The Oriental Institute, Chicago and its famous tympanum:
narrative representation of history
"the torch of civilization"
Door to the Oriental Institute at Chicago, established in 1919 by James Henry Breasted "as a laboratory for the study of the rise and development of ancient civilization". (See The Oriental Institute website: a brief history).
Image: wikipedia entry on "The Oriental Institute".
This is the relief that serves as the tympanum above the entrance to the Oriental Institute, designed by Breasted himself. Sculptor: Ulric H. Ellerhusen. According to the OI website, "the personification of the East (represented by an Egyptian scribe, left) gives a wall fragment from the temple of the Fifth Dynasty king, Sahure, to the personification of the West. This gift is meant to represent the Eastern origins of the Western writing system. Behind each of the central figures are symbols of Eastern and Werstern civilizations." Link:tympanum. Image also from the same site.
The tympanum "depicts the encounter between East and West, the lion and the buffalo, in terms of a meeting between rulers of various western Asiatic and Egyptian Empires, and the representatives of a western tradition successively manifested in Herodotus, Alexander, Julius Caesar, a crusader, a field archaeologist, and a scholar with a vase" (Sherratt, A. and S. Sherratt; 1998. “Small worlds: interaction and identity in the Ancient Mediterranean,” in The Aegean and the Orient in the Second millennium. Liège, 329.)
Mr Breasted in his office.
