by Geoff Emberling
When frequent ARCHAEOLOGY contributor Andrew Lawler reported on the construction of Sudan's massive Merowe Dam on the Nile River at Hamdab, some 220 miles north of the capital Khartoum ("Damming Sudan," November/December 2006), innumerable ancient sites were about to be flooded. The disastrous situation also posed a humanitarian crisis, as those in the water's path were systematically forced from their homes. The following year, University of Chicago archaeologist Geoff Emberling joined an international salvage effort to document sites before they disappeared..

WTTW's Chicago Tonight has a feature called Hidden Chicago.
On June 10, 2009 they broadcast a feature on architectural ornamentation
Easily Overlooked Ornamentation. 5:10 into that broadcast is a segment on James Henry Breasted and the typmanum over the Oriental Institute doorway.
They also have a
slideshow, and an extended "
director's cut" of the show.
For more on the OI tympanum, see
The Tympanum within the Arch on the Doorway to the Oriental Institute, and
Some Decorative Motifs of the Oriental Institute Building.
Cold case techniques bring mummy’s face to life, University of Chicago Press Release, June 22, 2009.
Thanks to the skills of artists who work on cold case investigations, people have a chance to see what the Oriental Institute’s mummy Meresamun may have looked like in real life.
A Chicago forensic artist and a police artist in Maryland prepared the images, which depict an engaging woman in her late 20s as she would have looked in 800 B.C. Both artists, though working independently, produced strikingly similar images. The drawings are on display at the Oriental Institute Museum, and have been placed on the institute’s Web site (http://oi.uchicago.edu/museum/special/meresamun/), on Meresamun’s Facebook page, her Wikipedia listing and on YouTube....
Adams, former Oriental Institute director and anthropology professor, honored with Alumni Medal , University of Chicago Chronicle, June 11, 2009, Vol. 28 No. 18.
The Alumni Association has bestowed this year its highest honor, the Alumni Medal, on Robert McCormick Adams, a former Chicago faculty member and administrator (Ph.B.,’47, A.M.,’52, Ph.D.,’56), who is retired from the anthropology department of the University of California, San Diego...
Dead Sea Scrolls Scandal: Norman Golb seems to be fighting another losing battle in his quest to prove his son's innocence, By Sara Jerome, Chicago Maroon, Published: June 1st, 2009.
An academic scandal erupted in early March, and professor Norman Golb found himself at its center. As newspapers rapidly seized on the tale, a narrative emerged about Golb’s son Raphael, 49, who allegedly used false e-mail accounts to impersonate and undermine his father’s scholarly critics. Arrested in New York City, Raphael, with his family’s support, denies the charges. But the scandal overlays an already contentious debate about the Dead Sea Scrolls, adding another argument where many say the evidence disfavors Norman Golb.
Jewish history and civilization professor Norman Golb does not court controversy. The soft-spoken 80-year-old, a scholar of the Dead Sea Scrolls, deliberately takes pains to avoid it ...
Oriental Institute offers free access to volumes of history, By William Harms , The University of Chicago Chronicle, May 28, 2009, Vol. 28 No. 17
... Gil Stein, Director of the Oriental Institute, said, “Our publications are the lasting record of our excavations and research. They are fundamental tools for scholars of the ancient Middle East throughout the world. Making these books available to our colleagues, to educators and the public reflects our mission to share knowledge.”
Publication of its research is a central tenet of the mission of the Oriental Institute. Equally important is making that research accessible to scholars and individuals throughout the world.
Toward that end, in October 2004, the Oriental Institute announced the Electronic Publications Initiative, which stated that all publications of the Oriental Institute would be simultaneously published in print and electronically. ...
Oriental Institute honors 90-year-old docent for 90th anniversary gala, By Hannah Fine, Chicago Maroon, May 8th, 2009.
The jubilee included a benefit dinner, the world premier of an Oriental Institute film, a silent auction, and the presentation of the Breasted Medallion for exemplary service.


