather slow and monotonous; his English was far from idiomatic; he was given to numerous and prolonged digressions and tended to be repetitive and diffuse. But none of these pedagogical failings were defects as far as I was concerned. Not blessed with a quick mind or a superior memory, I found that Poebel's repetitions, digressions, and obiter dicta were just what I needed to help me understand and digest the principles of Sumerian grammar underlying  the intricate and often misleading cuneiform system of writing, as well as the methodology of transforming the dead inscriptions into living informants.

p. 38