The Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures, West Asia & North Africa (ISAC), formerly known as the Oriental Institute, is the University of Chicago's interdisciplinary research center for ancient Near Eastern studies and archaeology museum. Established in 1919, it was founded for the university by Egyptology and ancient history professor James Henry Breasted with funds donated by John D. Rockefeller Jr. It conducts research on ancient civilizations throughout the Near East, including at its facility, Chicago House, in Luxor, Egypt. The institute also publicly exhibits an extensive collection of artifacts related to ancient civilizations and archaeological discoveries at its on-campus building in Hyde Park, Chicago. According to anthropologist William Parkinson of the Field Museum, the ISAC's highly focused "near Eastern, or southwest Asian and Egyptian" collection is one of the finest in the world.
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👉 Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures in the context of James Henry Breasted
James Henry Breasted (/ˈbrɛstɪd/; August 27, 1865 – December 2, 1935) was an American archaeologist, Egyptologist, and historian. After completing his PhD at the University of Berlin in 1894 – the first American to obtain a doctorate in Egyptology – he joined the faculty of the University of Chicago. In 1901, he became director of the Haskell Oriental Museum at the university, where he continued to concentrate on Egypt. In 1905, Breasted was promoted to full professor and held the first chair in Egyptology and Oriental History in the United States.
Breasted was a committed field researcher in Egypt and the Levant and had a productive interest in recording and interpreting ancient writings, especially from sources and structures that he feared may be lost forever. In 1919, he founded the Oriental Institute (later known as, the Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures) at the University of Chicago, a center for interdisciplinary study of ancient civilizations. That same year, he was elected to the American Philosophical Society.