PETERS, JOHN PUNNETT An m i Ameriean clergyman and Orientalist, born in Neav York City. Ile graduated at Yale (1873), and studied at Berlin and at Leipzig. He became professor of Old Testament languages and litera ture at the Protestant Episcopal Divinity School in Philadelphia (1884) and professor of Hebrew at the University of Pennsylvania (1885), and from 1888 to 1891 conducted excavations at Nippur. In 1893 lie became rector of Saint Miellacrs Church, New York City. He wrote: Scriptures, Hebrew and Christiam (l886-89) ; Nippur, or Explorations and ildrentures on the Euphrates (1897) ; and The Old Testament and the New Scholarship (1901).
PETERS, 1416ra. KARL (1856—). A German traveler. Ile was born at Neuhaus, in Hanover, and studied at Gottingen, Tiibingen, and Berlin, where in 1880 he became privat-docent. In 1884 lie founded the German Colonization Society. in whose interests he traveled through Eastern Africa. Returning to Germany in 1885, he be came the head of the German East African Com pany, and two years later went again to Africa to assume the management of the colonial posses sions. In 1888 lie took the leadership of an ex pedition for the relief of Emin Pasha, marched lip the Tana River to its source, and penetrated finally to the Victoria Nyanza. He crossed the
lake in June, 1890, met Emin, already rescued by Stanley. and thence returned to the coast. In February, 1891. he was sent as Imperial commis sioner to East Africa: founded a station at Kili manjaro, and was active in the settlement of the boundary between German and English posses sions. Accusations of cruelty toward the natives were in 1896 preferred against him. They were investigated before a judicial commission, and resulted in his dismissal from the service. In 1898 he went to London and formed a company for the exploration of the gold-fields of Rhodesia, and he himself visited Africa again in 1900-01. His publications include: Willenstrelt tend Welt wile (1883), a philosophical study; Die deutsche Emin Paseha-Expedition (1891) ; Das deutsch ostafrikanisehe Schutzg,bict (1895) ; Dos goldene Ophir Salomos (1895) ; and .I equatorial mid Sialafrika ?melt Otter Darstellung von 1719 (1895).