The Parsa Community Foundation Grant to the Persepolis Fortification Archive Project

The Persian Mirror reports on the Parsa Community Foundation grant to the Persepolis Fortification Archive Project.

For over 80 years, the University of Chicago’s Oriental Institute has been a pioneer and innovator in exploring the world's earliest civilizations in the ancient Near East. In 1933, the Institute discovered thousands of clay tablets and fragments during their archeological excavations of historic sites in Iran. These ancient artifacts are on long-term loan from the government of Iran and were left in the Institute's care for purposes of translation, study and publication. They make up the Persepolis Fortification Archive (PFA) and constitute a rich source for the research of the history, languages, art and society of the 2,500 year-old Achaemenid Persian Empire. The artificats are in danger of being seized and put up for public auction to compensate plaintiffs in a private lawsuit against the government of Iran. The institute is operating under emergency conditions to prevent interruption of the preservation of these tablets and PARSA CF's continuing support will fund conservators in prompt delivery of digital photography, translation and editing. The University of Chicago is a second-time PARSA CF grantee and a model conservation effort.

This is the second time the Parsa Community Foundation has made a grant to the Persepolis Fortification Archive Project.

The Oriental Institute and Digitized Books

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. All of these volumes are accessible thought the catalogue of publications produced by the Oriental Institute Publications Office. They are also accessible, gathered in a single convenient list, at AWOL - The Ancient World Online - 2, as well as in a contribution to this blog.

The Oriental Institute was one of the founding members of the ETANA partnership, and the Research Archives gave access to many of books scanned for inclusion in ETANA Core Texts. As of today (1 July 2008) there are 355 digitized books and one developing resource (eTACT) in ETANA Core Texts. In response to numerous request, I present here in AWOL - The Ancient World Online - 6 all of those titles in a single list organized alphabetically by author's name.

Howdy Neighbor!

The Oriental Institute is to have a new neighbor, The Milton Friedman Institute, in the facility now housing the Chicago Theological Seminary, which will move the southeast corner of South Dorchester Avenue and East 60th Street.



The first thing that jumped into my mind was to wonder what will happen to the incomparable Seminary Co-op Bookstore.

History of the Internet presence of the Oriental Institute, University of Chicago

Nine years ago, when the web was about half as old as it is now, "Back before Google", I wrote a piece for the Web Editor column of Ariadne (Issue 21 - 23 September, 1999), Abzu and Beyond: Charles Jones muses on the history of the Internet presence of the Oriental Institute, University of Chicago.

It's probably time to write an update. I wonder who'll do that?

Recovering the Lost Story of the Rise of Man: The Research Archives of the Oriental Institute

Foy Scalf

Research Archivist, Oriental Institute

[The following article was originally printed in The Oriental Institute News & Notes 197 (Spring 2008), 6-7. Past issues can be found here on the Oriental Institute website].

James Henry Breasted, founder of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, summarized the goal of the Institute as “an organized endeavor to recover the lost story of the rise of man.”¹ Part of this goal is fulfilled by the Oriental Institute Museum, which houses one of the premier collections of ancient Near Eastern artifacts in the United States. Another part is fulfilled by the scholars toiling away to interpret this bountiful material here at the Oriental Institute and worldwide. Each generation of scholars laboring to fulfill this lofty mission rests upon the shoulders of their predecessors and the work they have left behind. It is this voluminous work, published in an ever-increasing number of pages, that places the library at the very heart of every academic discipline. For ancient Near Eastern studies, the Research Archives of the Oriental Institute holds one of the most significant collections of research materials in the Western Hemisphere.

A Brief History of the Research Archives

The Research Archives is the scholarly library for the faculty, staff, and members of the Oriental Institute as well as the graduate students in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations of the University of Chicago. While especially rich in the areas of Assyriology and Egyptology, the aim of the Oriental Institute has always been to build a comprehensive collection of materials covering all aspects concerned with the study of the ancient Near East including history, archaeology, and philology. Founded in 1919 as the Oriental Institute Library, the original development of these facilities owed a great deal to Johanne Vindenas, librarian for the Oriental Institute from 1924 to 1964. Her meticulous cataloging is renowned in library circles² and can be found on display in the sixteen volumes of the Catalog of the Oriental Institute Library, University of Chicago, published in 1970 under the supervision of Johanne’s successor as Oriental Institute Librarian, Shirley A. Lyon. This catalog documents the holdings of the Oriental Institute Library before the 1970 consolidation with the University library system in the newly built Joseph Regenstein Library. The magnitude of this work is overwhelming, with its 284,400 index cards covering over 50,000 volumes. Only after twenty years of acquisitions and electronic cataloging are we once again nearing similar numbers.

