Chicago museum opens magical doors

KEVIN CULLEN

Chicago, to me, is more than the Cubs, Tribune Tower and Water Tower Place. It is world-famous museums. I have been visiting them since I was 6 years old.

Most of my forays have been confined to the Field Museum of Natural History, the Museum of Science and Industry, the Chicago Historical Society Museum (now the Chicago History Museum) and the Museum of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Each is amazing, whether you like steam engines, dinosaurs, mummies, Abraham Lincoln’s slippers or Impressionist paintings.

Last year, I discovered a museum that blew my socks off. I’ve visited it twice in the past six months, and I’m looking forward to another pilgrimage in June.

It is the Oriental Institute Museum at 1155 E. 58th St. on the South Side. It’s in the Hyde Park neighborhood, on the campus of the University of Chicago.

The museum focuses on antiquities from the Middle East — Iraq, Iran, Syria, Egypt, Turkey, Israel — but the most incredible pieces are from Iraq. They are part of the largest collection of Iraqi antiquities in the United States.

The name “Oriental” seems odd, but at the turn of the last century, when much of the collection was assembled, “Oriental” referred to the Middle East.

The museum is small, but intimate. There is no admission charge, but donations are accepted. Flash photography is permitted. You can walk right up to sculptures carved 4,000 years ago, and see the tiniest marks left by the master’s chisel.

The place is packed with 150,000 pieces of the ancient world. University of Chicago archaeologists were able to get things from Iraq that would never be allowed out of the country today. For decades, Iraq kept the best pieces for its national museum, but they allowed foreigners to take the duplicates.

It’s only natural for us to think that our civilization is the epitome of knowledge, science and art. A trip to the Oriental Institute quickly gives you second thoughts. There, you are surrounded with evidence that more than 4,000 years ago, people were writing poems, building temples, living in sophisticated cities, working with precious materials and pursuing the sciences.

The Yelda Khorsabad Court is dominated by a 16-foot-tall winged bull with a human head, carved of limestone. The 40-ton masterpiece is the most spectacular item in the Mesopotamian collection. It came from the inner courtyard of the palace of the Assyrian King Sargon II, who ruled Iraq from 721 to 705 BC. The Institute excavated it in 1928-29 at the site of Sargon II’s capital city, Dur-Sharrukin.

The grand sculpture is accented by others that flank it: six, 10-foot tall stone reliefs that originally stood with it on the façade of the throne room of the king’s palace. Each panel weighs 15,000 pounds.

Two life-like striding lions, each made of colorful glazed brick, add vitality and drama to the tableau. They were among 120 such lions that once decorated the walls of the “Processional Way” that led out of ancient Babylon.

Items filling dozens of display cases trace the history of Iraqi civilization. Modern graphics and text blocks tell the story of pottery, stone figurines (a few pornographic), clay tablets, gold jewelry and objects from everyday life.

The ancient Iraqis, I learned, gave us writing, cities, the wheel, literature, government and the fundamentals of mathematics. They developed commerce to a remarkable degree. They standardized money. They created the famous Code of Hammurabi. They built palaces and temples and filled them with art.

It’s easy to think of Iraq in terms of Saddam Hussein, beheadings and suicide bombers.

The Oriental Institute Museum tells the story of ancient Mesopotamia — that magical land between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers — that shaped the modern world in so many wonderful ways.

It’s all yours … in Chicago.

Danville native Kevin Cullen is a former Commercial-News reporter. Reach him at irishhiker@aol.com.

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