Lauinger is named first Donnelley research fellow By William Harms, University of Chicago Chronicle, April 16, 2009. Vol. 28 No. 14.
...As a recent Ph.D. graduate in Near Eastern Languages & Civilizations, Lauinger will explore his interests further at Cambridge, where he will be the first Gaylord and Dorothy Donnelley Research Fellow at Corpus Christi College. His fellowship will run for three years...
What’s a mummy to do when she needs new tunes? If she’s Meresamun, she’ll ‘get by with a little help from her friends’ By William Harms, University of Chicago Chronicle, April 16, 2009. Vol. 28 No. 14.
A song contest has been initiated in honor of Meresamun, a mummy who is the focus of a special exhibition at the Oriental Institute Museum...

I can't even begin to do justice here to the amazing publicity
Meresamun has had. I was in the UK when the show opened, and it was in all the London papers, and then all the US papers, and then everywhere else too. Google will give you eleven thousand hits for "
Meresamun".
Twitter need: Can social media transform museums? By Lauren Weinberg, Time Out Chicago / Issue 214 : Apr 2–8, 2009.
Our Facebook friend Meresamun is almost 3,000 years old. We haven’t corresponded with the Egyptian temple singer much, partly because she’s a mummy. But Meresamun’s tech savvy changed our perception of the Oriental Institute, where she’s on display through December 6...
Scholars to interpret signs and omens of the ancient world, By William Harms, University of Chicago Chronicle, March 5, 2009, Vol. 28 No. 11.
Leading scholars from around the world will gather at the Oriental Institute to discuss the role of signs and omens in the ancient world. “Science and Superstition: Interpretation of Signs in the Ancient World” is a public symposium scheduled for Friday, March 6 and Saturday, March 7. Amar Annus, a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Oriental Institute, organized the event.
All kinds of worldly phenomena were taken as signs that communicate divine messages about future events in ancient Mesopotamian civilization. The first references to diviners in written sources came from the third millennium B.C.
“The study of signs from gods was vitally important for ancient Mesopotamians throughout their history,” Annus said. That study and the literature associated with signs spread throughout the ancient world, as far as Rome and India.
“The concept of sign is found in all ancient cultures, but was first described in ancient Mesopotamian texts. This branch of Babylonian scientific knowledge had great influence, as witnessed by similar texts written in the Aramaic, Sanskrit and Sogdian, among other languages,” Annus said. Ancient Mesopotamians viewed potentially everything in the universe as signs from the gods.
Omens were apparently part of the oral tradition from earliest times in Mesopotamia and first appeared in the written texts of the Old Babylonian period. Different bodies of omens may be of heterogeneous origin, deriving from wisdom literature genres, such as proverbs like. “If the king does not heed justice, his people will become confused and the country will be destroyed.”
Some of the ancient Mesopotamian omens or proverbs resonate with stories found in the Bible. “The introductory statement of the parable of the Rich Fool in Luke, the person who does not know where to store his crops, finds a forerunner in a Babylonian omen,” Annus said.
The sessions for the symposium begin at
9 a.m. Friday, March 6, with remarks from Gil Stein, Director of the Oriental Institute. They continue through 5:45 p.m. The session resumes at 9 a.m. on Saturday, March 7, and concludes at 12:30 p.m.
Speakers from Chicago include Edward Shaughnessy, the Lorraine J. & Herrlee G. Creel Distinguished Service Professor in Early Chinese Studies and Chair of East Asian Languages & Civilizations, and Seth Richardson, Assistant Professor in the Oriental Institute.
This event is the fifth in a series of annual conferences that postdoctoral fellows organize to look at important themes in ancient Near Eastern studies. The proceedings of the conference will be published online and printed in the “Oriental Institute Seminars” series.
The yummy mummy uncovered after 3,000 years, by ROSS MCGUINNESS - Sunday, February 8, 2009 Associated Newspapers Limited.
