The Oriental Club of Philadelphia is one of the oldest continuously-active academic clubs in the United States. It was founded on April 30th, 1888, with the aim of "bring[ing] together those interested in the several fields of Oriental study, for the interchange of ideas, and the encouragement of Oriental research." The club was founded by scholars and other prominent intellectuals in the Philadelphia area interested in sharing new research and archaeological findings about the cultures of South Asia, East Asia, and the Near East. Its membership was initially limited to thirty, and meetings consisted of monthly lectures, held in the houses of members.

Members in the early days of the club included some of the founding figures in American scholarship on Sanskrit, the Ancient Near East, Judaica, and the art and archaeology of Asia. Among the club's founders were Cyrus Adler

Cyrus Adler

Cyrus Adler was a U.S. educator, Jewish religious leader and scholar.-Biography:Adler was born in Van Buren, Arkansas, a graduate of University of Pennsylvania in 1883 and gained a Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University in 1887, where he taught Semitic languages from 1884 to 1893...

, Tatsui Baba, George Dana Boardman

George Boardman the Younger

George Dana Boardman the Younger was born in Burma, the son of the Baptist missionaries George Dana Boardman and Sarah Hall Boardman. He returned to the United States as a boy and attended first Worcester Academy from which he graduated in 1846, then Brown University, where he graduated in 1852...

, Stewart Culin

Stewart Culin

Stewart Culin was an ethnographer and author interested in games, art and dress. He believed that similarity in gaming demonstrated similarity and contact among cultures across the world.-Early life:...

, Morton W. Easton, Paul Haupt

Paul Haupt

Hermann Hugo Paul Haupt was a Semitic scholar, one of the pioneers of Assyriology in the United States....

, Edward Washburn Hopkins

Edward Washburn Hopkins

Edward Washburn Hopkins, Ph.D., LL.D. , American Sanskrit scholar, was born in Northampton, Massachusetts.He graduated at Columbia University in 1878, studied at Leipzig, where he received the degree of Ph.D...

, Marcus Jastrow

Marcus Jastrow

Marcus Jastrow was a renowned Talmudic scholar, most famously known for his authorship of the popular and comprehensive A Dictionary of the Targumim, Talmud Babli, Talmud Yerushalmi and Midrashic Literature....

, Morris Jastrow, Jr.

Morris Jastrow, Jr.

Morris Jastrow, Jr., Ph. D. was an American orientalist, the son of Marcus Jastrow.-Biography:He was born in Warsaw, came to Philadelphia in 1866 when his father, Marcus Jastrow, accepted a position as Rabbi of Congregation Rodeph Shalom. He graduated at Penn in 1881...

, Benjamin Smith Lyman

Benjamin Smith Lyman

Benjamin Smith Lyman was an American mining engineer, surveyor and amateur linguist and anthropologist.-Biography:Benjamin Smith Lyman was born in Northampton, Massachusetts. He graduated from Harvard University in 1855...

, Robert W. Rogers, Mayer Sulzberger, Henry Clay Trumbull

Henry Clay Trumbull

Henry Clay Trumbull was an American clergyman and author, born on June 8, 1830, at Stonington, Connecticut, and educated at Williston Northampton School. He became a world famous editor, author, and pioneer of the Sunday School Movement. Poor health kept him from formal education past the age of...

, and Talcott Williams. Other early members included William F. Albright

William F. Albright

William Foxwell Albright was an American archaeologist, biblical scholar, philologist and expert on ceramics. From the early twentieth century until his death, he was the dean of biblical archaeologists and the universally acknowledged founder of the Biblical archaeology movement...

, Robert Pierpont Blake

Robert Pierpont Blake

Robert Pierpont Blake was an American Byzantinist and scholar of the Armenian and Georgian cultures.Robert P. Blake was born in San Francisco on November 1, 1886. As a John Harvard Traveling Fellow, he chiefly studied and worked, between 1911 and 1918, in Russia where he mastered Russian and began...

, Rhys Carpenter

Rhys Carpenter

Rhys Carpenter was a classical art historian and professor at Bryn Mawr College.Carpenter was born in Cotuit, Massachusetts. He took his B.A. in Classics at Columbia University in 1909. Carpenter won a Rhodes scholarship at Oxford, studying at Balliol College. There he published his own poetry...

, Franklin Edgerton, W. Max Müller, E. A. Speiser, and Solomon Zeitlin

Solomon Zeitlin

Solomon Zeitlin, שְׁלֹמֹה צײטלין, Шломо Цейтлин Shlomo Cejtlin was a Jewish historian...

.

The fifth anniversary of the Oriental Club of Philadelphia was marked by the publication of a volume of studies. For the twenty-fifth anniversary of the club's foundation in 1913, it entertained the American Oriental Society

American Oriental Society

The American Oriental Society was chartered under the laws of Massachusetts on September 7, 1842. It is one of the oldest learned societies in America, and is the oldest devoted to a particular field of scholarship....

. The thirty-fifth anniversary of the foundation was marked by a colloquium in 1923, the proceedings of which were published in 1924; the volume features essays by Max
L. Margolis, James A. Montgomery, Walter Woodburn Hyde, Franklin Edgerton, and Theophile J. Meek. For the fiftieth anniversary of the Oriental Club of Philadelphia in 1938, the club invited the American Oriental Society

American Oriental Society

The American Oriental Society was chartered under the laws of Massachusetts on September 7, 1842. It is one of the oldest learned societies in America, and is the oldest devoted to a particular field of scholarship....

to meet in Philadelphia. In 1989, under the direction of William Hanaway, the Oriental Club of Philadelphia mounted a major conference with the participation of academic clubs from around the world. The recent history of the Oriental Club of Philadelphia was the topic for discussion at the Annual Banquet on April 25, 2001, preserved in audio on the CD “An Oral History of the Oriental Club."

According to the club's website, the Oriental Club of Philadelphia "continues to be a forum for the academic exchange of ideas about the literature and languages of Asia, North Africa, and the Near and Middle East. The club brings together scholars in the Philadelphia area who work on the cultures of these regions from a variety of different perspectives, including History, Art History, Anthropology, Philosophy, and Religious Studies. Members include faculty and staff of universities and museums in the Philadelphia area. Sponsored events include presentations of works-in-progress by members, an annual lecture and banquet, and public colloquia on themes of cross-cultural concern."

Sources

• S. Culin, Chinese games with dice; read before the Oriental club of Philadelphia, March 14, 1889 (Philadelphia: Franklin, 1889)
• D.G. Brinton and M. Jastrow, The cradle of the Semites: two papers read before the Philadelphia Oriental Club (Philadelphia, 1890).
• Oriental Studies: A selection of the papers read before the Oriental Club of Philadelphia, 1888-1894 (Boston: Ginn and Co., 1894), pp. 3-16.
• The Oriental Club of Philadelphia: record of 25 years (Philadelphia, 1913).
• R.G. Kent, ed., Thirty years of Oriental Studies, issued in commemoration of thirty years of activity of the Oriental Club of Philadelphia (Philadelphia, 1918).
• R. G. Kent and I. G. Matthews, “The Oriental Club of Philadelphia,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 58.1 (1938), pp. 2-4.
• The Oriental Club of Philadelphia homepage