Johanne Vindenas, Oriental Institute Librarian 1924-1964

The current incarnation of the Oriental Institute library facilities, the Research Archives, was founded in 1972 under the directorship of Dr. John Brinkman at the request of scholars who needed immediate access to research materials for the various projects being conducted at the Institute. Traveling to the Regenstein Library to check references was terribly inconvenient, further delaying projects already fifty years old. A non-circulating library would be a necessity within the Oriental Institute. Among the projects for which such a library was necessary was the Chicago Assyrian Dictionary, initiated in 1921. Checking references for the dictionary projects of the Oriental Institute would be greatly facilitated with an in-house archives. Those working on the dictionary, humorously referred to as “dictionary slaves,” had enough to frustrate them. Erica Reiner captured the arduous journey and scholarly wrestling matches of the Assyrian Dictionary staff in her book An Adventure of Great Dimension. Any added aggravation could only delay their work further. Thus, the Research Archives became their home away from the Assyrian Dictionary office.

Initially, the Research Archives collection consisted of the personal libraries of several illustrious scholars, including James Henry Breasted, Keith C. Seele, and William F. Edgerton. Since its outset in 1972, the Research Archives has made an attempt to comprehensively acquire materials, both new and old, relevant to the study of the ancient Near East through purchases and donations. Current acquisitions lists are circulated informally to Oriental Institute faculty, staff, and students, but these will soon appear on the Research Archives Web site (Acquisitions Lists).

Today there are roughly 50,000 volumes in the collection of the Research Archives, covering all fields within ancient Near Eastern studies. The library continues to grow by approximately 1,500 volumes per year. Generous donations from the personal libraries of Gregory Areshian and Erica Reiner have added 2,000 volumes to the collection in the last year. These scholarly donations are crucial for the continued vitality of our disciplines by making available priceless scholarly works to future generations of researchers. Being both founded and expanded by such donations, the Research Archives continues to grow, providing its users with extensive coverage of the ancient Near East.

The Eilzabeth Morse Genius reading room of the Research Archives circa 1931. James Henry Breasted called it the "most beautiful room in the building"

Making the Most of the Research Archives

All the publications acquired by the Research Archives after 1990 have been entered into a database that is publicly accessible online (Online catalog). The collection is cataloged and housed based on a unique call-number system: Journals (call number J/), Serials (call number S/), Monographs (call number = author’s last name), Pamphlets (call number pam), and Reference (call number ref). In December 2007, at a reception honoring the generous donation of Dr. Gregory Areshian, the Research Archives inaugurated the Gregory Areshian Collection (call number GAC), a special collection of 1,500 books on the archaeology and history of central Asia, now housed in a separate room for individual study. In addition, the Online Catalog contains over 44,000 links to articles available from all over the world over the Web. Just look for the link called “Online Publication.”

We are currently in the process of retrospectively cataloging the entire collection of the Research Archives. All serials have been cataloged, with 65 percent of the monographs and 35 percent of the journals remaining. Material not currently accessible in the Online Catalog can be searched using the card catalog in the Research Archives. Through our cataloging initiatives, the Online Catalog of the Research Archives has become “an indispensable tool for all research workers in the field of the Near East,” as James Henry Breasted described the original card catalog. In addition to the standard library information and following the trend-setting vision of James Henry Breasted, all volumes are analyzed in their entirety, including journal articles and independently authored chapters of monographs and series, producing a nearly comprehensive index of ancient Near Eastern studies.³ The database currently has over 260,000 individual records and will easily contain over 500,000 when the retrospective cataloging is completed over the course of the next few years.

The online catalog of the Research Archives is freely accessible to the public and, as an index to ancient Near Eastern studies, users may search the catalog using their preferred criteria. The results, containing full bibliographic data, acts as an indicator of the work done on a specific topic and the researchers who have tackled the subject. Users may also save individual records using the briefcase function and export them to build their own bibliographies on topics of their choosing. In the future, the Research Archives plans on moving to a more robust database software environment that will provide users with further sorting flexibility and a more powerful search engine. Information on past and future library projects can be found in the pages of the Oriental Institute Annual Report, editions of which can be viewed on the Web (Annual Reports).