Remarkable images of an entombed Egyptian singer-priestess have been released and they show she was a very pretty lady... about 3,000 years ago.
A hospital scanner has produced the most detailed pictures yet of Meresamun - or She Lives For Amun - who is thought to have led rituals worshipping the deity at a temple in Thebes in 800BC. ...
Tales from the Vitrine: Battles Over Stolen Antiquities, By Britt Peterson, January 7, 2009 This article appeared (sic) in the
January 26, 2009 edition of The Nation.
... There is no place on earth where questions of patrimony and preservation are more urgent than Iraq, which, according to archaeologist Gil Stein, is undergoing the wholesale "eradication of the material record of the world's first urban, literate civilization." In Catastrophe! The Looting and Destruction of Iraq's Past, an exhibition catalog from the Oriental Institute Museum of the University of Chicago, Stein and other archaeologists and curators discuss the history of looting in Iraq and what is to be done about the future. Under Saddam Hussein--until the 1990s, at least--Iraq did a good job of protecting more than 1,000 archaeological sites, such as buried cities and tomb complexes from the Sumerian, Babylonian, Assyrian and Akkadian empires. Saddam, who fancied himself the spiritual descendant of ancient Mesopotamian kings like Hammurabi and Nebuchadnezzar, provided ample funds for the State Board of Antiquities and Heritage, and set a high penalty on looting. (This scrupulousness did not extend to his neighbors' treasures; after invading Kuwait in 1990, the Iraqi army made off with nearly every item housed in the Kuwait National Museum.)
Following the Gulf War, with the country's economic strength on the wane, the looting of archaeological sites became far more common and the enforcement of antilooting laws declined sharply. Nor did this much seem to bother the West. John Russell, an archaeologist and former cultural adviser to the Coalition Provisional Authority, claims that "newly surfaced Iraqi artifacts were sold in the United States at venues to accommodate every price range: the major New York auction houses, brick-and-mortar galleries, online virtual galleries, and the burgeoning, anonymous, unregulated mega-market of eBay."
After the invasion, however, even beyond the piñata bash that was the Iraq Museum in the early days of April 2003, unlawfully excavated antiquities became as coveted on the black market as weapons. By May the Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani had issued a fatwa against illegal excavations; the United Nations passed a ban against traffic in stolen Iraqi art the same month. Still, an estimated 15,000 objects were stolen from the Iraq Museum, and more than half of these remain missing, including the museum's unique collection of Babylonian cylinder seals. Damage to the archaeological sites is unquantifiable, but through the use of DigitalGlobe aerial images, the Oriental Institute has assembled an extensive database cataloging the missing artifacts. As Roger Atwood writes in Stealing History (2004), "Antiquities pulled from the ground...have no...records, no catalogue numbers or schematic drawings, and so it is that much more difficult to detect them as they move through the market and, if seized, to prove that they were plundered." Even if the objects are someday returned, much of their history, not to mention their value, is lost forever. Without archaeological context, as McGuire Gibson writes in Catastrophe!, objects "are really just knickknacks. Beautiful and intriguing, but knickknacks."
Catastrophe! includes a day-by-day retelling of the looting of the Iraq Museum, an event that also features prominently in Thieves of Baghdad (2005), Marine Col. Matthew Bogdanos's first-person account of leading the museum's restoration effort. According to Donny George, a former director of the museum (he fled Iraq in 2006), the first looters were professional thieves who knew exactly what to target, and it's likely that many of them were linked to former or current museum employees. Later waves appear to have been more local, casual and indiscriminately destructive. Many of the writers of Catastrophe! blame the US Army for not securing the museum and Iraq's archaeological sites quickly enough or with sufficient manpower. Gibson and Russell describe the days leading up to the invasion and the years since as a frustrating series of memos ignored, phone calls unreturned. Atwood tells the story of a group of Iraqi curators and their two guards trying to defend the 3,500-year-old city of Nimrud from looters in the first days after Saddam's fall. After weeks spent dodging Kalashnikov bullets and watching as the looters carved slices of Assyrian friezes out of the walls with stonecutting tools, the Iraqis requested additional American protection; an infantry battalion finally showed up in May, too late to save the most important pieces. Bogdanos, on the other hand, details his exasperation with archaeologists who assumed the Army had total mobility throughout Iraq in the early days of the occupation. He points out that Saddam's army had used the museum as a fortress, and that securing it immediately would have required its bombing.
