Son of a Lutheran theologian, Friedrich Delitzsch (1850-1922) was a professor of Semitic languages and Assyriology at Leipzig, Breslau and Berlin. A founder of the German Oriental Society, he caused a furore far beyond the world of Ancient Near Eastern studies when, in January 1902, he gave a lecture 'upon the relations between the Bible and the recent results of cuneiform research' in the presence of the German emperor and his court. Delitzsch demonstrated for his non-specialist audience that (as many biblical archaeologists already knew) several Old Testament narratives, including the...