How You Can Help

There are several ways you can help the Research Archives fulfill its mission. We welcome relevant book donations and volunteer help. Please send all book donation and volunteer inquiries to the Head of the Research Archives Foy Scalf (scalffd@uchicago.edu, (773) 702-9537). Financial donations help as part of the Oriental Institutes Research Endowment Campaign and can be made to the Research Archives in several ways. A simple monetary donation is greatly appreciated, but we also offer potential donors the option to “Adopt a Journal.” By helping the Research Archives subscribe to a scholarly journal, you will have your donation commemorated by a book plate permanently placed inside your journal. For further information on making a financial donation or adopting a journal, please contact Development Director Monica Witczak (mwitczak@uchicago.edu, (773) 834-9775).

Notes

¹ James Henry Breasted, The Oriental Institute. The University of Chicago Survey 12, p. w. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1933. Italics in the original.

² Robert Wadsworth, “Johanne Vindenas Remembered,” Access 36, No. 23, November 11, 1988: 2–3.

³ Breasted realized immediately the value of indexing the content of periodicals. Already in 1933, the card catalog of the Research Archives was “becoming more and more an indispensable tool for all research workers in the field of the Near East” (Breasted, Oriental Institute, p. 403).

[Following are the pages of this article in the format in which it was originally published in The Oriental Institute News and Notes]

Double Breasted

In case you needed further evidence that neither presumably smart people nor assuredly observant secretaries are perfect, I present the following anecdote.

In May 1919, The Oriental Institute was established by the University of Chicago Board of Trustees as a constituent unit of the University (a status it retains today). Its guiding force, James Henry Breasted, assiduously cultivated all the right people, not the least of whom was one John Davison Rockefeller, Jr. After a tour of the Middle East with the Junior Rockefeller family, Breasted received a handsome grant, part of which was used to construct the original Oriental Institute building that Chuck Jones has documented so well.

Given all of Breasted's accomplishments, the Board of Trustees felt it only appropriate to name the beautiful auditorium in the new building in his honor, which they did in (I believe) 1934 or 1935. To this day, the auditorium is referred to by OI insiders as "Breasted Hall," while the building as a whole generally answers to the terms "OI" and "Institute."

However, it turns out that in early 1936, shortly after Breasted's death, those same Trustees named the entire building after Breasted. Neither they nor those who were taking notes observed the possible conflict, which only came to light when the University, in the course of a development campaign, had to set a donation level that would entitle the generous person or persons to have the building named in their honour. The issue was never resolved, but if you have $10,000,000 burning a hole in your pocket, and you don't want to give it to me, you could see how this little problem might be solved!

Bookplates in the Oriental Institute Research Archives

[8/13/08: An updated version of this post appears here, at the Ancient World Bloggers Group Blog.

[Originally posted 2/14/08, updated below on 2/28/08 and 3/14/08]

This is the very plain bookplate of the collection known as the Director's Library. Traditionally this was the collection housed in the Director's Study. The core of the Director's Library was the collection of James Henry Breasted (see the bookplate below). Much of the Director's Library was absorbed and integrated into the Research Archives in the early 1970's. Almost all of the remainder of it (with the exception of the Director's Study collection of publications of the Oriental Institute) was absorbed by the Research Archives during the directorship of William Sumner when the Study was renovated and restored.


This is the personal bookplate of James Henry Breasted. The design used on the bookplate is the same as that used on Ulric Henry Ellerhusen's tympanum over the doorway to the Oriental Institute (and seen also here and here in architect's models, with a variant design here). I am not sure whether the bookplate or the tympanum design were the original iteration of the idea, but the existence of variants of the tympanum rather suggests that the architectural version was first.

The bookplates illustrated below are from book in the collections of the Research Archives. Some were acquired through purchase, others by bequest.


Hans Bernhard Ambrosius Abel


Sidney Edward Bouverie Bouverie-Pusey


S. R. Driver and Godfrey Rolles Driver


Ernst Herzfeld
Biographical Sketch of Ernst Emil Herzfeld


Gustave Jéquier
Gustave Jequier, 1868-1946


Georg [Christian Julius] Möller


Charles Francis Nims


Keith Cedric Seele




Wilhelm Spiegelberg
Wilhelm Spiegelberg (* 25. Juni 1870 in Hannover; † 23. Dezember 1930 in München) war ein deutscher Ägyptologe. Er trat durch seine maßgeblichen Forschungen über demotische Papyri hervor


Walter Wreszinski

and finally...



