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<< Our Photo Pages >> University of Chicago Institute - Museum in United States in Great Lakes Midwest

Submitted by bat400 on Tuesday, 25 June 2013  Page Views: 12757

MuseumsSite Name: University of Chicago Institute Alternative Name: University of Chicago Oriental Institute, The Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago
Country: United States
NOTE: This site is 27.022 km away from the location you searched for.

Region: Great Lakes Midwest Type: Museum
Nearest Town: Chicago, IL
Latitude: 41.789200N  Longitude: 87.5978W
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University of Chicago Oriental Institute
University of Chicago Oriental Institute submitted by bat400 : The Assyrian Lamassu at the Oriental Institute Museum at the University of Chicago. Gypsum (?) Khorsabad, entrance to the throne room Neo-Assyrian Period, ca. 721-705 B.C. OIM A7369 This 40 ton statue - one of two flanking the entrance to the throne room of King Sargon II. A protective spirit known as a lamassu, it is shown as a composite being with he head of a human, the body and ears ... (Vote or comment on this photo)
Museum in Cook County, Illinois. Ancient Near Eastern art museum and research center. The collections cover near eastern ancient cultures (Egyptian, Mesopotamian, Nubian, Assyria, Megiddo) well into the era's of recorded ancient history, but there is also a prehistory section. Many of the exhibits of specific culture cover them from prehistory and then into the era's following the invention of writing.

The artifacts on display and available for researchers to examine predate modern Middle Eastern laws preventing the export of antiquities. Instead large parts of the collection are from 19th and early 20th century digs where the frequent arrangement was to share artifacts between the country of origin and the foreign archeologists. Other collections, particularly parts of the extensive cuneiform tablet collection have been curated under agreement with the country of origin.

The museum is on the campus of the University of Chicago. Museum website (opened to the page on the cuneiform collection). More photos from the Institute here

The beer was full of bacteria, warm and slightly sour. By contemporary standards, it would have been a spoiled batch. "Hurray, Beer!" See latest comment.
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"University of Chicago Institute" | Login/Create an Account | 4 News and Comments
  
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The Oriental Institute is changing its name by Andy B on Friday, 17 March 2023
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Administrators at the 104 year old museum agree its time to drop "oriental"

The institute’s new change and logo will be debuted at an April 4 reception at the museum, which is located at 1155 E. 58th St.

In a March 2 statement announcing the change, Theo van den Hout, interim director at the institute, said the decision is a long time coming.

“Our current name has caused confusion, often contributing to the perception that our work is focused on East Asia, rather than West Asia and North Africa,” Hout said. “Additionally, the word “oriental” has developed a pejorative connotation in modern English.”

Founded in 1919, the OI is a museum and research institute that studies civilizations of the ancient Near East. In addition to housing thousands of ancient artifacts and running educational programs, the institute partners with international museums to host archaeological digs in North Africa and the Middle East.

More at
https://www.hpherald.com/evening_digest/the-oriental-institute-is-changing-its-name/article_1470fc18-c363-11ed-ba1d-73b2932f15cd.html
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For Its Latest Beer, a Craft Brewer Chooses an Unlikely Pairing: Archaeology by bat400 on Tuesday, 25 June 2013
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Enlisting the help of archaeologists at the University of Chicago, Cleveland's Great Lakes Brewer has been trying to replicate a 5,000-year-old Sumerian beer using only clay vessels and a wooden spoon.
“How can you be in this business and not want to know from where your forefathers came with their formulas and their technology?” said Pat Conway, a co-owner of the company.

As interest in artisan beer has expanded across the country, so have collaborations between scholars and independent brewers.
“It involves a huge amount of detective work and inference and pulling in information from other sources to try and figure it out,” said Gil Stein, the director of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, which is ensuring the historical accuracy of the project. “We recognize that to get at really understanding these different aspects of the past, you have to work with people who know things that we don’t.”

There is an unresolved argument in academic circles about whether the invention of beer was the primary reason that people in Mesopotamia, the birthplace of Western civilization about 10,000 years ago, first became agriculturalists. By about 3200 B.C. beer had already held a significant role in the region’s customs and myths. Sipped through a straw by all classes of society, it is also believed to have been a source of drinkable water and essential nutrients.

