Wednesday, January 28, 2009

President and Mrs. Obama and the Oriental Institute

Because the guy isn't getting enough press, I offer the following tidbit. I have been staggered by how many people have asked me whether President Obama was involved with the Institute.

There is no public record of the Obamas having been members of or donors to the Institute. This claim is based on donor/member lists published by the Oriental Institute as well as by the tax records released by the Obamas. It is possible that they made an anonymous contribution which they did not claim on their taxes (for the years released). If I knew of such a contribution, I couldn't and wouldn't disclose it. It is also possible that they tossed a few bucks into the donation box on a visit to the Institute. Largely so I could say I called the White House to ask about making this post, I called the White House to ask about making this post. They were cool with it. Rest assured I did not ask that the President or one of his many peeps comment. Rest further assured that thousands of Hyde Parkers, not presently occupying the White House, have never given the Institute a plug nickel, which is entirely their privilege. Rest finally assured that the Institute has done very well by thousands of other Hyde Parkers. There... am I covered?

Speaking of which, I am not aware of any reliable report (or certainly photographic evidence) of either of the adult Obamas ever having visited the place. Having said that, it would be a bit weird for two people who spent so much time in Hyde Park never having popped in for a look-see, even once--it has an impressive collection, is free, and has reasonable opening hours. Having said that, the Institute's galleries were fully or partially closed for most of the Obamas' many years in Hyde Park. Having said that (and I am aware that I am on the third or fourth "other hand" by now), the Institute's Museum Education Office had a large number of family events (typically free and not requiring registration) both at the Institute and on the road, and it is entirely possible that one or both of the Obama girls took part in one of those.

A special note: the Institute's public outreach efforts have a long and pretty goll-durned impressive history. Outreach was one of Breasted's apparently-infinite highest priorities which combined to land him on the cover of Time magazine. When Michelle Obama was Michelle Robinson, a girl from Chicago's South Side, it is entirely possible, and I would think likely, that there was either a school trip or a family visit to the Institute or perhaps a visit to a classroom in which the Robinson children would appear to have been paying attention, given the career paths of both the First Lady and her brother. I toyed with contacting the Office of the First Lady to ask as to whether she had any recollection of the Institute, and may still do so, but I need to think about it.

I think I've exhausted this topic. I know I've exhausted myself, and fear I've exhausted you, dear reader.
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Tuesday, January 27, 2009

The Life of Meresamun: A Temple Singer in Ancient Egypt

Teeter, Emily; Johnson, Janet H. [editors].

Summary: "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’s Museum. 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 light on Meresamun’s life and death."
Publication Year:2009
Type of Material:Book
Publisher:The Oriental Institute
Place of Publication:Chicago
Subject: Egypt
Egyptology
Online access:http://oi.uchicago.edu/research/pubs/catalog/oimp/oimp29.html
ISBN:978-1-885923-60-8
Permalink: http://www.etana.org/abzu/abzu-displayentry.pl?RC=21161
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The Oriental Institute Electronic Publications Initiative

Starting in 2005, the Oriental Institute committed to digitizing all of its publications and making them available online, without charge. The minimum for each volume, old and new, current and forthcoming, will be a Portable Document Format (PDF) version following current resolution standards. New publications appear online at or near the time they appear in print. Older publications will be processed as time and funding permits. More than one hundred volumes are now online (April 9, 2008) [Updated April 30, 2008 with the addition of more volumes of the CAD and CHD; Updated September 16, 2008 with the addition of OIP 130; Updated December 23, 2008 with the addition of OIP 135; Updated January 27, 2009 with the addition of OIMP 29]



Assyriological Studies (AS) | List of volumes in print


The Assyrian Dictionary of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago (CAD) | List of volumes in print


The Chicago Demotic Dictionary (CDD) [Born digital publication]


The Hittite Dictionary of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago (CHD) | List of volumes in print


Materials for the Assyrian Dictionary (MAD)


Oriental Institute Communications (OIC) | List of volumes in print


Oriental Institute Museum Publications (OIMP) | List of volumes in print


Oriental Institute Publications (OIP) | List of volumes in print


Oriental Institute Seminars (OIS) | List of volumes in print


Studies in Ancient Oriental Civilization (SAOC) | List of volumes in print


Miscellaneous Publications | List of volumes in print


Oriental Institute Annual Reports
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Monday, January 26, 2009

My Friend Meresamun

If you have an account in Facebook, you can be friends with the mummy of Meresamun.

