Oriental Institute Museum Publications – serie

This Oriental Institute Museum exhibit catalog looks at how the living commemorated and cared for deceased ancestors in the ancient Middle East. The focus of the exhibit is the memorial monument (stele) of an official named Katumuwa (ca. 735 BC), discovered in 2008 by University of Chicago archaeologists at the site of Zincirli, Turkey. Part I of the catalog presents the most comprehensive collection of scholarship yet published on the interpretation of the Katumuwa Stele, an illuminating new document of ancestor cult and beliefs about the soul. In Part II, leading scholars describe the relationship between the living and the dead in Mesopotamia, Egypt, Anatolia, and the Levant (Syria-Palestine), providing a valuable introduction to the family and mortuary religion of the ancient Middle East. The fifty-seven objects cataloged highlight the role of food and drink offerings and stone effigies in maintaining a place for the dead in family life.

This companion volume to the exhibit examines the multicultural city of Fustat, capital of medieval Egypt and predecessor to modern Cairo. It explores the interactions of Muslim, Christian, and Jewish communities within urban city life. These three communities practiced their own beliefs and enacted communal self-government, but they also intermingled on a daily basis and practiced shared traditions of life. Essays by leading scholars examine the different religions and languages found at Fustat, as well as cultural aspects of daily life such as food, industry, and education. The lavishly illustrated catalog highlights a new analysis of the Oriental Institute's collection of artifacts and textual materials from 7th through 12th-century Egypt. Highlights include documents from the Cairo Genizah (a document repository) of the Ben Ezra Synagogue as well as never-before-published artifacts from archaeological excavations conducted at Fustat by George Scanlon on behalf of the American Research Center in Egypt. The volume encourages discussion on the challenges of understanding religion through objects of daily life.

This book explores what the Book of the Dead was to the ancient Egyptians, what it means to us today, what it was believed to do, how it worked, how it was made, and ultimately what happened to it. Edited by Foy Scalf, PhD, this volume includes fourteen essays showcasing the latest research on the Book of the Dead written by thirteen internationally renown experts as well as a complete catalogue of the forty-five objects on display in an associated exhibition at the Oriental Institute Museum. Two famous Book of the Dead papyri, Papyrus Milbank and Papyrus Ryerson, are reproduced in their entirety with full-color photographs among nearly 400 illustrations for the first time. Discover how the ancient Egyptians controlled their immortal destiny and sought close association with the gods through the Book of the Dead.

This special edition of Highlights of the Collections of the Oriental Institute Museum commemorates the 2019 centennial of the Oriental Institute and presents 100 highlights from ancient Mesopotamia, Syro-Anatolia, the Levant, Egypt, Nubia, and Persia in the collections.

Explore the changing world of late nineteenth-century Iran through the gaze of one of its most renowned photographers, Antoin Sevruguin. This volume publishes for the first time the Oriental Institute Museum’s complete collection of nineteenth-century Iranian photographs, most of which were created by Sevruguin. The artfully staged photographs still resonate with us today.Accompanying the catalogue of photographs is a series of essays that investigating Sevruguin’s life and photographic career, including the lasting impact of his unique vision as demonstrated by the work of contemporary artist Yassaman Ameri.

This fully-illustrated catalogue offers highlights of the Egyptian collection at the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago. A brief history of the collection is followed by a catalogue of seventy-seven objects, which date from the early third millennium BC to the eighth century AD. Many of these objects have not been previously published. The artefacts include statues, stelae, tools, games, clothing, coffins, figured ostraca, and papyri; each item is described, and its function and symbolism are discussed. Brief texts are translated. Appendices give museum registration numbers, provenance, and bibliographies.

This companion volume and catalog to the exhibit that opens on February 9, 2009, traces the life of Meresamun, whose mummy, dating to about 800 B.C., is one of the highlights of The Oriental Institute museum in Chicago, IL. The text introduces the historical and cultural setting of Egypt during her time. Essays and artifacts examine the role of music and of musicians in Egyptian temple cults, their training, and the types of musical instruments that Meresamun would have used. The life of Meresamun outside the temple is explored, with emphasis upon her social and legal status, what other professions were available to her, and what home life was like. The study of the life of this individual is augmented by forensic evidence obtained with the newest generation of CT scanners that sheds life on Meresamun's life and death.

