The multitude of duties which devolved upon the chief librarian did not hinder him from continuing to hold the office of president of the board of directors of the Archaeological Institute. This, although it conferred honor, yet consumed much time. Lepsius had held the post since Gerhard’s death in 1867, and when he became manager of the library the directors were no less men than Haupt, Curtius, Mommsen, Kirchhoff, and afterwards Hercher. Under his presidency the Institute had been enlarged from a Prussian institution to a scientific institution of the whole German empire. The construction of a stately building at the capital had been authorized and completed. It was also largely owing to Lepsius that the scholarships for young archaeologists were increased in number and amount. The application for them constantly became more numerous, and among the archaeologists were many philologists, who wished to participate in the benefits of the Institute. The archaeologists generally received the preference, but Lepsius specially and rightly interested himself for the young private professors of the university and the teachers at the gymnasiums. He desired that they might acquire more elevated views of art, and a more enlightened conception of science and of life, by a sojourn on the classical soil of Italy, where the whole spiritual existence of a well-prepared and susceptible youth is so easily broadened and ennobled. Entirely apart from whatever scientific gains he may have won, the memory of Italy must illumine the teacher’s life, his academical discourses, and even his dryest teaching, and lend to all a higher inspiration. Lepsius was also enthusiastically interested in the founding of a subordinate branch of the Roman Institute at Athens, and exerted all the influence in his power in favor of it. Ernest Curtius, “whose intellectual Fatherland is Greece,” showed himself most active in carrying out this project. The correspondence which Lepsius had to conduct, as president of the board of directors in Berlin, had so increased that in 1874 he was obliged to write about eighty letters in a quarter of a year. Since 1833 he had belonged to the Institute as a corresponding member, since 1835 as a regular member, since 1836, first as a director, and finally as presiding member of the central board. When he retired in 1880 the Institute awarded him the well-deserved honor by electing him an honorary member. He had been made a Doctor of the Theological Faculty in Leipsic in 1859.