She's the subject of an exhibition opening at the Oriental Institute Museum on February 10, 2009.

Museum
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Tuesday, January 13, 2009

Meresamun in Archaeology

The next issue of Archaeology Magazine features the new Oriental Institute exhibit The Life of Meresamun: A Temple Singer in Ancient Egypt. The editors of the magazine want people to vote on the wording for the cover.

Museum
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Fathom and the Oriental Institute

From 1999 to 2003, The University of Chicago was a participant in Fathom, a consortium of 14 leading educational and cultural institutions providing high-quality, free educational resources on the Internet:

Fathom Knowledge Network, founded in 1999, launched its Web site in the spring of 2000 with the goal of providing high quality educational resources to a global audience through the Internet. The Fathom academic consortium grew to include 14 leading educational and cultural institutions dedicated to that goal. The Fathom Web site ceased operations in March 2003.

During its operation, the Fathom Web site received visitors from more than 52 countries. Fathom users included students, professionals, educators, and lifelong learners. Over 65,000 of Fathom's visitors enrolled in courses and seminars.

Fathom expanded its content and created new formats to help reduce barriers to online learning, such as free seminar series and interdisciplinary learning centers. In 2001, Fathom was honored by Yahoo, and then in 2002 by Forbes, as a leading educational Web site. Fathom's alliances with the BBC, the AARP, and Elderhostel brought online learning to new and diverse audiences.

The Fathom Web site ceased operations in March 2003, but the University of Chicago Libraries archive offers access to the complete range of free content developed for Fathom by University of Chicago faculty, researchers, and departments. Among these are several contributions by staff and faculty of the Oriental Institute:

Dorman, Peter F.
Hatshepsut: Wicked Stepmother or Joan of Arc?

Epigraphic Survey
Lost Egypt: Photography and the Early Documentation of Egyptian Monument

Gibson, McGuire; Susan Kidwell; Paul Sereno
Why We Dig Up the Past

Golb, Norman
The Origins of the Dead Sea Scrolls

Hout, Theo P.J. van den
"I Have Given You my Advice": Educational Principles in the Hittite Empire
and
Miles of Clay: Information Management in the Ancient Near Eastern Hittite Empire

Johnson, Janet H.
Women's Legal Rights in Ancient Egypt

Teeter, Emily and Douglas J. Brewer
Ancient Egyptian Society and Family Life
and
Religion in the Lives of the Ancient Egyptians
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There may not be gold in them thar' hills...

but there are names on them thar' tiles. In the late 1990s, the University of Chicago administration approved the replacement of the Oriental Institute roof. The project ultimately took two summers and something in the neighborhood of two million dollars. This was not at all a cosmetic matter--the western outer roof, in particular, had sags between the beams that were easily visible from the center of the University's quads. I'm not talking about depressions that would entice Tony Hawk to pull out his skateboard, but they were bad enough, especially for those seated underneath them.

The project took place over the summers of 2000 and 2001, managed for the contractor by an exceedingly affable Hoosier named Malcolm and quarterbacked--superlatively and (characteristically) without complaint--for the Institute by Ray Tindel. It was a big enough deal to merit the lede in an Annual Report Introduction and inspired a nifty painting by Mark McMahon that was originally featured in the University of Chicago Magazine, which I happily cadged for the Annual Report cover 2000-2001, for a reasonable fee.




At some point, no doubt inspired by the ethos of the Institute and its focus on inscriptions of one kind or another (and this my personal favorite), I came up with the idea of having people remember themselves in writing on the undersides of the clay tiles that adorned the roof, old and new. I put a little bit of my own cash into determining what was most lasting, ranging from nail polish to a variety of paints (including the battleship gray favored by the US Navy) before determining that Sharpies were highly durable. I then bought twenty of those bad boys, on the Institute's nickel.