But everyone from Bogdanos to Russell, except Cuno, agrees that the vast illegal antiquities trade is the major impediment to curtailing looting in Iraq...
Ancient mummy is 1st patient for new CT scanner, By Robert Mitchum, Chicago Tribune reporter, December 25, 2008 .
[When doctors at the University of Chicago put the first patient through their new cutting-edge CT scanner, they weren't very concerned about her health. But they did hope to find clues into how she died, 3,000 years ago.
Meresamun, a mummy owned by the university's Oriental Institute, recently had the honor of being the first subject of the university's 256-slice scanner, which is four times as powerful as the previous model and the first of its kind in Illinois....].
Kipper center encourages children to investigate field of archaeology, by By William Harms, University of Chicago News Office, University of Chicago Chronicle, November 20, 2008.
[...Chicago-area students will get some hands-on experience now that the Oriental Institute has opened its new Kipper Family Archaeology Discovery Center, where children can make their own discoveries in a simulated archaeological dig.
The Archaeology Discovery Center, which opened Monday, Nov. 17, will allow visiting school children to recover archaeological replicas buried in an artificial ancient mound, known as a “tel.” Oriental Institute archaeologists, whose expeditions take them across the Middle East, often dig for artifacts in these ancient mounds...].
Insight into the Soul, by Eti Bonn-Muller, Archaeology online features, November 19, 2008.
[...When graduate students from the University of Chicago, led by Virginia Rimmer, the excavation area supervisor, first uncovered the monument's rounded top, they noticed vertical lines incised across it. "They wondered if that was writing so they started looking at these scratches, trying to figure them out," he says. The lines, it turns out, were from modern plows. The stele lay fewer than eight inches below the surface of a wheat field that had been farmed for generations.
A workman carefully exposed the object further and next saw its rounded back, which the archaeologists thought might be a grindstone. But when the workman saw the top line of clear writing, he called Rimmer over right away. Working in the area were two graduate students specializing in Northwest Semitic philology, Samuel Boyd and Benjamin Thomas, who had just taken a course in exactly the kind of inscription and dialect on the stele. "None of the rest of us were experts on this particular script," says Schloen. "They translated it on the spot!" ...].
(Photo: Eudora Struble, University of Chicago)
(Photo: Eudora Struble, University of Chicago)Funerary Monument Reveals Iron Age Belief That The Soul Lived In The Stone. ScienceDaily (Nov. 18, 2008).
[Archaeologists in southeastern Turkey have discovered an Iron Age chiseled stone slab that provides the first written evidence in the region that people believed the soul was separate from the body.].
Found: An Ancient Monument to the Soul. By JOHN NOBLE WILFORD, Published: November 17, 2008 New York Times.
[In a mountainous kingdom in what is now southeastern Turkey, there lived in the eighth century B.C. a royal official, Kuttamuwa, who oversaw the completion of an inscribed stone monument, or stele, to be erected upon his death. The words instructed mourners to commemorate his life and afterlife with feasts “for my soul that is in this stele.”
University of Chicago archaeologists who made the discovery last summer in ruins of a walled city near the Syrian border said the stele provided the first written evidence that the people in this region held to the religious concept of the soul apart from the body. By contrast, Semitic contemporaries, including the Israelites, believed that the body and soul were inseparable, which for them made cremation unthinkable, as noted in the Bible].

