Hermann Volrath Hilprecht (July 28, 1859 - March 19, 1925) was a German-American Assyriologist and archaeologist. In 1882, he spent two months in the British Museum studying cuneiform literature. He participated in the first campaign of excavations at Nippur (modern Nuffar, Iraq) in 1889. In the following two campaigns he was member of the scientific committee in Philadelphia and eventually travelled to Constantinople in examining the portable finds and arranged the separation/acquisition of duplicate pieces for the newly constructed University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology in Philadelphia. With announcing the discovery of the Temple Library of Nippur after finishing the fourth campaign, some other team members including the former expedition director John Punnett Peters built a strong opposition against Hilprecht who claimed "the cream" of nearly every important discovery as his work. He died in Philadelphia in 1925.
