JAMES HENRY BREASTED

Lindsay Ambridge Ottawa, ON Canada lambridg@umich.edu

Basic Biographical Information

James Henry Breasted (1865-1935) was an American Egyptologist best known for his work as a historian, philologist and epigrapher, and as the founder of the Oriental Institute at the University of Chicago. Born in 1865 in Rockford, Illinois, Breasted was from a family of modest means; his father was a hardware store owner and, later, a traveling salesman. Consequently, Breasteds path to academia was fraught with financial struggle. The need to support his family was a factor in the considerable amount of educational outreach work from public lectures to popularizing books that he accepted; as a result, he became one of the most widely known historians of his generation (Ambridge 2010; for examples of popular work, see Breasted 1908; 1916). Between 1880 and 1890, Breasted studied at several institutions: North-Western College in Naperville, IL, where he concentrated in Latin; the Chicago College of Pharmacy; and the Chicago Theological Seminary. After excelling in Hebrew at the seminary, he was encouraged to pursue graduate work in Semitic languages with William Rainey Harper at Yale University (Abt 2011: 4-16; C. Breasted 1943: 13-25). After a year of study at Yale, and with the encouragement of Harper, Breasted departed for Germany in order to obtain a doctorate in Egyptology, a field of study not yet well established in American academia. In 1891 he matriculated at the Humboldt University of Berlin (known at the time as Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universitt) and studied for the next three years under Adolf Erman, one of the foremost Egyptologists in Germany. By the fall of 1894, Breasted had completed his doctorate with a dissertation on the sun hymns of the New Kingdom pharaoh Akhenaten; married Frances Hart, a fellow American expatriate living in Berlin; secured a position as Assistant in Egyptology at the University of Chicago; and embarked on his first tour of Egypt (Abt 2011: 23-40; C. Breasted 1943: 33-40, 58-66). He would remain with the University of Chicago for the duration of his career.

Major Accomplishments
Breasted excelled in languages; among those that he commanded were German, French, Latin, Hebrew, Arabic, ancient Egyptian (including Coptic) and Assyrian. With his educational background rooted in philology, he gradually pioneered new epigraphic methods of copying, recording, and photographing ancient inscriptions. Crucial to the development of his epigraphic methodologies were the years from 1894-1908, when he was granted several leaves of absence from the University of Chicago in order to conduct research abroad. From 1899-1901 he toured the major museums of Europe, where he photographed, transcribed, and translated all of the museums historical inscriptions of ancient Egypt (Abt 2011: 75-78; C. Breasted 1943: 103-115; Wilson 1936: 99). This work contributed to Adolf Ermans Egyptian dictionary the Wrterbuch der gyptischen Sprache and culminated in Breasteds own multi-volume Ancient Records of Egypt, published in 1906. His first tour of Egypt occurred in the winter season of 1894/95, during which he recorded inscriptions at major archaeological sites in the Nile valley north of Aswan. In the winter seasons of 1905/06 and 1906/07

he led expeditions through both Upper and Lower Nubia from Naga in the south to Beit el-Wali in the north, further refining his epigraphic methods (for photos of these expeditions, see Larson 2006). In the years between 1908 and 1919, Breasted focused on teaching, writing, and administration; he was the Chair of the University of Chicagos Department of Oriental Languages and Literatures as well as the Director of the Haskell Oriental Museum (now the Oriental Institute Museum). The most notable publications from the first half of his career include his popular and widely read A History of Egypt from the Earliest Times to the Persian Conquest (1905); Ancient Records of Egypt (1906); Development of Religion and Thought in Ancient Egypt (1912); and Ancient Times, a History of the Early World (1916), a textbook written for high school students. Ancient Times had a significant impact on the future of American Egyptology when the book received a favorable response from Frederick Gates, business advisor to John D. Rockefeller, Sr. and his son, John D. Rockefeller, Jr. Consequently, Breasted sought research funding from the Rockefeller Foundation and in 1919, John D. Rockefeller, Jr. committed to five years of financial support, enabling Breasted to found the Oriental Institute at the University of Chicago. The Institutes first project in 1919/20, led by Breasted, was a 9-month reconnaissance survey throughout the Middle East, a region of the world undergoing profound changes in the aftermath of World War I. On this trip, Breasteds team evaluated such sites as Ur, Lagash, Babylon, Assur, Nineveh, and Khorsabad (Emberling 2010). With continued funding from Rockefeller, Breasted established permanent field headquarters for the Oriental Institute in Luxor, Egypt. Named Chicago House, the site still serves as the base for the Institutes ongoing Epigraphic Survey of Theban temples, a project initiated by Breasted in 1924. By 1928, Breasted secured a multi-million dollar grant from the Rockefeller Foundation, resulting in a permanent endowment for the Oriental Institute and the construction of the Institutes research center, completed in 1931 (Abt 2011: 284-286; 345-349). Although Breasted did not identify himself as an archaeologist he acknowledged the difference between the goals and methodologies of his epigraphic work and those of excavations run by such archaeologists as Flinders Petrie and George Reisner in his capacity as Director of the Oriental Institute he initiated excavations at such sites as Megiddo, atal Hyk, Khorsabad, Tell Asmar, and Persepolis. The heavy administrative duties of the Oriental Institute slowed Breasteds own research during the second half of his career. Two notable publications from this period are The Edwin Smith Surgical Papyrus (1930) and The Dawn of Conscience (1934). His wife, Frances, died in 1934; in June of 1935 he married his wifes younger sister, Imogen. The marriage was short-lived, however, as Breasted fell ill on the return journey from a tour of the Middle East in that same year. By the time his ship arrived in New York, Breasted had developed a streptococcal infection and he died on December 2nd, 1935, at the age of seventy. He was survived by three children: Charles, James Henry, Jr., and Astrid.

Cross-References
Empire in the Ancient Near East, Archaeology of History of Archaeology: Overview History and Archaeology: Relationship over Time (USA Perspective)

References
Abt, J. 2011. American Egyptologist: The Life of James Henry Breasted and the Creation of His Oriental Institute. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Ambridge, L. 2010. History and Narrative in a Changing Society: James Henry Breasted and the Writing of Ancient Egyptian History in Early Twentieth Century America. Unpublished PhD dissertation, University of Michigan. Breasted, C. 1943. Pioneer to the Past: The Story of James Henry Breasted, Archaeologist. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Breasted, J. H. 1908. Egypt through the Stereoscope: A Journey through the Land of the Pharaohs. New York: Underwood & Underwood. - 1916. Ancient Times, a History of the Early World. Boston: Ginn and Company. Emberling, G. (ed.) 2010. Pioneers to the Past: American Archaeologists in the Middle East, 1919-1920. Chicago: Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago. Larson, J. 2006. Lost Nubia: A Centennial Exhibit of Photographs from the 1905-1907 Egyptian Expedition of the University of Chicago. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Wilson, J. 1964. Signs and Wonders upon Pharaoh: A History of American Egyptology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Further Readings
Abt, J. 1996. Toward a Historians Laboratory: The Breasted-Rockefeller Museum Projects in Egypt, Palestine and America. Journal of the American Research Center in Egypt 33: 173-194. Ambridge, L. 2012. Imperialism and Racial Geography in James Henry Breasteds Ancient Times, a History of the Early World. Journal of Egyptian History 5: 49-70. Kuklick, B. 1996. Puritans in Babylon: The Ancient Near East and American Intellectual Life, 1880-1930. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Marcanti, R. 1977. The 1919/20 Breasted Expedition to the Near East: A Photographic Study. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.