Some 11 items from the Père Albert Jamme, M.Afr. Collection have been loaned to the Smithsonian’s Sackler Gallery for its upcoming exhibition, “Unearthing Arabia: the Archaeological Adventures of Wendell Phillips,” October 11, 2014-June 7, 2015, Arthur M. Sackler Gallery.

See Unearthing Arabia ; Language and Writing

The Père Albert Jamme, M.Afr. Collection in CUA’s Semitics/ICOR Library brings together in one place 55 years of work (ca.1946-1999) by an eminent scholar of the languages and scripts of pre-Islamic Arabia.

Fr. Jamme (1916-2004) was a faculty member of CUA’s Department of Semitic and Egyptian Languages and Literatures between 1953 and 1997. He served as research epigrapher for important archeological expeditions to the Arabian peninsula.

The Jamme Library is a large ‘integrated’ epigraphic collection in which the evidence of inscribed stones, latex and paper squeezes or impressions, photographs, slides, rubbings, and line drawings of the inscriptions can be studied side by side with Fr. Jamme’s site maps, work notes and published studies, with the comparative lexical data of his Old South Arabian and Old North Arabian card indexes, and with his professional correspondence and research archives. Additional support is provided by his reference library of books and serials.

Work is underway to improve access to this important collection. It is the focus of a digitization project in Mullen Library. The collection, which has been in offsite storage, also is being rehoused in an epigraphic seminar room within the Semitics/ICOR library.