Our Growing Collections

ROLAND BAUGHMAN
 

Barnouw gift. Professor Adriaan Barnouw has placed in our care
a valuable photographic facsimile of the autograph manuscript of
Gerard dc Groote's Dat Leven ons Leven Heren, the original of
which is in the Bibliotheek Kruisherenklooster St. Agatha at Cuyk,
the Netherlands. It is the only known extant manuscript in the
autograph of de Groote.

Bassett-Monroe gifts. Mrs. Jeanette Monroe Bassett (Mrs. Henry
Bassett) and Mr. Ellis Monroe have presented an extremely valu¬
able collection of antiquities in memory of their father, the late
Professor Paul Monroe of Teachers College. The gifts include a
group of about 75 complete or nearly complete cuneiform tablets,
as well as a large number of small fragments, representing various
periods from Ur III to the Neo-Babylonian (ca. 2100 b.c. to
539 B.C.); a collection of ten original "oracle bones" dating from
about 1200 B.C., together with three modern imitations; two un-
glazed pottery vases, possibly of early Islamic origin; one small
pottery head, unidentified but under study; a large lectern manu¬
script of the Hebrew Torah dating from the i8th century or
earlier; and a beautiful alabaster vase of considerable antiquity.

The importance of these gifts can scarcely be exaggerated. Chi¬
nese "oracle bones" represent the earliest known extant examples
of the Chinese script (see Library Columns, May, 1959, pages
11-14). Cuneiform tablets, also, are of prime significance in the
study of the writing and records of the various peoples who lived
in ancient Babylonia and its environs (see Library Columns, May,
1959, pages 28-30).

Bechtel gift. Mrs. Edwin De T. Bechtel has presented a number of
useful volumes from the collection of her late husband. Of prin-