James Henry Breasted (August 27, 1865 - December 2, 1935) was an American archaeologist, Egyptologist, and historian. He has several claims to fame. He was the first American to gain a PhD in Egyptology.
James Henry Breasted
He wrote a highly influential book, A History of Egypt: From the Earliest Times to the Persian Conquest, which was first published in 1905, became a popular classic, and is still considered by Egyptologists as one of the best introductions to their subject ever written. He played an important role in reading the hieroglyphic inscriptions in the tomb of Tutankhamun when it was discovered by Howard Carter in 1922. He founded the Oriental Institute at the University of Chicago with lavish funding from the Rockefellers. He coined the phrase ‘the Fertile Crescent’ to describe the birthplace of civilisation in the Middle East.
His ancestors went back to early colonial Dutch and English, with the family name Van Breestede. He was educated at local public schools before attending North Central College (then North-Western College). He graduated from there in 1888, and attended Chicago Theological Seminary, but transferred to Yale University to study Hebrew. He studied with William Rainey Harper, who had great influence on the teaching of the language. He received a master's degree from Yale in 1891.
His mentor Harper had just accepted the presidency of the University of Chicago and encouraged Breasted to study at the University of Berlin for his doctorate, and then to join him in Chicago. Breasted studied the Egyptian language under the instruction of Adolf Erman. Erman had just established a new school of Egyptology, concentrating systematically on grammar and lexicography. Breasted received his doctorate in 1894, producing an edition of the sun hymns of El 'Amǎrneh period for his thesis.
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Early Life and Education
James Henry Breasted was born on August 27, 1865, the son of a small hardware business owner and his wife, in Rockford, Illinois. For a while, he considered a career in the Church. But soon he was drawn into a more sophisticated, scholarly study of the Bible and its sources in the history and literature of the most ancient civilizations. Nevertheless, religion - whether Christian, Judaic, or Egyptian - remained a driving force in his work; Breasted would never lose his belief in God.
In 1894 Breasted married Frances Hart. Hart and her sisters were in Germany at the same time as Breasted, where they were learning the German language and studying music. The couple honeymooned in Egypt. Frances Hart Breasted died in 1934 after 40 years of marriage.
Academic Career and Achievements
Breasted became an instructor at the University of Chicago in 1894 soon after earning his doctorate. Five years later the university agreed to his accepting an invitation from the Prussian Academy of Sciences to work on its Egyptian dictionary project. From 1899 to 1908 he did fieldwork in Egypt, which established his reputation. He began to publish numerous articles and monographs, as well as his History of Egypt from the Earliest Times Down to the Persian Conquest in 1905.
In 1901, Breasted was appointed director of the Haskell Oriental Museum (forerunner of the Oriental Institute), which had opened at the University of Chicago in 1896. Though the museum contained works of art from both the Near East and the Far East, Breasted's principal interest was in Egypt. He began to work on a compilation of all the extant hieroglyphic inscriptions, which was published in 1906 as Ancient Records of Egypt, and continues to be an important collection of translated texts. As Peter A. Piccione wrote in the preface to its 2001 reprint, it "still contains certain texts and inscriptions that have not been retranslated since that time."
Through the years, as Breasted built up the collection of the Haskell Oriental Museum, he dreamed of establishing a research institute, "a laboratory for the study of the rise and development of civilization", that would trace Western civilization to its roots in the ancient Middle East. As World War I wound down, he sensed an opportunity. He wrote to John D. Rockefeller Jr., son of the major donor to the university, and proposed founding what would become the Oriental Institute.
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He planned a research trip through the Middle East, which he suggested was ready to receive scholars. Rockefeller responded by pledging $50,000 over five years for the Oriental Institute. He separately assured the University of Chicago President Judson to pledge another $50,000 to the cause. Breasted had two key objectives for the field trip: to purchase antiquities for the Oriental Institute and to select sites for future excavation. As Breasted scouted future archaeological sites and visited antiquities dealers, he came to know many of the British political figures and scholars working in Egypt.
