Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures

Step inside, and the city noise drops away. The air is cool and still. Your footsteps sound soft on the floor, and the light is low, kept gentle for objects that have survived thousands of years. Somewhere ahead, a pale stone giant waits in the half-dark. You are on the campus of the University of Chicago, in one of the oldest research centres in America devoted to the ancient Middle East.

This is the Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures. For most of its life it carried another name, the Oriental Institute. In 2023 the university renamed it, partly because the word oriental now sounds dated and vague. The new name is more precise. It points to the regions the Institute studies, West Asia and North Africa. The scholarship and the collection did not change with the name. Only the label on the door did.

The story begins with one man, James Henry Breasted. He was an American Egyptologist, among the first in the country. He founded the Institute in 1919, just after the First World War. Breasted had a big idea. He believed the roots of Western civilization ran back to Egypt and Mesopotamia, and he wanted Americans to see that connection for themselves. Many people credit him with popularising a phrase you probably learned at school: the Fertile Crescent.

Big ideas need money. Breasted found it through John D. Rockefeller Junior, the oil heir and philanthropist. Rockefeller funding paid for expeditions across Egypt, Iraq, Iran, Syria, Turkey and the Levant. It also paid for this building, completed in the early 1930s. Look at the exterior when you leave. The style is Gothic Revival, like much of the campus, but the details carry a cleaner, Art Deco feel. Above the entrance, a carved relief shows figures from the ancient East and the modern West, a picture of Breasted's belief in a single shared story.

Now, back to that giant. In the Mesopotamian gallery stands a lamassu, a winged bull with the head of a bearded man. Assyrian kings placed creatures like this at palace gateways as protective spirits. This one came from Khorsabad, in modern Iraq, from the palace of King Sargon the Second, built in the late eighth century before Christ. It weighs many tons. It travelled to Chicago in pieces, and the team reassembled it here.

Walk around the lamassu slowly, and here is the first surprise. Count its legs. From the front, you see two legs, standing still. From the side, you see four legs, walking forward. That makes five legs in total. The sculptors wanted the creature to look complete from every angle a visitor might approach. It is a clever trick of ancient design, and many people pass it without noticing.

In the Egyptian gallery, another giant waits. A colossal statue of the boy king Tutankhamun rises far above head height. The Institute's own team excavated it in Egypt in the 1930s, at the site of Medinet Habu, near Luxor. Parts of the statue were missing, and restorers filled them in. Look closely and you can see where ancient stone meets modern repair. Later rulers re-carved the inscriptions to claim the statue for themselves... a common habit among pharaohs.

The Egyptian rooms hold quieter things too. There are mummies, painted coffins, and small objects from daily life. Look for the toys, the cosmetic jars, the jewellery and the tools. These are the parts of the collection that bring ancient people closest. Someone held that comb. Someone carried that little amulet for luck. Reading the labels takes time, but these small cases often stay with visitors longer than the colossal pieces.

Another gallery is devoted to ancient Persia. In the 1930s, Institute archaeologists excavated at Persepolis, the ceremonial capital of the Achaemenid Persian Empire, a dynasty that ruled much of the ancient world around five centuries before Christ. Through an agreement with Iran, some finds came to Chicago. Look for a huge stone bull's head, once part of a column in one of the great halls. Its curled hair and smooth face show the precise carving of Persian court artists.

Here is the second surprise. This place is not only a museum. It is a working research institute, and some of its most important results are books, not objects. Scholars here spent about ninety years compiling the Chicago Assyrian Dictionary, a record of the ancient Akkadian language written on clay tablets. The final volume appeared in the early 2010s. Other teams have worked on dictionaries of Hittite and of Demotic, a late form of Egyptian writing.

The fieldwork continues as well. Since the 1920s, the Institute has kept a base in Luxor, in Egypt, known as Chicago House. There, its Epigraphic Survey records the carvings and inscriptions on temple walls, line by line, before weather and time wear them away. Many visitors never learn about this work. Yet it means that the people behind these glass cases are still out in the field, adding to the record.

Other galleries cover ancient Nubia, the Levant, and Anatolia, the region of modern Turkey. Look for finds from Megiddo, a site in modern Israel that the Institute excavated for years. Among them are delicate carved ivories. The galleries are not huge, so you can see a great deal in a single visit. Take your time. Read a few labels in full rather than skimming all of them. The depth here rewards patience.

Before you leave, return to the lamassu for a moment. Stand where a visitor to Sargon's palace might once have stood, at the gateway, looking up. Notice the cuneiform text carved between its legs, a script pressed and cut into stone nearly three thousand years ago. Then step outside into the Chicago air. Look up at the carved entrance one more time, and listen to the students passing by. The conversation that Breasted started is still going on.