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William Hayes Ward

1835–1916 · United States

New York editor and Orientalist who published Phoenician inscriptions from the Cesnola collection in 1885 and sold the Wolfe collection of seals and tablets to the Metropolitan Museum in 1886.

Biography

William Hayes Ward, born at Abington, Massachusetts, on 25 June 1835, joined the New York weekly The Independent in 1868 and was its editor in chief from 1896 to 1913. He directed the Wolfe Expedition to Babylonia in 1884-85 and twice served as president of the American Oriental Society1.

His work on Cyprus concerned the collection of Luigi Palma di Cesnola. In "Some Phoenician Inscriptions in New York", he published the texts of Phoenician inscriptions on vases, alabastra and jars in the Cesnola collection at the Metropolitan Museum that are not in the first two fascicles of Renan's Corpus3. In 1886 the Museum bought from him the "Wolfe" or "Ward" collection of more than 700 tablets and seals4. The Museum's guide of 1899 says the sixty cylinders that formed the nucleus of its seal collection came from Cesnola in Cyprus14. In May 1893 Max Ohnefalsch-Richter, speaking in New York, cited Ward as an authority on cylinders, to argue that cylinders of 1500 to 3000 BCE could not have lain in rubbish over a Byzantine mosaic at Kourion, as Cesnola said15.

Ward also catalogued the seals in the library of J. Pierpont Morgan, in a privately printed volume of 1909 that includes five Cypriote cylinders7. He died on 28 August 1916 at South Berwick, Maine1.

Life and work

  1. 1885
    Published the text of the Phoenician inscriptions of the Cesnola collection in the Metropolitan Museum that occur on vases, alabastra and jars, which are not in the first two fascicles of Renan's Corpus

    New YorkW. H. Ward (1885). Some Phoenician Inscriptions in New York

  2. 1886
  3. May 1893
    Described by Ohnefalsch-Richter, speaking in New York, as an authority on cylinders whose own collection of cylinders was in part in the Metropolitan Museum; Ohnefalsch-Richter used him to date the cylinders Cesnola said were found at Kourion

    New York(1893). The Critic, 20 May 1893 (report of Ohnefalsch-Richter's remarks on the Cesnola cylinders). The Critic 19(587)

Connections

5 people
Luigi Palma di CesnolaJohn Pierpont MorganArchibald Henry SayceMax Ohnefalsch-RichterPaul SchroederWilliam Hayes Ward
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Mentioned in

6 mentions

Sources

  1. 1.“William Hayes Ward (Wikipedia article)”. Online
  2. 2.Wikidata and GND authority record for William Hayes Ward. Online
  3. 3.W. H. Ward (1885). “Some Phoenician Inscriptions in New York”.
  4. 4.Rakić (2021). “Collecting the Ancient Near East at The Met”. Metropolitan Museum Journal 56.
  5. 5.W. H. Ward (1909). Cylinders and Other Ancient Oriental Seals in the Library of J. Pierpont Morgan.
  6. 6.W. H. Ward (1910). The Seal Cylinders of Western Asia.
  7. 7.A. Ungnad (1910). “Review of W. H. Ward, Cylinders and other ancient Oriental Seals in the Library of J. Pierpont Morgan (New York, privately printed, 1909), Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft 64”. 810-811.
  8. 8. (1871). “Journal of the American Oriental Society, proceedings 12 Oct 1871”.
  9. 9. (1874). “Proceedings of the American Oriental Society, Boston, May 1874”.
  10. 10.M. Lidzbarski (1898). Handbuch der nordsemitischen Epigraphik.
  11. 11.Paul Åström (1966). Excavations at Kalopsidha and Ayios Iakovos in Cyprus. Lund.
  12. 12.Andrés T. Reyes (1994). Archaic Cyprus: A Study of the Textual and Archaeological Evidence. Oxford, Clarendon Press.
  13. 13.S. Alaura (2017). “Setting the Stage for Hittite Studies in Victorian England: Practices and Methods of the 1870s”.
  14. 14.Arthur Hoeber (1899). The Treasures of the Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York.
  15. 15. (1893). “The Critic, 20 May 1893 (report of Ohnefalsch-Richter's remarks on the Cesnola cylinders)”. The Critic 19(587).
  16. 16. (1931). “Catalogue of Sassanian seals (Metropolitan Museum), Art Bulletin 13(2), June 1931”. The Art Bulletin 13.
  17. 17. (1987). “Ancient Art in Miniature: Near Eastern Seals from the Collection of Martin and Sarah Cherkasky”. Metropolitan Museum of Art.
  18. 18.1910, Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenlaendischen Gesellschaft, vol. 64 (Bibliographische Anzeigen): Cylinders and other ancient Oriental Seals in the Library of J. Pierpont Morgan, catalogued by William Hayes Ward, Bibliographische Anzeigen; 1909, Records of the Past, vol. 8 (notice of the Morgan seal catalogue).
  19. 19.Andre Parrot, 1949, Review of E. Porada, Corpus of Ancient Near Eastern Seals in North American Collections: the Collection of the Pierpont Morgan Library.
  20. 20.Archiv für Religionswissenschaft, 27. Februar 1912, Bd. 15, H. 1-2. - Our Digital Library (1912).
  21. 21.Deutsche Morgenländische Gesellschaft, Zeitschrift.
  22. 22.In Kommission Bai F.a. Brockhaus., Zeitschrift Der Deutschen Morgenlandischen Gesellschaft Band.64 (1910).
  23. 23.Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft (1910).
  24. 24.Nederlands Instituut voor het Nabije Oosten, Bibliotheca Orientalis 6 (1949) (1949).
  25. 25.Silvia Alaura, Setting the Stage for Hittite Studies in Victorian England: Practices and Methods of the 1870s.
  26. 26.W. H. Ward, 1885, Some Phoenician Inscriptions in New York, leaf 1.
  27. 27.1893, The Critic, 20 May 1893 (report of Ohnefalsch-Richter's remarks on the Cesnola cylinders).
  28. 28.Arthur Hoeber , Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York, N.Y.), The Treasures of the Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York (1899).
  29. 29.Lidzbarski, Mark, 1868-1928, Handbuch der nordsemitischen Epigraphik : nebst ausgewählten Inschriften (1898).
  30. 30.Lidzbarski, Mark, 1868-1928., Handbuch der nordsemitischen Epigraphik, nebst ausgewählten Inschriften / (1898).
  31. 31.Journal of the American Oriental Society (1843).
  32. 32.Philological Society (Great Britain), Transactions of the Philological Society (1854).
  33. 33.Mark Lidzbarski, Handbuch der Nordsemitischen Epigraphik (1889).
  34. 34.Handbuch der nordsemitischen Epigraphik: nebst ausgewählten Inschriften. 1.
  35. 35.Guide To The Collections Ancient Near Eastern Art.

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