On January 29, 2005, the Oriental Institute celebrated the official public opening of the Haas and Schwartz Megiddo Gallery. This occasion marked the return of some of the most extraordinary artifacts ever excavated in the southern Levant to permanent public display. The Oriental Institute's prolific history of exploration in the region is testament to a long-standing scholarly passion for discovery and the pursuit of knowledge. This volume draws from the momentum generated by the opening of the Megiddo Gallery and present a selection of highlights from the Institute's greater Israel collection.

This catalogue for an exhibit at Chicago's Oriental Institute Museum presents the newest research on the Predynastic and Early Dynastic Periods in a lavishly illustrated format. Essays on the rise of the state, contact with the Levant and Nubia, crafts, writing, iconography and evidence from Abydos, Tell el-Farkha, Hierakonpolis and the Delta were contributed by leading scholars in the field. The catalogue features 129 Predynastic and Early Dynastic objects, most from the Oriental Institute's collection, that illustrate the environmental setting, Predynastic and Early Dynastic culture, religion and the royal burials at Abydos. This volume will be a standard reference and a staple for classroom use.

This fully illustrated catalogue of essays, descriptions, and commentary accompanies the Oriental Institute special exhibit Picturing the Past: Imaging and Imagining the Ancient Middle East (on exhibit February 7 through September 2, 2012). Picturing the Past presents paintings, architectural reconstructions, facsimiles, models, photographs, and computer-aided reconstructions that show how the architecture, sites, and artifacts of the ancient Middle East have been documented. It also examines how the publication of those images have shaped our perception of the ancient world, and how some of the more "imaginary" reconstructions have obscured our real understanding of the past. The exhibit and catalog also show how features of the ancient Middle East have been presented in different ways for different audiences, in some cases transforming a highly academic image into a widely recognized icon of the past.

Our Work: Modern Jobs - Ancient Origins is the catalog for a photo-based exhibit that reveals that many modern professions originated in the ancient Middle East. Artifacts from the Oriental Institute Museum were paired with a baker, farmer, manicurist, brewer, poet, boat builder, judge and other professionals to show the antiquity of these jobs. The portraits are accompanied by commentary on the contributions of the ancient Middle East to life today and new insights into how members of the public view their relationship to the past. This volume will be of interest to educators, historians, and those interested in fine-arts photography.

Embroidering Identities: A Century of Palestinian Clothing is the companion piece to the exhibit held at the Oriental Institute from November 11, 2006 to March 25, 2007. It is an overview of the colourful and distinctive clothing of late nineteenth and early twentieth-century Palestine. The richly illustrated text discusses the construction of traditional dresses, the materials and dyes employed, and clothing and embroidery in the years following 1948. Garments from many regions are illustrated and described. The volume includes a glossary of Arabic terms and a checklist to the exhibit.

Archaeologists work with broken fragments to build pictures of life in past societies. In many excavations, the most abundant fragments we work with are broken pieces of ceramic vessels and objects (we call them "sherds"), which we find by the thousands in a typical dig. These sherds can tell us quite remarkable things about the past: when a site was occupied in history, what trade contacts it had, and what kinds of everyday activities people were doing there. We can also learn about technologies and how artisans learned and adopted technologies across large areas. The finest ceramics, of course, are true works of art that convey an aesthetic sense that we can appreciate hundreds or thousands of years later. Daily Life Ornamented: The Medieval Persian City of Rayy shows how archaeologists work with sherds at the same time that it portrays aspects of life along the Silk Road during the ninth - fourteenth centuries. It must be said that although the catalogue is based largely on sherds, they are not only interesting as documents of medieval Islamic civilization, but they are also among the most beautiful sherds in the collections of the Oriental Institute. This catalogue, published in conjunction with an exhibition of the same name, also represents an opportunity to re-examine the pioneering work of Erich Schmidt, who excavated the ancient site of Rayy during the mid-1930s.