(Photo: Eudora Struble, University of Chicago)
High resolution version of the aboveFunerary monument reveals Iron Age belief that the soul lived in the stone. University of Chicago News Office, November 18, 2008.
[Archaeologists in southeastern Turkey have discovered an Iron Age chiseled stone slab that provides the first written evidence in the region that people believed the soul was separate from the body.
University of Chicago researchers will describe the discovery, a testimony created by an Iron Age official that includes an incised image of the man, on Nov. 22-23 at conferences of biblical and Middle Eastern archaeological scholars in Boston.
The Neubauer Expedition of the Oriental Institute at the University of Chicago found the 800-pound basalt stele, 3 feet tall and 2 feet wide, at Zincirli (pronounced "Zin-jeer-lee"), the site of the ancient city of Sam'al. Once the capital of a prosperous kingdom, it is now one of the most important Iron Age sites under excavation.
The stele is the first of its kind to be found intact in its original location, enabling scholars to learn about funerary customs and life in the eighth century B.C. At the time, vast empires emerged in the ancient Middle East, and cultures such as the Israelites and Phoenicians became part of a vibrant mix].
(Photo: Eudora Struble, University of Chicago)
High resolution version of the above
(Photo: Jason Herrmann, University of Arkansas)High resolution version of the abovePapers on resent work at Zincirli will be presented at the
ASOR Annual Meeting this week:
Virginia Rimmer (University of Chicago), “The Impact of Assyrian Imperial Incorporation on Households at Sam’al (Zincirli) in Southern Turkey” (5 min.)
[In the Household Archaeology Workshop, 1:00-4:00pm, Friday 21 November]
David Schloen (University of Chicago) and Amir Sumakai-Fink (Tel Aviv University), “Zincirli (Ancient Sam’al) 2008” (25 min.)
[In the Reports Non-ASOR Affiliated Excavations and Surveys Session, 4:15-6:15pm, Saturday 22 November]
and at the
SBL Annual MeetingDennis Pardee, University of Chicago, A New Alphabetic Inscription from Zincirli
[In the Paleographical Studies in the Ancient Near East Session, 11/23/2008, 1:00 PM to 3:30 PM, Meeting Room 304 - CC]
Abstract: On July 21, 2008, the Neubauer Expedition to Zincirli, directed by Prof. David Schloen of the University of Chicago and by associate director Amir Fink, found an inscribed basalt stele at the site of Zincirli in Gaziantep province in southeastern Turkey. The remarkably well-preserved stele, 70 centimeters wide and 95 centimeters tall, was found intact in its original location. It was set into a stone wall with its protruding tenon still inserted into the stone-paved floor. The alphabetic inscription on the stele is written in Sam’alian, the language spoken in the region of Zincirli (ancient Sam’al) during the Iron Age. It commemorates the life of “Kattammuwa servant of Panamuwa,” probably a high official of King Panamuwa, who reigned during the eighth century B.C. A bearded figure is depicted on the stele, seated in a chair in front of a table laden with food. Beside him is a thirteen-line inscription, elegantly carved in raised relief and preserved in almost pristine condition nearly three millennia after it was inscribed. It describes the establishment of the memorial stele and associated mortuary rites. This stele is unique in its combination of pictorial and textual features and thus is an important addition to our knowledge of ancient language and culture. An analysis and translation of the inscription will be presented by Prof. Dennis Pardee of the University of Chicago, and Prof. David Schloen will discuss the archaeological context
Ancient Mesopotamia: This History, Our History. Website Review in Education World, November, 2008.