Theo van den Hout and Emily Teeter generously supplied appropriate Hittite and Egyptian encomia, and letters were sent to all Institute faculty, staff, volunteers, NELC students and Associate Members, along with the Visiting Committee. I recall about 400 letters being sent, and receiving responses from about 100 or 120 people. Most responses simply asked for a name to be written under either the Hittite or Egyptian elements, which graduate students Joe Daniels, Brett McClain, and John Nielson executed. There were a few exceptions, of course: one VC member asked that his recently-passed mother be noted, while another wanted to recall his first wife, who died in a plane crash. There is no chance that I will be more specific about those who responded.

The tiles in question are located near the west peak of the roof, above the Morse Genius Reading Room. I do not know whether our Sharpies will survive the decades and the elements, but I sure hope so. I myself took the opportunity to remember my father, who died when I was in my early twenties.
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Monday, January 12, 2009

Marshall Holleb

Marshall Holleb died in early December in Chicago. He was, and his wife Doris remains, a long-time member of the Oriental Institute Visiting Committee, and they were generous donors to the Institute. It is in their honor that the Doris and Marshall Holleb Family Temporary Exhibition Gallery of the Oriental Institute Museum is named. Marshall was the subject of a Chicago Stories television documentary, and a short biography is available here.

With his death, the Oriental Institute lost a good friend.
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Monday, January 5, 2009

Oriental Institute Events

There is a new newsfeed for announcements of events at the Oriental Institute. I have updated the Oriental Institute Events sidebar on the right side of the page.
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Friday, January 2, 2009

Oriental Institute Website Traffic in 2008

[And see now a comparable list for 2009 - added 3 January 2009]

In 2008 826,805 unique visitors came to the Oriental Institute website 1,149,023 times, looking at 3,982,345 pages (averaging 3.46 pages per visit). 68.9 % of these visitors stayed 30 seconds or less before leaving, but 14.7 % stayed longer than 5 minutes.

Robots, worms and other such creatures looked at another 7,839,713 pages.

The twenty five most frequently viewed pages on the Oriental Institute Website are:
  1. The Oriental Institute Home Page 463306 visits

  2. The Museum Education Mummy Game 246444 visits

  3. The Museum Education Home Page 121614 visits

  4. The Museum Home Page 69754 visits

  5. NIPPUR - SACRED CITY OF ENLIL, SUPREME GOD OF SUMER AND AKKAD. Figure. 1 Map of ancient Mesopotamia. 67300 visits

  6. The Museum Education Kids' Corner 52337 visits

  7. Highlights from the Collection: Mesopotamia 42238 visits

  8. Oriental Institute Map Series - Site Maps 41935 visits

  9. Death in Ancient Egypt 40755 visits

  10. Highlights from the Collections 36625 visits

  11. Research at the Oriental Institute 35544 visits

  12. Persepolis and Ancient Iran 31071 visits

  13. The Oriental Institute Museum Hours 28060 visits

  14. Museum Galleries 23270 visits

  15. The Edgar and Deborah Jannotta Mesopotamian Gallery 22438 visits

  16. Lost Treasures from Iraq 21469 visits

  17. Abzu 21284 visits

  18. The Giza Plateau Mapping Project (GPMP) 21268 visits

  19. The Oriental Institute Museum: The East Wing Galleries 21158 visits

  20. Oriental Institute Events 20465 visits

  21. Egypt and the Ancient Near East: Web Resources for Young People and Teachers 19943 visits

  22. Museum Education Teacher Resource Center. Mesopotamia: Science & Inventions 18048 visits

  23. The Oriental Institute Home Page 17977 visits

  24. Catalog of Publications 17857 visits

  25. Museum Gallery Tours & Program 17166 visits

The top twenty-five points of entry to the Oriental Institute website are:
  1. The Oriental Institute Home Page

  2. The Museum Education Mummy Game

  3. NIPPUR - SACRED CITY OF ENLIL, SUPREME GOD OF SUMER AND AKKAD. Figure. 1 Map of ancient Mesopotamia.

  4. Death in Ancient Egypt

  5. The Museum Education Kids' Corner

  6. Oriental Institute Map Series - Site Maps

  7. Highlights from the Collection: Mesopotamia

  8. The Museum Home Page

  9. Persepolis and Ancient Iran

  10. Highlights from the Collections

  11. Egypt and the Ancient Near East: Web Resources for Young People and Teachers

  12. The Giza Plateau Mapping Project (GPMP)

  13. Lost Treasures from Iraq

  14. The Oriental Institute Home Page

  15. Abzu

  16. Constructing The Giza Plateau Computer Model (1990-1995)

  17. Museum Education Teacher Resource Center. Mesopotamia: Science & Inventions

  18. NUBIA - "Its glory and its people" 1987 EXHIBITION: BROCHURE, FEBRUARY 1 thru 28, 1987

  19. WHO WAS WHO AMONG THE ROYAL MUMMIES

  20. Museum Education Teacher Resource Center. Mesopotamia: Law & Government

  21. Museum Education Teacher Resource Center. Mesopotamia: Architecture

  22. Oriental Institute Map Series

  23. Museum Education Teacher Resource Center. Mesopotamia: Role of Women

  24. Nippur - Sacred City Of Enlil: SUPREME GOD OF SUMER AND AKKAD

  25. Highlights from the Collection: Egypt

These lists show some some interesting patterns which requires some preliminary comments:

Various pages in the complex developed by the Museum Education department are heavily represented in the top 25 entry pages (nos. 2, 5, 17, 20, 21, and 23).

In each list, variants of the OI home page appear twice, once with and once without the final "/".

Both lists include three pages of specific interest:

  • Abzu is a link to a redirector, sending users (after a short explanation) to the current site of Abzu at the ETANA project at Vanderbilt University. Though Abzu has been served from Vanderbilt for several years it still received more than twenty thousand hits on the OI website in 2008.

  • The Museum Education Mummy Game is the second most popular page (with nearly a quarter million viewers in 2008) and the second most frequent point of entry to the OI website. It includes no links back to either its source in the Museum Education site, or more generally to the OI home page.

  • Death in Ancient Egypt, and

  • Egypt and the Ancient Near East: Web Resources for Young People and Teachers, together representing more than sixty thousand annual visits to the Oriental Institute web presence, have never been converted to the new format, and have no links to them from elsewhere on the OI web.

  • WHO WAS WHO AMONG THE ROYAL MUMMIES, an article by Edward Wente appearing originally in the Oriental Institute News & Notes No. 144, Winter 1995, and

  • NUBIA - "Its glory and its people" 1987 EXHIBITION: BROCHURE, FEBRUARY 1 thru 28, 1987, a brochure by Bruce B. Williams published in conjunction with the exhibition presented by: THE ORIENTAL INSTITUTE OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO and the OAK WOODS CEMETERY ASSOCIATION In the Tower of Memories, Oak Woods Cemetery, Chicago, 1987, remain consistently among the important points of entry to the Oriental Institute web presence years after the were originally reformatted for the web.


I'll add more comments as they occur to me.


Finally, a list of the twenty-five most frequently downloaded digital versions (pdf) of formal publications of the Oriental Institute for 2008. Note that some of these are fairly recent, but others are old standards.

  1. Oriental Institute 2002-2003 Annual Report, downloaded 4853 times.

  2. OIS 4. Religion and Power: Divine Kingship in the Ancient World and Beyond, Nicole Brisch, ed., downloaded 3152 times.

  3. OIS 3.Performing Death: Social Analyses of Funerary Traditions in the Ancient Near East and Mediterranean, Nicola Laneri, editor, with contributions by Nicola Laneri, Ellen F. Morris, Glenn M. Schwartz, Robert Chapman, Massimo Cultraro, Meredith S. Chesson, Alessandro Naso, Adam T. Smith, Dina Katz, Seth Richardson, Susan Pollock, Ian Rutherford, John Pollini, John Robb, and James A. Brown, downloaded 2924 times.

  4. The Assyrian Dictionary of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago (CAD), Volume 14, R, 1999, downloaded 2806 times.

