From “An” to “The”: the OI at 100 by Theo Van Den Hout

From “An” to “The”: The OI at 100 By Theo van den Hout Who were the five mysterious companions that Mrs. Breasted, the wife of the Oriental Institute’s founder James Henry Breasted, had to share her cabin with when sailing down the Nile on her honeymoon in 1894-1895? Where did two OI archaeologists end up when lost in a sandstorm at nightfall in Iraq in the 1930’s? And who was behind the Middle Eastern sounding name of the author Yuv ben Hadd in the volume professor Hans Güterbock received as a gift for his 70th birthday in 1978? Answers to these questions and everything else you always wanted to know about the Oriental Institute at the University of Chicago can now be found in the book Discovering New Pasts: The OI at 100 published by the Oriental Institute Press. Discovering New Pasts: The OI at 100. Coming from Rockford, Illinois, Breasted was a German-trained Egyptologist and one of the first hires at the newly founded (1892) University of Chicago. He was a visionary man whose goal was to establish an institute for the “study of man, … to recover the story of the human career,” as he wrote in a letter to John D. Rockefeller in February of 1919. His idea was an all-encompassing approach to this study, not starting in ancient Greece but in the true cradle of western civilization, the ancient Middle East. It was there that people for the first time changed from hunting and gathering to a sedentary lifestyle. It was there that writing was invented, and the first cities arose. James Breasted at Persepolis, 1933. All figures courtesy of the Oriental Institute. Breasted realized early on that besides old-fashioned philology and archaeology the physical and social sciences needed to be involved and could significantly contribute to uncovering that story. On May 2nd, Rockefeller came through with an initial gift of one hundred thousand dollars in five yearly installments. Moving quickly, less than two weeks later, on May 13th, the Trustees of the University “approve[d] the general plan for the organization of an Oriental Institute.” Just a few years later, Breasted received permission from the University to move into Haskell Hall, the previous home of the Chicago theologians and nowadays housing the department of Anthropology. This was also where the University’s growing collection of ancient Middle Eastern artefacts had been stored since 1896. However, the building soon became too small and, in 1928, with another large gift from the Rockefeller Foundation the construction on the OI’s own home could start and in 1931 the Museum as well as faculty and staff could move into the building that still houses the Institute. Ever since, Breasted’s vision of an interdisciplinary approach to the study of the ancient Middle East has made the OI one of the world’s leading research institutions on the study of “man’s early career.” Its teams of archaeologists conducted excavations in Egypt, Ira q , Ira n, Is ra e l-Palestine, Syria, and Turkey. Its philologists lead dictionary projects of a scope and length that was and is possible only at Chicago. Almost immediately, in 1924, Breasted also established a permanent base in Luxor, Egypt, to systematically document the inscriptions of ancient Thebes and its vicinity. And soon after, practically in the same years that the Institute was built, “Chicago House” was erected on the bank of the Nile. In Discovering New Pasts: The OI at 100, 62 people, almost all faculty, staff, and volunteers, tell the story of the OI, past and present, and of their involvement with the Institute. Jeffrey Abt, author of American Egyptologist: The Life of James Henry Breasted and the Creation of His Oriental In s t it u t e , opens with the account of Breasted’s tireless efforts to make his vision reality. Next, architect Susan van der Meulen recounts the story of the building itself with never before seen photos of the OI in statu nascendi. Breasted was very much hands-on in the process of designing both the exterior and interior and must not have been an easy client. Following these two introductory chapters, the book is divided into two large sections, “The Institute” and “Areas of Research.” The Oriental Institute during construction. The exterior of the Oriental Institute in 2018. “The Institute” tells the story of the Museum, the development of the collection and its current vision, but also of its conservation and registration departments as well as of its archives (not to be confused with the library, known as the Research Archives) and Tablet Collection. The subject of the next chapter is how the Volunteer Program started in 1 9 6 6 and g rew int o t he vibrant Educ at ion depart ment wit h it s rig orous t raining of docents. When in 1995 the Museum had to close for ten years to install climate control and to build a new wing, it was those volunteers who saved the Institute from oblivion by taking the show on the road in an ambitious outreach effort. Mummy Night, the annual Nowruz c elebration, the real tell in the basement where children can pretend to be archaeologists and unearth small objects, and many other activities bring in the Chicago community, especially the younger ones. Assyriologist Miguel Civil surrounded by cabinets containing clay fragments of cuneiform insc ript ions. A scene from Mummy Night. In “A Kind of Paradise” current librarian Foy Scalf sketches the history of the OI’s referenc e collection. A crisis occurred in the 1960’s when the University consolidated all previously separate departmental libraries into a large central one. The entire collection of books, journals, and maps moved to the brand-new location of the J oseph Regenstein Library and the magnificent reading room that for over three decades had housed the ever-growing collection sat empty for three years. But under the directorship of John A. Brinkman a complete shadow collection, called the Director’s Library, was built up, which continues to serve the OI community and its many research projects to this day. The final two contributions focus on the Center for Ancient Middle Eastern Landscapes, known as the CamelLab, founded in 1998 by the late Tony Wilkinson, and on the Publications Office. The latter is responsible for all publications, ranging from the popular News & Notes for all members to the most serious monographs for the scholarly community and to the present centennial book. The Reading Room. In Areas of Research faculty members sketch the involvement of the OI in Egypt, Mesopotamia, Iran, Afghanistan, Anatolia, the Levant, and Nubia. The last contribution brings together the OI’s dealings with the Islamic Period in these areas. It is here you will encounter famous archaeologists like Hans Henning von der Osten, Ernst Herzfeld, Erich Schmidt (and his Waco biplane christened “Friend of Iran”), Henri Frankfort, Robert and Linda Braidwood, and Robert Adams. Two sections offer the history and an explanation of the “Chicago-House Method” of the Epigraphic Survey in Luxor; guest author Eric Cline recounts the history of the excavations at Megiddo. Besides going into the field as epigraphers, the philologists back home were no less busy. Scholars like Benno Landsberger, Leo Oppenheim, Erica Reiner built the Chicago Assyrian Dictionary (CAD), George Hughes and Janet Johnson the Chicago Demotic Dictionary (CDD), and Hans Güterbock and Harry Huffier the Chicago Hittite Dictionary (CHD). The latter two projects are still ongoing, and the OI is home to countless smaller projects, many of them now making ample use of digital techniques and resources that marks the transition into the 21st century. Robert and Linda Braidwood. As a tribute to their indispensable role in the history of the OI, the book ends with portraits of some current staff and volunteers. One hundred years after the Trustees of the University of Chicago agreed to the founding of an Oriental Institute, the hard work of generations of scholars made possible by staff and volunteers has definitely earned it the article the. Finally, what about Mrs. Breasted’s companions on the Nile and the archaeologists in the sandstorm? The companions were human mummies, and when, going back, they could no longer see the tracks of their car (or anythingelse for that matter) and decided to spend the night on the spot, Seton Lloyd and Thorkild Jacobsen found themselves at dawn 10 feet away from their dig house. Who Yuv ben Hadd was you will have to figure out for yourself. The headquarters of the Diyala excavations in 1932. Theo van den Hout is Arthur and Joann Rasmussen Professor of Hittite and Anatolian Languages at the University of Chic ago. .

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