[Ancient Mesopotamia: This History, Our History provides a wealth of resources for teaching and learning about this civilization. The artifacts in the learning collection were chosen by teachers to shed light on the everyday lives of the people who lived in this area which is now Iraq. Teachers and students can examine the artifacts and use the teacher developed questions to drive classroom discussions. The collection can be browsed by name, material, object type, time period, archaeological site map or cultural themes. The Interactives offer users the opportunity to view significant artifacts up close and go on a virtual archaeological dig in Iraq. Any of fourteen different themes can be explored to learn about the different aspects of ancient life in this region. Additionally, teaching materials such as standards based lesson plans, information on visual thinking strategies, how to use this resource and last but not least an online course for teachers wishing to learn more about this region]
Oriental Institute Museum helps visiting school students dig for "artifacts", Chicago News, November 13, 2008.
[Chicago-area students will be able to get a hands-on archaeological experience when a new simulated dig opens in November at the Oriental Institute, 1155 East 58th Street.
The Kipper Family Archaeology Discovery Center, which will have its grand opening November 17, will allow school groups to recover archaeological replicas buried in an artificial ancient mound, or "tel," which replicates the Middle Eastern mounds where Oriental Institute archaeologists dig].
Drink Like a Sumerian, Chicago Public Radio, Eight Forty-Eight 11/12/2008. [Audio presentation]
["As you look toward the weekend, or even later this evening, is a good “cold one” on your mind? Beer is one of humankind’s oldest and most beloved beverages, but it’s changed a lot over time.
It began as a light, sweet drink and has evolved to the heavier, more bitter brew we enjoy today. Eight Forty-Eight Food Critic David Hammond has this history lesson.
Food Critic David Hammond is a contributor to Chicago Reader and Time Out Chicago, and he moderates LTHForum.com, the Chicago-based culinary chat site].
Nectar of the Babylonians, November 11, 2008, The University of Chicago Magazine Blog.
["Students socializing at Jimmy’s over a pint of beer know that they’re participating in an age-old practice, but few likely realize just how old. Even before the dawn of recorded history, beer-brewing was widespread throughout the ancient Near East. In a presentation at the Oriental Institute last Wednesday, Kathleen Mineck, a PhD candidate in Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, coupled a lecture on beer in the ancient world with a tasting of her own home brews, prepared in the Sumerian manner..."].
Loot! Chicago at center of battle between archeologists, collectors. A 4,000-year-old artifact turns up at O'Hare. Stolen property or museum piece?, By Tom Hundley, November 9, 2008, Chicago Tribune Magazine.
["On April 11, 2003, three days after American tanks rumbled into Baghdad and the day after looters swarmed the Iraq National Museum like a plague of locusts, Donald Rumsfeld and the Pentagon press corps enjoyed a little laugh at the expense of Iraq's catastrophe. "The images you are seeing on television you are seeing over and over and over, and it's the same picture of some person walking out of some building with a vase, and you see it 20 times and you think, 'My goodness, were there that many vases?' Is it possible that there were that many vases in the whole country?" the defense secretary asked with mock astonishment. This was vintage Rumsfeld, and the journalists chuckled appreciatively. The looting would continue for two more days.
McGuire Gibson, a man who may know as much about ancient Mesopotamian archeology as anyone on the planet, was horrified by the events in Baghdad and by Rumsfeld's cavalier attitude, but he wasn't particularly surprised. In the months leading up to the U.S. invasion, the distinguished University of Chicago scholar had repeatedly warned the Pentagon and State Department about the likelihood of looting. n The warnings fell on deaf ears. n I had been hearing about the legendary Mac Gibson for years, but I did not meet him until a month after the ransacking of the museum, when I was in Baghdad as a Tribune correspondent and he traveled to that benighted city to inspect the damage for himself ..."].



The high-stakes game of trading in ancient artifacts, By Nadira A. Hira, writer, Fortune, Thursday October 23, 12:10 pm ET
["..."The state of the discussion between archaeologists and museum curators and directors is so polarized that it has ceased almost entirely to be productive," says archaeologist Geoff Emberling, who is also museum director of the Oriental Institute at the University of Chicago, whose museum specifically does not acquire pieces on the market.