This bookplate was presented to me when I left the Oriental Institute in June 2005. It was (I think) thought up and designed by Tom Urban, using Mark Garrison's drawing of Persepolis Fortification Seal 1, (Cat.No. 182, pp. 272-274, Pl. 100c-e in Seals on the Persepolis Fortification Tablets, Volume I: Images of Heroic Encounter, by Mark B. Garrison and Margaret Cool Root).

This bookplate doesn't strictly speaking belong in this compilation, because no book in the Research Archives carries it. I guess this means I'll need to make a donation to become legitimate.

The study of the Bookplate, or Exlibris, is an interesting topic. See here, and here, and here, for instance. I suggest in particular, that those of you interested in the subject might like to consult Antike im Exlibris 2 Griechenland im Exlibris, and, Antike im Exlibris. Teil 1, Aegypten im Exlibris. A copy of the latter is in the Research Archives.

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Since the intial posting, I have had several interesting responses, both in the comments on the blog, and offline. The following bookplates have been brought to our attention by correspondents [February 28th 2008]:


James Henry Breasted's bookplate altered to identify books in the collection donated to the Research Archives by Gregory Areshian [Courtesy of Foy Scalf]




Armas Salonen [Courtesy of Bob Whiting]



Silvin Kosak Created by the Slovene painter and sculptor Andrej Ajdic [Courtesy of Silvin Kosak]




Edda Bresciani Scanned from: La tradizione degli ex libris nella provincia di Lucca. 103 esemplari stampati dalla tipografia Biagini di Lucca. Forte dei Marmi 29-30-31 luglio 1994, printed by: Tipografia Biagini, Lucca 1994. [Courtesy of Giuseppe Del Monte]

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Since the revised posting, I have had additional interesting responses. The following have been brought to our attention by correspondents [March 14th 2008]:


Louis Herbert Gray [From a book in the Research Archives. Courtesy of Foy Scalf]

Egyptological (or Egyptomaniacal) bookplates in the collection of Lewis Jaffe at Confessions of a Bookplate Junkie

Peter Dorman to be named President of AUB

The Chronicle of Higher Education's News Blog is reporting that:

The American University of Beirut is expected to name the University of Chicago’s Peter Dorman as its new president next week. Mr. Dorman, an Egyptologist and chairman of Chicago’s department of Near Eastern languages and civilizations, said he planned to accept when the American University of Beirut, known as AUB, makes the offer official...

There is an entry for Dorman at the website of the Universiy of Chicago Divison of the Humanities, and the stub of an entry in wikipedia.

The University of Chicago's Archival Photographic Files

The Archival Photographic Files digitization project, begun in 2002, hopes eventually to digitize and present all of the more than sixty thousand images in the collection online. Among those already available are some very interesting images of the Oriental Institure. This sequence of photographs of the construction of the Oriental Institute is extraordinary. Click on each photograph for a larger version.


The lot, at 58th Street and University Avenue, on which the Institute was to be constructed
Archival Photofiles, [apf2-05409], Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library.



Groundbreaking. Robert Maynard Hutchins, President of the University, observing James Henry Breasted wielding the shovel.
Archival Photofiles, [apf2-05471], Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library



Excavation of the foundations.
Archival Photofiles, [apf2-05410], Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library.



Foundations.
Archival Photofiles, [apf2-05412], Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library.



Construction of the basement.
Archival Photofiles, [apf2-05411], Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library.



Construction of the first floor - museum galleries
Archival Photofiles, [apf2-05413], Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library.



Construction of the first floor - museum galleries.
Archival Photofiles, [apf2-05414], Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library.



Construction of the first floor - offices and library.
Archival Photofiles, [apf2-05415], Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library.



Roofing.
Archival Photofiles, [apf2-05416], Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library.

Y2K

Younger readers of this blog--and I'll bet you outnumber the Obamaniacs!--may not remember the much-ballyhooed, not-to-be-missed, where-were-you-when epochal event that was December 31, 1999. You could spend about twenty-three grand in US dollars (when US dollars were US dollars) flying westward from New Zealand, so that you could enjoy a dozen or more new millennia. I, much more sensibly if I do say so, procured some lobsters at about 1/750th of that price and co-hosted a very pleasant dinner party.

Anyhoo, the whole year 2000 business got a bit over the top round about the middle of 1998 or thereabouts, and was positively passe by the first month of 1999. The Oriental Institute moves for no one, so its holiday card consisted of the following....

Front cover emblazoned with multiple renderings of 2000 in a variety of scripts, suitably whizbang-like....

Inside the card, in the blandest possible font, was the following: "At the Oriental Institute, it's just another millennium." Great yuks were had by all, or maybe by many, or at least by me!.