The crux of the controversy lay in the University’s funding of archaeological expeditions to Iraq to excavate the ancient city of Nippur. Hermann Volrath Hilprecht accompanied some of these expeditions as scientific director, but apparently had taken the credit for some of the findings of his colleagues in a 1903 book, Explorations in Bible Land. Specifically, the claim that Hilprecht had discovered what he called the “Temple Library” at Nippur was a major point of contention. The charges brought forward by Dr. John Peters asserted that not only did Hilprecht only stay at the Nippur site for a month and a half, but that the tablets Hilprecht claimed to have come from a larger library collection were actually purchased from a local worker and did not have any indication of being the literary and academic works Hilprecht described. As Hilprecht was curator of the Semitic section of the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Sara Yorke Stevenson formed two committees out of the museum’s Board of Managers to investigate the claims, but could issue no formal decisions or reprimands due to the influence of the university Board of Trustees. Stevenson and four of her colleagues resigned in protest, so the Board of Trustees assumed control over the case and eventually acquitted Hilprecht of charges of scholarly misconduct. Stevenson’s clippings from the period indicate just how contentious the drama became in Philadelphia circle. Most of the newspapers seem to condemn Hilprecht’s violations and take Stevenson’s side by describing the Board of Trustees as biased toward Hilprecht’s cause. In the end, however, while Stevenson resigned Hilprecht would later be awarded for his archaeological efforts by the institutions as powerful as the Ottoman Empire