Emberling calls the lioness sale a "catastrophe," saying that prices at this level put archaeological sites in greater danger than they have ever been before. "In the big picture," he says, those artifacts "are better off still in the ground, awaiting a detailed excavation. But I acknowledge that's sort of a dream." ..."].
Safeguarding Iraq's antiquities: Country's scholars to get help from 2 Chicago museums, by Ron Grossman, Chicago Tribune, October 17, 2008,
["... In announcing the $14 million program, Laura Bush named the Field Museum of Natural History and the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago as sites where 45 Iraqis will "learn the new methods of preservation that they were largely isolated from during Saddam Hussein's regime." ..."].
Iraq Cultural Heritage Project (ICHP), October 16, 2008, Department of State Press Release
["The Department of State, through the American Embassy in Baghdad, has awarded a $13 million grant to International Relief and Development (IRD) a charitable, non-profit, non-governmental organization that directs assistance “in regions of the world that present social, political and technical challenges.” ... With the collaboration of the Field Museum of Natural History and the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago a two year professional development program will be developed for employees of the Iraq State Board of Antiquities and Heritage (SBAH), the Iraq National Museum and other museums..."].
US unveils Iraq culture aid, October 16, 2008, AFP News
["US First Lady Laura Bush visited Baghdad's embassy in Washington on Thursday to unveil a 14-million-dollar US campaign to rebuild Iraq's cultural heritage and safeguard its treasures ... The funds will also help create a two-year education program for Iraqi preservationists at Chicago's Field Museum of Natural History, in collaboration with the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago ..."].
Ancient stories in modern dress: Gilgamesh, Silk Road Theatre Project
["On Saturday, Silk Road will present Gilgamesh, the “world’s oldest story,” in a recent version by Pulitzer-prize-winning poet Yusef Komunyakaa and dramaturg Chad Gracia, at the Oriental Institute in partnership with the Chicago Humanities Festival and the Poetry Foundation. Among its treasures, the Oriental Institute houses a mummified body roughly the age of the story, Mesopotamian prayer statues, and clay tablets with cuneiform writing that may depict Gilgamesh standing on the head of the vanquished monster Humbaba"].
Teaching the Loss of Iraq's Heritage, Art Historians at Work, Tuesday, September 30, 2008.
Who Wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls?, By JORDANA HORN, Wall Street Journal online, SEPTEMBER 26, 2008

The New York Review of Books published (Volume 55, Number 16 · October 23, 2008) Chuck Jones'
Letter to the Editor responding to their omnibus review entitled
The Devastation of Iraq's Past, by Hugh Eakin, of the editorial staff of The New York Review, discussing seven books including
Catastrophe! The Looting and Destruction of Iraq's Past an exhibition at the Oriental Institute Museum, Chicago, April 10–December 31, 2008. Catalog of the
exhibition edited by Geoff Emberling and Katharyn Hanson. Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, 87 pp., $29.95 (paper).
Posted on the Oriental Institute's
What's New page, and on several mailing lists, such as
ANE-2, is the announcement of the discovery of an inscription at Zinçirli:
New Alphabetic Inscription From Zincirli (ancient Sam’al) In Southeast Turkey.
["On July 21, 2008, the Neubauer Expedition to Zincirli, directed by Prof. David Schloen of the University of Chicago and by associate director Amir Fink, found an inscribed basalt stele at the site of Zincirli (pronounced “Zin-jeer-lee”) in Gaziantep province in southeastern Turkey. The remarkably well-preserved stele, 70 centimeters wide and 95 centimeters tall, was found intact in its original location."]
The homepage of the Zinçirli project is
here.
The Facebook presence of the 2008 expedition of the Zinçirli project is
here.
The University of Chicago's website features a
story on a computerized tomography scan of one of the Institute's most-beloved objects on public display, the mummy of Meresamun. This recalls a
News & Notes piece from the early 1990s, regarding the mummy of Petosiris.


