Main content
Nathaniel Julius Reich collection
Notifications
Held at: University of Pennsylvania: Archives at the Library of the Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies [Contact Us]420 Walnut Street, Philadelphia, PA 19106-3703
This is a finding aid. It is a description of archival material held at the University of Pennsylvania: Archives at the Library of the Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies. Unless otherwise noted, the materials described below are physically available in their reading room, and not digitally available through the web.
Overview and metadata sections
Early Life and Education
Dr. Nathaniel Julius Reich was born in Sarvar, Austria-Hungary, on April 29, 1876. He was the son of Rabbi Wilhelm Reich and his first wife. His father was oberrabbiner (chief rabbi) of Baden bei Wien (Baden-near-Vienna, also known as Baden), Austria for fifty years, until his death in 1929. For more biographical information about his father, see the finding aid for the Wilhelm Reich Collection.
Reich's father gave him "a complete Rabbinical training in Bible, Talmud, and other Rabbinical literature," and taught him "from childhood, Hebrew, Aramaic, Arabic and Syriac." He also studied piano, violin and cello, as well as drawing, sketching and painting. Reich's formal education included the Volksshule and Gymnasium of Baden. He also studied architecture and higher mathematics at the Technische Hochshule (Institute of Technology) in Vienna for one year (1).
Higher Education
Nathaniel Julius Reich received his Ph.D. degree in 1904 from the Lehranstalt fur Orientalische Sprachen in Vienna, where he studied "Semitics, Paleography, Papyrology, Oriental History and Egyptology, with a minor in Philosophy" (1). His dissertation was titled: "Prolegomena zu einer vergleichenden und praehistorischen Grammatik mit besonderer Berucksichtigung des Aegyptischen und seiner Dialekte" (Prolegomena to a comparative and prehistoric Grammar with special attention to the Egyptian language and its Dialects.) He also obtained post-graduate training at the Universities of Vienna, Berlin, Munich, Strasbourg and Oxford, where he studied librarianship, museology, chemistry and preservation techniques (1).
Choice of Career
In Reich's curriculum vitae, he explains his decision to pursue an academic career: "I had resolved to make my life work a collection of data wherever found in Oriental records (manuscripts, potsherds, inscriptions, etc.) concerning the Jews.... to write a complete history of the Jews in the Ancient Orient, North Africa, Greece and Rome. The work when completed should form a 'living commentary' on the Bible and Talmud" (1).
The focus of Reich's career became Egyptology, but he was also known as a linguist. He learned 50 languages (2) including Greek, Latin, "Persian, Turkish.... Sumerian, Assyrian, Hittite cuneiform, Phoenician, Meroitic and.... South Arabian dialects" (1), in addition to the Mahri, Sokotri, Skhauri, and Sabaic dialects. He also learned the Hamitic languages of North Africa, including Libyan, Berber, Shilhish, and Taureg, as well as Somali, Nubian, and Ethiopian (2).
Dr. Reich spoke several modern languages as well, including German, English, French, Italian and Spanish. Among others, he studied the Indian language, Tamil, and some Indigenous languages of the North and Central Americas.
Reich specialized in Egyptian language forms (hieroglyphs), particularly the Hieratic, abnormal Hieratic, Coptic and Demotic. His interest in Demotic was linked to this statement that "the Demotic material is very important.... because it is of the period when the Jews had the greatest political power and developed the Jewish Alexandrian culture" (2). In a news article about his work with Demotic papyri, he is quoted saying: "Think now, how well rewarded I am by my persistence.... at the end of every hard task lies romance.... and the satisfaction of knowing that you have mastered an age old mystery" (3).
Early Career
Reich's early work included cataloging and editing publications of the collections of ancient inscriptions held by various museums and libraries. These institutions included the Innsbruck Landesmueum, the Munich Library, the British Museum, the National Library of Vienna, and the Museo di Antichita of Turin. In addition, he held docent positions at the University of Prague and the University of Vienna.
Immigration
In the years following World War I, Dr. Reich searched for an academic position in both Europe and the United States. Reich came to the United States in January 1922 when he was appointed Assistant Curator of the Egyptian Section at the University Museum of the University of Pennsylvania. He was also appointed by the New York Historical Society to publish their collection of Demotic papyri (1), and served for a brief time as librarian of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago (4). He applied for United States citizenship in 1927, and obtained a U.S. passport by the summer of 1929.
Dropsie College
In 1924, the philanthropist Julius Rosenwald provided funding to create a position in Egyptology specifically for Dr. Reich at the Dropsie College for Hebrew and Cognate Learning in Philadelphia (5). Dr. Reich held this position (with various alterations in title) from 1925 until his death in 1943, after which the position was never filled again.
Dr. Reich supplemented his income through projects for various institutions holding collections of Egyptian inscriptions, both in the U. S. and abroad. His notes suggest that one such project was the examination and inventory of the Pierpont Morgan Library collection. In 1926 he lectured on Egyptology and historical law at Johns Hopkins University.
Literary Works
Throughout his career, Dr. Reich was an author of multiple books and scholarly articles. Many of his works are held by the Library at the Herbert D. Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. In 1933 he established the short-lived periodical, Mizraim, which he edited and to which he was a frequent contributor. The publication ran to nine volumes, the last of which was issued in 1938. Feature articles included translations of various papyri and ostraca, often by leading scholars throughout the world.
