- "N.E.H.
project connects Chicago and Baghdad museum collections," in The University of Chicago, online,
November 29, 2004: "... a $100,000 National Endowment for the
Humanities grant to the Oriental Institute at the University of
Chicago. Given as part of the NEH’s 'Recovering Iraq’s Past'
initiative, the Diyala Project grant will fund the launch of the
Oriental Institute’s on-line Diyala database. The database will contain
a full publication of all artifacts recovered during the institute’s
excavations on archaeological sites in the Diyala River Basin northeast
of Baghdad between 1930 and 1936. At their time, these excavations were
the most carefully executed and documented in modern-day Iraq. Once
completed, the Web site will contain the largest single on-line
collection of excavated artifacts from ancient Mesopotamia available in
the world. The Web site will have particular value in the wake of the
looting of the Iraq National Museum in Baghdad in April 2003. About
half of the objects gathered in the excavation were located in the Iraq
museum. While a final tally of the losses incurred during the looting
is still missing, some 600 Diyala cylinder seals have been confirmed to
be missing. Fortunately, all of these objects were photographed during
the institute’s excavation; ..." "'It also provides a way to search the
whole range of different kinds of field records of artifacts,
architecture, texts and stratigraphy in a completely new way. This is
something that has never been possible to do before, and it will
provide us with major new insights. It is also revolutionary in the way
it links two spatially separated collections of artifacts—one
essentially inaccessible in Baghdad and one in Chicago. I think this
project may well represent the future of archaeological publication,'
[Gil] Stein [Director of the Oriental Institute] said. Clemens Reichel,
a Research Associate at the Oriental Institute, is the principal
investigator for the Diyala Web site project. George Sundell, a retired
data architect, has been working as the project’s database designer.
Volunteers are helping with much of the primary work, such as data
entry and the scanning of photographic negatives and of archival
material."
"Working at the sites of Tell Agrab, Tell Asmar, Ishchali and Khafaje,
the Oriental Institute team uncovered temples, palaces, domestic
quarters and workshops, dating from 3200 to 1800 B.C., a time when
large territorial states emerged in Mesopotamia, urban centers were
developed and writing was invented." "Their meticulous record-keeping
is reflected in an enormous collection of archival material, now housed
in the Oriental Institute’s Museum Archives, including field plans,
field and object photographs, field object registers, notebooks, and
diaries. All of these sources, both published and unpublished, will now
be scanned, indexed and included in a virtual archive as part of the
project’s on-line database, providing a comprehensive research tool for
scholars who wish to further investigate the archaeological sequence of
the Diyala sites." "While primarily intended to serve as a scholarly
publication, the Web site also will address the interest of the general
public. 'Our site will feature educational components that could easily
be used as teaching tools in schools,' Reichel explained. 'By ‘walking’
on the computer screen through the plan of a selected building, for
example, students will be able to call up images and descriptions of
artifacts found in each room. Such exercises will not only help
students do their own virtual digging, but also will help them
understand the importance of properly recorded archaeological context
for ancient artifacts—an important message at a time when so many
objects from illicit excavations in post-war Iraq are flooding the
antiquities market,' Reichel said."
Photo 1: "Statue hoard" [from the 1930s excavations, maybe at Tell
Asmar? the largest figurine, on the right, looks very similar to no. 33
in the Oriental Institute's Lost
Treasures from Iraq database if it isn't one and the same]
Photo 2: "Vessel bearer"
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