These included Gertrude Bell, Howard Carter, Lord Carnarvon, Lord Allenby, and the Arab leader Faisal, who would become king of Iraq. Breasted's acquisitions were significant for the growth and scope of the collections of the Oriental Institute and the Art Institute of Chicago. The first excavation conducted by the Oriental Institute was in Egypt at Medinet Habu, one of the sites he had recommended. Breasted returned to Egypt frequently; between 1922 and 1927 he supported Howard Carter's excavation of Tutankhamun's tomb.
He applied his expertise in deciphering seals, and was present during the dismantling of the shrine that contained the King's sarcophagus. Breasted also collaborated with his University of Chicago colleague Carl F. Huth, Jr. on a very well-received series of historical maps that was published by the Denoyer-Geppert Co. (1916), which were sold both individually and eventually expanded and published in a series of atlases, including (with Huth and Samuel B. Harding) European History Atlas: Ancient, Medieval and Modern European and World History Adapted from the Large Wall Maps, 3rd rev. ed.
On April 25, 1923, Breasted became the first archaeologist to be elected to membership in the National Academy of Sciences. The honor helped to legitimize the struggling profession of archaeology in American academic circles.
While at Chicago, Breasted had a home built near the university. Its carriage house was designed to look like a mastaba. Breasted is buried in Greenwood Cemetery, in Rockford, Illinois.
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The James Henry Breasted Prize was established in 1985 in his honor by the American Historical Association.
He popularized the term "Fertile Crescent" to describe the archaeologically important area including parts of present-day Iraq, Syria, Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan, Palestine and Israel.
Breasted's 1916 map of the Fertile Crescent
Selected Publications
- A History of Egypt from the Earliest Times to the Persian Conquest. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons.
- Ancient Records of Egypt: Historical Documents from the Earliest Times to the Persian Conquest, collected, edited, and translated, with Commentary. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
- Development of Religion and Thought in Ancient Egypt: Lectures delivered on the Morse Foundation at Union Theological Seminary. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons.
- Ancient Times - A History of the Early World. Boston: The Athenæum Press.
- Survey of the Ancient World. Boston: The Athenæum Press.
- Oriental Forerunners of Byzantine Painting: First-Century Wall Paintings from the Fortress of Dura on the Middle Euphrates. Chicago: University of Chicago Oriental Institute Publications. 1924. ISBN 9780226071855.
- The Conquest of Civilization. New York; London: Harper and Brothers.
- The Dawn of Conscience. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons.
Acemoglu, Robinson and "Why Nations Fail"
Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson are the authors of the international bestseller Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity and Poverty.
This book is about the huge differences in incomes and standards of living that separate the rich countries of the world, such as the United States, Great Britain, and Germany, from the poor, such as those in sub-Saharan Africa, Central America, and South Asia. In this book we’ll study how these patterns reproduce themselves over time and why sometimes they are altered, as they were in England in 1688 and in France with the revolution of 1789.
This will help us to understand if the situation in Egypt has changed today and whether the revolution that overthrew Mubarak will lead to a new set of institutions capable of bringing prosperity to ordinary Egyptians. Egypt has had revolutions in the past that did not change things, because those who mounted the revolutions simply took over the reins from those they’d deposed and re-created a similar system. It is indeed difficult for ordinary citizens to acquire real political power and change the way their society works.
But it is possible, and we’ll see how this happened in England, France, and the United States, and also in Japan, Botswana, and Brazil. Fundamentally it is a political transformation of this sort that is required for a poor society to become rich. There is evidence that this may be happening in Egypt. Reda Metwaly, another protestor in Tahrir Square, argued, “Now you see Muslims and Christians together, now you see old and young together, all wanting the same thing.” We’ll see that such a broad movement in society was a key part of what happened in these other political transformations.
The best recent work on this subject comes from a remarkable pair of scholars, Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson.
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