The Ernst Herzfeld Papers at the Smithsonian Institution. Identifying the Palmyrene Squeezes

The Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC holds a collection of about thirty-thousand items originally belonging to the German architect and archaeologist Ernst Emil Herzfeld (1879–1948): photographs and negatives on glass plates, sketches, excavation journals, maps and letters illustrating his archaeological fieldwork in the Near East. Among them is a section of glass negatives documenting the work on Palmyrene epigraphy by one of Herzfeld’s colleagues, the German semitist Moritz Sobernheim (1872–1933). Sobernheim and Herzfeld traveled extensively in Syria, Lebanon and Jordan, collecting Islamic inscriptions as part their ongoing epigraphic project. Their journeys are documented by photographs in the Herzfeld Papers archive. Some of the images illustrate their personal friendship and family relations. Among Sobernheim’s sister Frida and her husband, the collector Georg Hahn, who also financed Herzfeld’s archaeological excavations at Samarra. Other images document the process of reproducing inscriptions by means of paper squeezes, that is by creating a tridimensional and reliable replica for study purposes and publication. The twenty-seven glass negatives in the Herzfeld’s Papers archive, photographs of the Palmyrene paper squeezes are an invaluable record of Sobernheim’s pioneering epigraphic work, and document the productive working partnership between Sobernheim and Herzfeld, who probably photographed them around 1905. It is unknown whether the process of reproduction was carried out by Herzfeld alone, or if Sobernheim participated as well. Fifteen negatives are marked by subsequent inventory numbers, and eight have another sequence, possibly indicating two different photographic sessions. A careful analysis of the reversed relief impressions left on the squeezes has allowed to identify twenty-six Palmyrene inscriptions, that are listed here with reference to their text-type and findspot, and cross-referenced to the editio princeps and other major text references. Their identification provides an additional element to complete their record in the Herzfeld Papers archive.