Left behind were only cuneiform texts that vaguely hint at the brewing process, perhaps none more poetically than the Hymn to Ninkasi, the Sumerian goddess of beer, dated to around 1800 B.C.. The University of Chicago is where a well-known interpretation of the text was translated in 1964.

Great Lakes has no plan to sell its brew, based on the Hymn to Ninkasi, to the public. The project, unlike others that recreate old recipes on modern equipment, is an educational exercise more than anything else. It has been shaped by a volley of e-mails with Sumerian experts in Chicago as both sides try to better understand an “off the grid” approach that has proved more difficult than first thought.

In place of stainless steel tanks, the Oriental Institute gave the brewery ceramic vessels modeled after artifacts excavated in Iraq during the 1930s. The team successfully malted its own barley on the roof of the brew house. It also asked a Cleveland baker to help make a bricklike “beer bread” for use as a source of active yeast — by far the most difficult step in the process.

The archaeologists said having professional brewers involved in the effort had helped them ask questions they had not considered.
“We keep going back to the evidence and finding new hints that can help us choose between different interpretations,” said Tate Paulette, a doctoral student and a lead researcher on the project.

While the project continues, Great Lakes’ brewing vessels are already a popular addition to guided tours of the brewery. The company is making plans to [offer] a public tasting of the final brew alongside an identical recipe made with more current brewing techniques.

After months of experiments in the brewery’s laboratory, Nate Gibbon, a brewer at Great Lakes, stood over a ceramic vat on a recent Wednesday, cooking outside on a patch of grass. The batch, spiced with cardamom and coriander, fermented for two days, but it was ultimately too sour for the modern tongue, Mr. Gibbon said. Next time, he will sweeten it with honey or dates.

Without sophisticated cleaning systems to rid the vessels of natural bacteria, Mesopotamian imbibers might have been more familiar with the brew’s unwanted vinegar flavor, archaeologists said. Yet even with the most educated guesswork, they said, the Sumerian palate might never be fully uncovered.

For more, see the New York Times.
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University of Chicago: Who Sent This Journal to Indiana Jones? by bat400 on Thursday, 31 January 2013
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Earlier this week the University of Chicago received what might be an elaborate hoax, a miracle, or the best college admissions application of all time: Abner Ravenwood’s journal from Raiders of the Lost Ark.

The journal came in a package addressed to Henry Walton Jones, Jr. but wasn’t sent through the U.S. mail — its stamps are fake. It’s a near-perfect replica of the journal Indiana Jones uses in Raiders. The university has no idea how it found its way into Rosenwald Hall, which houses the school’s admissions department and where the staff initially thought it was just a piece of mail meant for a professor that got lost on the way.

“This package was a little perplexing because we couldn’t find the staff member or the professor [it was intended for] in the directory,” Garrett Brinker, director of undergraduate outreach for the university.

Since its discovery, Brinker said, the university has been doing everything it can to figure out where exactly the package came from. After determining that the replica they’d received was not a recently sold item on eBay, they decided to ask the internet. They put an “Indiana Jones Mystery Package” post on Tumblr, set up an e-mail tip-line for anyone who might know its origins and even asked Lucasfilm, which responded, “We don’t know where the package came from but would love to know.”

Fans of Raiders will remember that Abner Ravenwood’s journal was what Indy used to find the Ark of the Covenant. Ravenwood was a professor at the University of Chicago and one of Indiana Jones’ mentors. The replica of his journal that was sent to his former university is meticulous in its details: photos, maps, currency, and even handwritten text that can be found here. “The entire journal must’ve taken hours upon hours to create,” Brinker noted.

But yet, the new 'best prop person' in the world has yet to come forward, or reveal their motives.

Thanks to jackdaw1, who sent this first link. See http://www.wired.com for details of the mysterious arrival (and speculation) in mid December 2012.

A few days later, the mystery was solved:

The University of Chicago’s Oriental Institute will unveil a highly detailed diary Thursday that the admissions office received in a manila envelope addressed to Henry Walton Jones Jr. — the birth name of fictional archeologist Indiana Jones.
“It has captivated and enthralled a lot of the campus,” Garret Brinker, the director of undergraduate outreach for the admissions office, told the Daily News.

