ISAC: Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures, West Asia & North Africa
ISAC: Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures, West Asia & North AfricaLast week we visited the ISAC Museum (formerly Oriental Institute) at the University of Chicago for the first time. What a FABULOUS museum!! We made a special trip to see it, and it was well worth the 6 hour drive there and back (a couple of days in Chicago is always fun anyway!).
ISAC was established in 1919. What interested us most is their nearly 100 years of excavation and study at the site of Megiddo in Israel. They have finds from all 20 stratum going back to the 4th millenium BC.
The institute has done projects in Turkey, Iraq, Iran, Syria, Egypt and Israel. Research and artifacts that all relate to our understanding of the culture of the Bible. The Institute has 3 massive language projects: Chicago Assyrian Dictionary, Chicago Hittite Dictionary and the Chicago Demotic Dictionary. The current special exhibit is titled “Back to School in Babylon”. The exhibit demonstrates how scribal schools in Babylon (1700’s BC) taught reading and writing of cuneiform script. A fun tidbit that I’d never thought of before is that some technology never changes - cuneiform tablets were mainly convenient palm size, just like a cell phone.
The first few pictures are artifacts from Megiddo. There were many ivories found in Megiddo demonstrating trading being done all over the ancient Near East. Next are some pictures of brick work from Babylon at the time of King Nebuchadnezzar II. Then wall reliefs and a lamassu (enormous human faced winged bull that guarded entrances) from the palace of Sargon II at Dur-Sharrukin (near present day Mosul Iraq). A few Egyptian objects and finally pictures of a large sculpture from Persepolis at the time of Darius. All of the exhibit signs, descriptions, and photos of excavations are exceptional and helpful for we amateurs.
glazed brick lion from the processional way of Babylon 604-562 BC
