Hillyer

A.B, degree from the university in 1828 and
shortly after graduation was admitted to the bar.
He began practice in Athens. At twenty-seven
he was elected solicitor-general of the western
district of Georgia and seven years later he be-
came judge of the superior court in the same dis-
trict, holding the position for four years, 1841-
45. In the stirring campaign of 1851, led by
Toombs, Stephens, and Cobb, for the purpose of
swinging the people of Georgia to support the
compromise measures of 1850, Hillyer support-
ed the triumvirate, helped elect Cobb as gov-
ernor, and fell heir to the latter's seat in Con-
gress (1851-55). After the election of Bu-
chanan he became solicitor of the United States
treasury and held this post until secession forced
his retirement.

During his last days in office Hillyer addressed
a series of letters to Howell Cobb which are im-
portant in that they reveal the ideas of a trained
observer of events. Late in January 1861, he
believed that none of the border states would fol-
low the South in secession and therefore thought
that the approaching Montgomery Convention of
seceding states should act with circumspection
to avoid alienating them. If, as was anticipated,
the Confederate government should establish
free trade, Virginia and Maryland, Hillyer felt,
would be lost; if the navigation of the Missis-
sippi were obstructed, Arkansas, Tennessee,
Kentucky, and Missouri would remain in the
Union. Writing on Feb. 9, he strongly argued
that free trade with direct taxation as the means
of raising revenue in the Confederacy would
ruin the cause and urged that a tariff for rev-
enue was the only expedient measure. He was
confident that the Republican party would acqui-
esce in secession, if a collision were avoided un-
til Lincoln's inauguration.

On resigning as solicitor of the treasury, Feb.
13, 1861, Hillyer returned to Georgia and ap-
pears to have taken no part in the Civil War nor
to have again offered for public office. He lived
twenty-five years longer. This quarter-century
he devoted to his private law practice, to devel-
oping the economic resources of Georgia, and to
furthering the educational interests of the state.
Long before the Civil War he had been one of
the original projectors of the Georgia Railroad.
For many years he was a trustee of the Univer-
sity of Georgia and of Mercer University at
Macon. He had married, in October 1831, Jane
(Watkins) Foster. He died in Decatur, Ga.,
which had been his home since 1871.

Wwg. Dir. Am. Cong. (1928) ; W. J. Northen, ed.,
Men of Mark in Ga., vol. II (1910) ; Toombs, Stephens
g,n$ Cebb Correspondence CI9I3)» published as Vol. II

Hilprecht

of the annual report of the Am. Hist. Asso. for the year
1911 ; Atlanta Constitution, June 22, 1886.] R p g
HILPRECHT, HERMAN VOLRATH (July
28, i859-Mar. 19, 1925), Assyriologist, was
born at Hohenerxleben, Germany, the son of
Robert and Emilie (Wielepp) Hilprecht. He
graduated from the Gymnasium at Bernburg in
1880 and for five years, 1880-85, studied theol-
ogy, philology, and law at the University of
Leipzig. In 1885 he became "repetent" of Old
Testament theology at the University of Er-
langen and in 1886 he emigrated to Philadelphia
as oriental editor of the Sunday School Times.
He soon became professor of Assyriology in the
University of Pennsylvania and in the next year,
1887, he became curator of the Babylonian sec-
tion of the university museum, both of which po-
sitions he held until his resignation in 1911. In
1888-89 he was a member of the first expedition
of the university which, under the leadership of
John P. Peters, excavated at Nippur, and in
I^95, upon Peters' removal from Philadelphia,
Hilprecht became scientific director of this ex-
cavation. The field work at that time was under
the direction of John Henry Haynes \_q.v.~\. Hil-
precht's fame as an Assyriologist was estab-
lished by the publication in 1893 °f the first part
of his Old Babylonian Inscriptions, Chiefly
from Nippur, the second part of which appeared
in 1896. The inscriptions treated in this study
were considerably older than the historical in-
scriptions previously published and were nat-
urally in a much more archaic script. The beau-
ty and accuracy of Hilprecht's copies and his
skill as a translator were at once recognized.
Since, according to the law, all antiquities ex-
cavated within Turkish territories belonged to
the government, those found at Nippur were
taken to Constantinople. In 1893 Hilprecht was
asked to reorganize the Imperial Ottoman Mu-
seum at Constantinople and until 1909 he was
practically in charge of the museum. Meantime
he projected four series of publications of the
materials from Nippur, of which he was to be
the editor. Of these, fourteen volumes of texts
appeared. Hilprecht himself wrote two of these
as well as two volumes for Series D, "Researches
and Treatises." In 1900 he went to Babylonia
for a second time. Haynes had discovered an
archive of several thousand tablets there and, as
scientific director, Hilprecht wished to be on the
spot. Three years later his Exploration in Bible
Lands during the Nineteenth Century was pub-
lished—a book which soon precipitated the "Hil-
precht Controversy" and ultimately led to his re-
tirement. On page 532 of this work he spoke of
an unopened clay letter addressed "Jo Lush-