With an introduction by Professor McGuire Gibson, this up-to-date account describes the state of the Iraq National Museum in Baghdad and chronicles the damage done to archaeological sites by illicit digging. Contributors include Donny George, John M. Russell, Katharyn Hanson, Clemens Reichel, Elizabeth C. Stone, and Patty Gerstenblith. Published in conjunction with the exhibit of the same name opening at the Oriental Institute April 10, 2008, this book commemorates the fifth anniversary of the looting of the Iraq National Museum.

This catalog presents the entire corpus of 272 baked clay figurines and votive beds excavated at Medinet Habu by the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago during their 1926-1933 campaign. The figurines represent women, women with children, men, deities, and animals. They date from the sixteenth century B.C. to the ninth century A.D., illustrating permanence and change in themes of clay figurines as well as stylistic development within each type. The group of votive beds and the stela made from votive bed molds is among the largest and most diverse collections of such material. Each object is fully described and illustrated and is accompanied by commentary on construction, symbolism, and function.

Pioneers to the Past: American Archaeologists in the Middle East, 1919-1920, the catalogue of the Oriental Institute special exhibit of the same name, highlights the interconnected stories of an important figure in intellectual history - James Henry Breasted - and the beginnings of American scientific archaeology in the Near East at a crucial turning point in world history. At the end of World War I, Breasted and a small team of scholars set sail for the Near East on what would be an eleven-month odyssey across the region. The fascinating mix of politics, scholarship, and history (both ancient and modern) as seen through a focus on the larger-than-life persona of James Henry Breasted lies at the heart of Pioneers to the Past. Breasted's letters and photographs from his trip provide a window into the engagement of modern scholarship with the ancient world, in a highly charged setting of power politics in the early twentieth century. The essays in this catalogue explain the historical, legal, and political context in a way that greatly enriches our understanding of Breasted's journey and its aftermath.

Lost Nubia: A Centennial Exhibit of Photographs from the 1905-1907 Egyptian Expedition of the University of Chicago is the catalogue for the inaugural exhibit in the Marshall and Doris Holleb Family Special Exhibits Gallery of the Oriental Institute Museum. Curated by John A Larson, Oriental Institute Museum Archivist, the exhibit of fifty-two historic photographs from the Oriental Institute Archives was selected as a temporary accompaniment to the new permanent installation of objects from ancient Nubia. These photographic images document some of the archaeological sites in Nubia that have disappeared under the waters of Lake Nasser and a few places that are so remote that few tourists have ever seen them. These documentary images, taken during the consecutive winter field seasons of 1905-1906 and 1906-1907, represent just a small part of a corpus of nearly 1,200 black-and-white negatives that were made by the Egyptian Expedition of the University of Chicago, under the direction of James Henry Breasted. The original glass-plate field negatives for the first season of the expedition, 1905-1907, were made by German photographer Friedrich Koch. For the expedition's second field season up the Nile (1906-1907) Breasted decided to supplement the professional glass-plate photography of Horst Schliephack with a second camera that used roll-film. The smaller-format film negatives were used to take ethnographic photographs, as well as candid photographs of the expedition members at work.

This lavishly illustrated catalogue of the exhibit European Cartographers and the Ottoman World, 1500-1750 , explores how mapmakers sought to document a new geography of the Near East that reconciled classical ideas and theories with the information collected and brought back by travellers and voyagers. The text is accompanied by images of illuminated manuscript charts and atlases, the earliest printed maps of the Ottoman Empire, and bird's-eye views of cities that provided "arm-chair travellers" with the experience of knowing distant places.

Writing, the ability to make language visible and permanent, is one of humanity's greatest inventions. This book presents current perspectives on the origins and development of writing in Mesopotamia and Egypt, providing an overview of each writing system and its uses. Essays on writing in China and Mesoamerica complete coverage of the four pristine writing systems - inventions of writing in which there was no previous exposure to texts. The authors explore what writing is, and is not, and sections of the text are devoted to Anatolian hieroglyphs of Anatolia, and to the development of the alphabet in the Sinai Peninsula in the second millennium BC and its spread to Phoenicia where it spawned the Greek and Latin alphabets. This richly illustrated volume, issued in conjunction with an exhibit at the Oriental Institute, provides a current perspective on, and appreciation of, an invention that changed the course of history.