Memberships
Dr. Reich belonged to a number of professional organizations, including the American Oriental Society, Archaeological Institute of America, Egypt Exploration Society of Great Britain, Linguistic Society of America, Society of Biblical Literature, and the Society of Oriental Research. His social memberships included the Arts Society, the Classical Club and Oriental Club of Philadelphia, and the Jewish Historical Society of America. He was affiliated with Congregation Mikveh Israel and the Joshua Lodge in Philadelphia, as well as local chapters of B'nai Brith.
Later Life
Nathaniel Reich died at the age of 67 on October 5, 1943. He is buried in the Beth El Emet cemetery in Philadelphia, where, in 1945, his tombstone was erected by Dropsie College.
The Nathaniel Julius Reich collection consists of correspondence, notebooks, literary productions, news clippings, facsimiles, photographs and issues of Mizraim, relating to Reich's career as an Egyptologist, dating from 1888 to 1942. The majority of this collection comprises of personal and professional correspondence, as well as drafted and published articles by Reich and his colleagues. The collection contains a complete set of Reich's periodical Mizraim.
The collection reveals relatively little of Dr. Reich's work as professor of Egyptology at Dropsie College. However, there are numerous items of correspondence with his students and former students. Photocopies of letters written by Dr. Reich to Cyrus Adler, President of the College, have been inserted into this collection, to fill important gaps. Additional items have been copied from the files of Abraham Neuman, Dr. Adler successor as President of the College. The researcher is referred to both the Cyrus Adler Papers and Abraham A. Neuman Papers, in the Library of the Herbert D. Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, for a more complete picture of Dr. Reich's career at the college.
The Nathaniel Julius Reich collection consists of eight series: I. Correspondence, II. Notebooks, III. Notes and transcriptions, IV. Literary productions, V. Mizraim, VI. News clippings, VII. Facsimiles, and VIII. Photographs.
1. Curriculum vitae of Nathaniel Reich (circa 1923). Nathaniel Reich Collection, CJS ARC MS 20, Box 7, FF 26, Herbert D. Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies at the University of Pennsylvania.
2. "Able to Understand Everybody's Talk," The Philadelphia Record, 1924 May 18, page 10.
3. "Age Old Records Deciphered Here," The Philadelphia Evening Bulletin, 1924 March 27.
4. Obituary printed in The New York Times, 1943 October 6.
5. Minutes of the Board of Governors, Dropsie College Archives, Herbert D. Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies at the University of Pennsylvania.
6. Reich, Nathaniel J. "Editorial Foreward." Mizraim, Volume I, 1933, page 2.
Boxes 17-18 are a gift of Eleanor Allen, 2022
This collection has been processed twice, and may require a third "round" before it can be considered completely accessible. The collection was first organized in 1988-1989 by Jonathan Weiser, Library Assistant. He first segregated the material into two distinct collections: the papers of Dr. Nathaniel Reich and those of his father, Rabbi Wilhelm Reich. Mr. Weiser then combined all of Dr. Reich's correspondence and ephemera, and arranged these in chronological order. It is not known whether this reflects the order in which the material was received after Dr. Reich's death in 1943.
The collection was processed again in 1992-93 by Judith Robins, Archivist, who elected to retain Mr. Weiser's chronological arrangement of the correspondence, but reorganized the other materials. She would like to acknowledge her debt to her predecessor for his extensive and useful work.
It is possible that many related items, such as pages of a single letter, were separated during some stage of the physical processing. An additional hindrance, during the second phase at least, has been the processor's lamentable ignorance of German, Hebrew, and any number of other languages, including ancient Greek and Egyptian hieroglyphics. Of them all, the processor's lack of German has imposed the greatest limitations on the accessibility of this collection's contents.
A third phase of processing, conducted by persons fluent in German and the other relevant languages, may well yield far more valuable results than have been achieved to date. Until such time as this may be done, the researcher will be obliged to search carefully for integral materials in these languages. This is particularly true of the Notes and Transcriptions, Mizraim, and Facsimiles Series, which contain many reproductions of ancient documents and inscriptions.
A first step towards this end was accomplished in 1995 when Dr. Robert A. Kraft of the University of Pennsylvania made extensive use of the collection. His research yielded much additional information, particularly in regard to Dr. Reich's Literary Productions, Notes and Transcriptions, as well as the Facsimile series. Much of this information has been incorporated into the revised finding aid.
The processor wishes to thank Arthur Kiron, Schottenstein-Jesselson Curator of Judaica Collections, for translating various materials in German and Yiddish. Thanks are also due to the Archives of the University Museum of the University of Pennsylvania, and to Temple University's Urban Archives, for supplying numerous biographical source materials.
Published works by Dr. Reich and his contemporaries have been removed from his papers and placed as appropriate in the Library's other collections. Many pamphlets and offprints of his own works can be found in the Katz Center's Ephemera Collection.
Two sets of unidentified glass-plate negatives have been removed from the Facsimile Series and placed in the Katz Center's Photographic Collection.
- Publisher
- University of Pennsylvania: Archives at the Library of the Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies
- Finding Aid Author
- Judith Robins, finding aid updated and revised by Hope Jones in 2025
- Finding Aid Date
- 1993
- Access Restrictions
-
This collection is open for research use.
- Use Restrictions
-
Copyright restrictions may exist. For most library holdings, the Trustees of the University of Pennsylvania do not hold copyright. It is the responsibility of the requester to seek permission from the holder of the copyright to reproduce material from the Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts.