Tuesday, March 21, 2017

David Rockefeller and the Oriental Institute

David Rockefeller died this week at the age of 101.
Rockefeller’s ties to the University spanned a lifetime, from touring Egypt and the Middle East as a teenager with distinguished University archaeologist James Henry Breasted to the endowment of a professorship in UChicago’s economics department, from which he received his doctorate. Rockefeller was associated with the University’s Board of Trustees for seven decades, providing a strong connection to the institution’s founding in 1890.
His Memoirs include the telling of the story of his visit to Egypt and the Near East in 1928 with his family, on a tour led by James Henry Breasted. The episode was excerpted in The University of Chicago Magazine December 2002, Volume 95, Issue 2 in an article entitled Three Months Among the Pyramids:
Father was enthralled by the discoveries of archaeologists who had uncovered so much about the emergence of the great civilizations of antiquity. As a young man he had taken a special interest in the work of the University of Chicago’s Oriental Institute, headed by the distinguished Egyptologist Dr. James Henry Breasted. For a number of years Father supported Breasted’s work in Luxor and at the Temple of Medinet Habu across the Nile just below the Valley of the Kings
In late 1928, Dr. Breasted invited Mother and Father to visit his “dig” in Egypt and to review the work of the institute. Neither of my parents had ever been to that part of the world, and after some discussion they readily agreed to go. I was in the ninth grade at the time and quickly made it obvious to my parents that I wanted to go with them. I had read about the discovery of King Tutankhamen’s tomb only a few years earlier, and a trip to Egypt seemed to me the most exciting of adventures. Father was concerned about my missing so much school because of the length of the trip, which would last for more than three months, but I finally persuaded him to let me go on the grounds that I would learn so much from the experience. He agreed on condition that a tutor went along to keep me up to date on schoolwork. This was the best deal I could get, so I eagerly agreed. 
IMAGE:  From an Oriental Institute tour at Megiddo in 1929: David Rockefeller is third from the left; his father, John D. Rockefeller Jr., and his mother, Abby Aldrich Rockefeller, stand beside him. James Henry Breasted, founder of the Oriental Institute, is third from the right.
From an Oriental Institute tour at Megiddo in 1929: David Rockefeller is third from the left; his father, John D. Rockefeller Jr., and his mother, Abby Aldrich Rockefeller, are fourth and fifth from the right. James Henry Breasted, founder of the Oriental Institute, is third from the right. 
We sailed from New York on the S.S. Augustus in early January 1929. At the last moment Mary Todhunter Clark, known as Tod, who was a close friend of [my brother] Nelson’s from summers in Seal Harbor, came along as well...