In an omnibus review entitled
The Devastation of Iraq's Past, Hugh Eakin, of the editorial staff of The New York Review, discusses seven books including
Catastrophe! The Looting and Destruction of Iraq's Past an exhibition at the Oriental Institute Museum, Chicago, April 10–December 31, 2008. Catalog of the
exhibition edited by Geoff Emberling and Katharyn Hanson. Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, 87 pp., $29.95 (paper). He neglects to mention that the book is available in an open access format.
Off to the Oriental Institute and
Offline Path Analysis, Marketing Productivity Blog: Moving from a Low Accountability to a High Accountability Business Model, by Jim Novo.
[Before and after comments by a marketing consultant for the Oriental Institute].
Archaeologists find silos and administration center from early Egyptian city, University of Chicago Press Release
[News from the OI project at Edfu - Several news sources are publishing articles based on this report].
Uncovering Evidence of a Workaday World Along the Nile, By JOHN NOBLE WILFORD, Published: July 1, 2008. The New York Times [News from the OI project at Edfu].
When grain was currency, © Copyright Al-Ahram Weekly, 19 - 25 June 2008, Issue No. 902.
[News from the OI project at Edfu: A large administrative building and silos thought to be the largest grain bins from the ancient Egyptian era ever found are the latest discoveries at Tel Edfu. Nevine El-Aref reports on a site that is providing fresh clues about the emergence of urban life in ancient times].
Benched for the season, UCHIBLOGO, The University of Chicago Magazine's Web log, June 6, 2008.
[Campus improvements].
This is a link to a
USAToday piece, which reads as perkily as one could possibly imagine, quoting OI Museum Director Geoff Emberling regarding the Indiana Jones business.
USAToday, May 22, 2008.
Who is Indiana Jones? What we know (so far) about Indy, The Roanoke Times, Wednesday, May 21, 2008. [In which Gil Stein comments on the ambiguous image of Indiana Jones].
Teaching Web Site Highlights Gifts of Ancient Mesopotamia, IMLS Project Profiles, May 8, 2008.
Teaching Web Site Highlights Gifts of Ancient Mesopotamia, 7thSpace Interactive, 2008-05-05.
The looting of Iraq's past, Shanghai Daily - By Tara Burghart 2008-4-20 .
Dig Into History -- Ancient Mesopotamia, Archaeorama - April 16, 2008.
Artistic casualties of the Iraq war. U. of C. exhibit highlights looting of cultural gems, Chicago Tribune - 12:29 AM CDT, April 11, 2008.
Oriental Institute exhibit highlights looting of Iraq, Chicago Sun Times - April 10, 2008.
Exhibition, book and symposium in Chicago, IW&A Blog - April 10, 2008.
Exhibit details destruction of Iraq's cultural heritage, Associated Press report in The International Herald Tribune - April 10, 2008.
Exhibit details destruction of Iraq's cultural heritage, Associated Press - April 9, 2008 3:24 PM ET.
Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago to Examine the Looting of the Iraq National Museum, Art Daily.
Preservation along the Nile River, by Bill Harms, University of Chicago News Office.
AUB finds new president after year-long search, Daily Star staff, Saturday, March 22, 2008.
Gregory Areshian Collection of the Research Archives of the Oriental, Foy Scalf, ANE-2, Thu Mar 20, 2008.
Mysteries of Hamoukar, world's oldest city, Pravda, 13 March 2008.
American U. of Beirut to Name U. of Chicago Scholar as Next President, The Chronicle of Higher Education News-Blog, March 12, 2008.
Scholars will explore conflicts between tribal, national allegiances, by Bill Harms, The University of Chicago Chronicle, March 6, 2008, Vol. 27 No. 11.
Old News:
Real Tough Rough Riders Were Sumerian Charioteers, Week of Feb. 23, 2008; Vol. 173, No. 8. (From the February 19, 1938, issue)