Exhibit of ancient
artifacts in chicago
'Fertile Crescent' treasures
debut Gallery at university's Oriental Institute holds artifacts
including Sennacherib's tale of battle.
By Tara Burghart
Associated Press
February 18, 2005
CHICAGO -- The Bible relates the tale
of a battle in 701 B.C. for the city of Jerusalem, waged by the
Assyrian King Sennacherib.
The Old Testament tells it from the
side of the Jewish King Hezekiah, and says "an angel of
the Lord went forth and slew 185,000 in the camp of the Assyrians,"
driving their king away.
King Sennacherib, however, describes
a different version in words recorded on a 2,700-year-old, six-sided
clay post that now stands in the newest gallery of the museum
of the University of Chicago's Oriental Institute.
"(Hezekiah) like a caged bird,
I shut up in Jerusalem, his royal city. The terrifying splendor
of my majesty overcame him, and he sent rich tribute to me,"
to lift the siege, the tiny cuneiform text reads.
The clay post, hardly bigger than a
loaf of bread, is one of several items in the Oriental Institute's
collection that reference events or people in the Bible. It's
also an example of how historical accounts of the same events
can be very different.
 Visitors
to a new exhibit at the museum of the University of Chicago's
Oriental Institute look at carved reliefs from an 8th-century
B.C. palace that show King Sargon II of Assyria riding through
a forest in his chariot. -- Nam Y. Huh / Associated Press
Ancient 'spin' at work
"There's definitely spin about
who won, even though they both agree on the fundamental fact
that the city was not -- at this time -- conquered by the Assyrians,"
museum director Geoff Emberling said.
The institute's new gallery, "Empires
in the Fertile Crescent: Ancient Assyria, Anatolia and Israel,"
holds more than 1,000 artifacts from the region, which was named
for its crescent shape stretching from the shores of the Mediterranean
on the west, along the Tigris and Euphrates rivers toward the
Persian Gulf.
The artifacts, up to 8,000 years old,
illustrate the power and majesty of the ancient civilizations
in what's now part of Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Israel, along with
the ways the cultures influenced one another's religious, artistic
and literary development.
The new exhibit opens with a series
of beautifully carved reliefs from an eighth-century B.C. palace.
Some show bearded men bringing riches and horses to the court
of King Sargon II of Assyria; in others, the king is shown riding
through a pine forest in his chariot, his head shielded from
the sun by a servant holding a parasol.
The reliefs would have lined the walls
to a private chamber of the king, accessed only by trusted staff
and family members, said Gil Stein, director of
"We've set them up in such a way
as to give museum visitors a real sense of what it would have
been like to walk down this corridor . . . into the most private
chambers of the king," Stein said. "It's the equivalent
of standing in the Oval Office."
Another highlight is a fragment of the
Dead Sea Scrolls, one of the few pieces in the United States,
in which the writer praises the virtues of humility and of studying
the Torah.
The gallery also holds a group of figures
from southeast Turkey believed to be the world's earliest known
artifacts made of true bronze -- an alloy of copper and tin.
They date to about 3,000 B.C. The male figures are in warlike
stances, while the women have their arms wrapped around their
breasts in a pose thought to denote fertility.
The Oriental Institute is a major center
for U.S. study of the ancient Near East, and most of its collection
was excavated in the first half of the 20th century, when University
of Chicago archeologists conducted large-scale expeditions.
The artifacts are especially valuable
because, unlike objects bought on the art market, the museum
can trace exactly when and where they were found and what other
objects accompanied them, Stein said. Excavations in what is
now Israel reveal "a picture of a very cosmopolitan culture,"
around 1300 B.C., that was influenced by Egypt, Greece, Anatolia
and Mesopotamia, he said.
"It's knowing the archaeological
context that gives you that tremendous added dimension of knowledge,"
Stein said.
War between good and evil
One of the university's major digs was
at Megiddo, a town in Israel that is heavily represented in the
gallery. Scholars believe Megiddo to be the New Testament's Armageddon,
the site of a final war between good and evil. They say it may
have been chosen because of its location at a crossroads where
many battles were waged. About a dozen of the "Megiddo ivories,"
discovered in a cellar, are on display. They date from 1300 B.C.
and include delicate ivory combs and a magnificent gaming board
of ivory inlaid with gold.
The Oriental Institute Museum closed
in 1996 for a $10 million renovation and expansion, and its collections
have reopened gradually -- with the Egyptian, Persian and Mesopotamian
galleries already open to the public. The last gallery, focusing
on Nubia (present-day Sudan), is expected to reopen early next
year.
Before the renovation, some of the institute's
artifacts had been in shipping crates for 70 years because of
a lack of display space, Stein said. He estimates 20 percent
to 30 percent of 1,000 objects in the Fertile Crescent gallery
have never before been displayed in the United States.
Oriental Institute Museum
· Address: 1155 E. 58th St., Chicago.
· Hours: 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Tuesdays, Thursdays, Fridays,
Saturdays; 10 a.m. to 8:30 p.m. Wednesdays; noon to 6 p.m. Sundays.
· Admission: Free, though donations of $5 for adults and
$2 for children younger than 12 are suggested.
· Info: (773) 702-9514 or www.oi.uchicago.edu
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