James Henry Breasted

Infobox Scientist
name =James Henry Breasted


image_width =150px
caption =James Breasted in Chicago, 1928.
birth_date = August 27 1865
birth_place = Rockford, Illinois
death_date = December 2, 1935
death_place =
residence =
citizenship =
nationality = United States
ethnicity =
field = archaeology Egyptology
work_institutions = University of Chicago
alma_mater = University of Berlin
doctoral_advisor =
doctoral_students =
known_for = Fertile Crescent
author_abbrev_bot =
author_abbrev_zoo = a
influences =
influenced =
prizes =
religion =
footnotes =

James Henry Breasted (August 27 1865–December 2, 1935) was an American archaeologist and historian.

Biography

He was born in Rockford, Illinois the son of a small hardware business owner Charles Breasted and was educated at North Central College (then North-Western College) (1888), the Chicago Theological Seminary, Yale University (MA 1891) and the University of Berlin where he earned his (PhD 1894) under the instructions of Adolf Erman. He was the first American citizen to obtain a PhD in Egyptology. That same year he married Frances Hart and the couple honeymooned in Egypt which turned into a working vacation because he had been recruited to build a collection of Egyptian antiquities for the University of Chicago. [Contemporary Authors Online, Gale, 2002 Document # H1000011705]

Breasted was in the forefront of the generation of archeologist-historians who broadened the idea of Western Civilization to include the entire Near East in Europe's cultural roots. Breasted coined the term Fertile Crescent to describe the archaeologically important area from Palestine to southern Iraq (inclusive).

He became an instructor at the University of Chicago in 1894. Five years later UC agreed to let him accept the Prussian Academy's invitation to work on their Egyptian dictionary project. Therefore, from 1899 to 1908 he devoted himself to field work which established his reputation. He began to publish numerous articles and monograms, as well as his "History of Egypt from the Earliest Times Down to the Persian Conquest" in 1905. At that time he was promoted to Professor of Egyptology and Oriental History for UC (the first such chair in the United States).

In 1901, he 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 Haskell Oriental 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", which remains 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."

In 1903 he successfully secured fifty thousand dollars from the Rockefeller Foundation to found the Oriental Exploration Fund so again in 1919 he turned to John D. Rockefeller to obtain funding for the Oriental Institute of Chicago, under whose auspices Breasted headed the University’s first archaeological survey of Egypt. In 1923 he was elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences. He died in 1935 from pneumonia, while returning from a trip to Egypt. He is buried in Greenwood cemetery, Rockford, Illinois. His grave site is marked with a large marble obelisk, which was a gift from the Egyptian government. He had a personal residence built near the University of Chicago campus which now still stands as the fraternity house for Phi Gamma Delta.

"If one were asked to name a scholar who, above all others, stimulated the development of ancient historical studies in the United States during the earlier part of the twentieth century, that honor would have to fall to the colossal figure of James Henry Breasted."" Dictionary of Literary Biography by William J. Murnane

Bibliography

* cite book
title=A History of Egypt from the Earliest Times to the Persian Conquest
location=New York
publisher=Charles Scribner's Sons
year=1905
* cite book
title=Ancient Records of Egypt: Historical Documents from the Earliest Times to the Persian Conquest, collected, edited, and translated, with Commentary
location=Chicago
publisher=University of Chicago Press
year=1906–1907
* cite book
title=Development of Religion and Thought in Ancient Egypt: Lectures delivered on the Morse Foundation at Union Theological Seminary
location=New York
publisher=Charles Scribner's Sons
year=1912
* cite book
title = Survey of the Ancient World
publisher = The Athenæum Press
location = Boston
year = 1919
* cite book
title=Oriental Forerunners of Byzantine Painting (University of Chicago Oriental Institute Publications; 1)
location=Chicago
publisher=University of Chicago Press
year=1924
* cite book
title=The Conquest of Civilization
location=New York; London
publisher=Harper and Brothers
year=1926
* cite book
title=The Dawn of Conscience
location=New York
publisher=Charles Scribner's Sons
year=1933
* cite book
title=The 1905–1907 Breasted Expeditions to Egypt and the Sudan: A Photographic Study
location=Chicago
publisher=University of Chicago Press
year=1975

Further reading

* cite book
last=Breasted
first=Charles
title=Pioneer to the Past: The Story of James Henry Breasted, Archaeologist
origyear=1943
year=1977
publisher=University of Chicago Press
location=Chicago; London
id=ISBN 0226071863 (paperback)
* cite journal
title=Professor Breasted as a Historian of Greece
first=John A.
last=Scott
journal=The Classical Journal
id=ISSN|00098353
volume=22
issue=5
year=1927
pages=383–384

[1] Contemporary Authors Online, Gale, 2002. Document Number H1000011705 http://galenet.galegroup.com/servlet/BioRC