The journal has ancient maps and notes on mysterious artifacts — notably the Ark of the Covenant. It even bears the signature of Abner Ravenwood, Jones’ fictional mentor and father of his love interest, Marion. The peculiar journal perplexed the admissions office from when they discovered it Dec. 13. until Monday morning when an eBay seller in Guam, Paul Charfauros, confirmed that he created it.

Charfauros made the prop replica and mailed it to a customer in Italy, but it fell out of its original packaging in Honolulu. The journal was still, however, in a smaller envelope — with string wrapped around it and canceled stamps — that Charfauros included to enhance the aura.

Despite lacking actual U.S. postage, the postal service shipped the package to the admissions office, where the Oriental Institute was located during the Indiana Jones era.

The journal will be added to an exhibit about actual University of Chicago professors, Henry Breasted and Robert Braidwood, who some speculate partly inspired the globetrotting character.

For more, see http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/mystery-solved-indy-jones-parcel-explained.
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Iran’s Cultural Heritage Under Threat by bat400 on Sunday, 25 April 2010
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Submitted by coldrum --

In 1933, archaeologists with the Oriental Institute made an astounding discovery. While excavating the ruins of Persepolis (southwestern Iran), they unearthed 15,000 to 30,000 clay tablets and fragments. The Persepolis Fortification Tablets consist of administrative records from the middle period of Darius I’s reign (509-494 B.C.). By studying these objects collectively, scholars have discovered webs of connections and parallels between individual inscriptions. Through comparison, researchers have been able to draw important conclusions about the Archaemenid governmental structure. The tablets also bear images that serve as signatures for the tablet’s creators, which have taught art historians about the nature of Archaemenid visual culture. Approximately two thirds of these artifacts have been returned to Iran, but thousands of tablets and fragments have yet to be studied and remain in the Oriental Institute’s collection. Unfortunately, the existence of the extraordinary collection and the untapped wellspring of information it contains is being threatened by an ongoing court case.

In 2001, nine American victims of a 1997 Hamas-orchestrated bombing in Israel brought suit against Iran for funding the terrorist organization in a case entitled Rubin v. Iran. In 1993, the plaintiffs were awarded damages totaling $71.5 million and Iran was ordered to pay an additional $300 million in punitive damages, (three times Iran’s annual budget for supporting terrorist groups). After the verdict, the plaintiffs found that collecting payment would be extraordinarily difficult. After a few unsuccessful attempts, their lawyers proposed an unorthodox strategy: they decided to go after Iranian artifacts in America. At the Oriental Institute, the plaintiffs’ attorneys targeted the Persepolis Fortification archive and the Chogha Mish collection. The latter body of artifacts proved that humans had occupied the region 1000 years earlier than previously suspected. The victims also sought to recover the Herzfeld collection from the Field Museum in Chicago (ornaments, prehistoric bronzes).

While the Rubin plaintiffs are entitled to compensation for the horrendous atrocity perpetrated against them, unique, priceless artifacts should not be substituted for monetary assets or other types of property. The antiquities are an important part of Iranian cultural heritage. They belong to the people of Iran, not its government. Additionally, if the objects are awarded to the plaintiffs, they would be sold at auction and collections would be broken up. Their dispersal would greatly impact future scholarship. The dissemination at auction of the Persepolis Fortification Tablets would be particularly tragic. These artifacts are useful to scholars because of their great number and because together, the tablets are being used to draw patterns about how a highly complex administrative system operated.

A decision to turn over the artifacts to the plaintiffs would have grave effects for the museums involved and cultural institutions in general. The fallout from this case will also make countries think twice before sending their national treasures abroad for the purpose of scholarship.

The use of the Iranian antiquities to satisfy the Rubin judgment could also cause foreign policy complications. The U.S. Government has filed statements of interest with the court expressing these concerns. In 2006 Abbas Salimi-Namin (Iran’s Cultural Heritage and Tourism Organization) sent a demand for the immediate return of the tablets. The Oriental Institute previously enjoyed a good relationship with Iran based on a shared interest in gleaning knowledge from the tablets. Salimi-Namin accused the museum of keeping the objects and suggested that American museums with objects in Iran would “face a similar measure.”

For more, see calitreview.com.
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