  5. The Assyrian Dictionary of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago (CAD), Volume 12, P, 2005, downloaded 2781 times.

  6. The Assyrian Dictionary of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago (CAD), Volume 1, A, part 1, 1964, downloaded 2679 times.

  7. The Assyrian Dictionary of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago (CAD), Volume 18, T, 2006, downloaded 2613 times.

  8. SAOC 62. Proceedings of the 51st Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale, Held at the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, July 18–22, 2005, Robert D. Biggs, Jennie Myers, and Martha T. Roth, eds., downloaded 2416 times.

  9. OIS 2, Margins of Writing, Origins of Cultures, Seth L. Sanders, editor, with contributions by Seth L. Sanders, John Kelly, Gonzalo Rubio, Jacco Dieleman, Jerrold Cooper, Christopher Woods, Annick Payne, William Schniedewind, Michael Silverstein-, Piotr Michalowski, Paul-Alain Beaulieu, Theo van den Hout, Paul Zimansky, Sheldon Pollock, and Peter Machinist. (second printing), downloaded 2198 times.

  10. SAOC 61. Sacred Space and Sacred Function in Ancient Thebes, Peter F. Dorman and Betsy M. Bryan, editors, downloaded 2192 times.

  11. The Assyrian Dictionary of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago (CAD), Volume 19, T [Tet], 2006, downloaded 2163 times.

  12. MAD 2. Old Akkadian Writing and Grammar, I. J. Gelb, 1952, downloaded 1993 times.

  13. AS 27. Studies Presented to Robert D. Biggs, June 4, 2004 From the Workshop of the Chicago Assyrian Dictionary, Volume 2, Martha T. Roth, Walter Farber, Matthew W. Stolper and Paula von Bechtolsheim, eds., 2007, downloaded 1886 times.

  14. The Assyrian Dictionary of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago (CAD), Volume 10, M, part 1, 1977, downloaded 1621 times.

  15. The Assyrian Dictionary of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago (CAD), Volume 1, A, part 2, 1968, downloaded 1504 times.

  16. The Assyrian Dictionary of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago (CAD), Volume 10, M, part 2, 1977, downloaded 1495 times.

  17. OIMP 28. Catastrophe! The Looting and Destruction of Iraq’s Past, edited by Geoff Emberling and Katharyn Hanson, 2008, downloaded 1495 times.

  18. OIS 2, Margins of Writing, Origins of Cultures, Seth L. Sanders, editor, with contributions by Seth L. Sanders, John Kelly, Gonzalo Rubio, Jacco Dieleman, Jerrold Cooper, Christopher Woods, Annick Payne, William Schniedewind, Michael Silverstein-, Piotr Michalowski, Paul-Alain Beaulieu, Theo van den Hout, Paul Zimansky, Sheldon Pollock, and Peter Machinist. (first printing), downloaded 1491 times.

  19. The Hittite Dictionary of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago (CHD), P, fascicle 3 (pattar to putkiya-), 1997, downloaded 1481 times,

  20. The Assyrian Dictionary of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago (CAD), Volume 11, N, part 1, 1980, downloaded 1370 times.

  21. The Demotic Dictionary of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, Janet H. Johnson, editor: Prologue, downloaded 1362 times.

  22. The Assyrian Dictionary of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago (CAD), Volume 9, L, 1973, downloaded 1306 times.

  23. The Assyrian Dictionary of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago (CAD), Volume 2, B, 1965, downloaded 1306 times.

  24. OIP 132. The Egyptian Coffin Texts, Volume 8. Middle Kingdom Copies of Pyramid Texts, James P. Allen, 2006, downloaded 1296 times.

  25. OIMP 25. Embroidering Identities: A Century of Palestinian Clothing.
    By Iman Saca in collaboration with Maha Saca, 2006    , downloaded 1255 times.
OIS 2 in its two printings is the 9th and 18th most popular digital publication of the OI during 2008 - collectively it would be No. 2, downloaded 3689 times.


The Oriental Institute has always has always been open about the traffic on its website. Historical statistics are accessible here. Current statistics are accessible here.
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