From the Circle of Iranian Studies:

The Cyrus the Great Cylinder, described as the world’s first Charter of Human Rights returned to the British Museum on Monday, following the seven-month loan to the National Museum of Iran (NMI).
The priceless Cylinder arrived in the UK just after the cultural authorities in Iran severed ties with the Louvre over the French museum’s decision not to lend Iranian antiquities to NMI.
The British Museum said the artefact would go back on display in its ancient Iran gallery (Room 52) on Tuesday.
[…]
In addition, a number of Iranian academics and oppositions objected the loaning of the cylinder to Iran, since the safety could not be guaranteed; a four-month loan was eventually agreed in September 2010. The cylinder was escorted by a British delegation headed by Dr John Curtis to the exhibition site, where it was displayed for the first time after 40 years during the 2,500 Year Celebration of Iranian Monarchy in 1971.
The duration of the loan was extended in December 2010, due to the exhibition’s popularity. Over two million Iranians have viewed this priceless artefact while it was on display in NMI.
The presence of Cyrus the Great Cylinder in Iran has proved immensely significant, as it was provided an opportunity for the majority of Iranians and non-governmental cultural establishments to promote a ‘nationalist narrative’, which predates Islam for thousands of years, once again since 1979 without fear of prosecution. Therefore, the bete noir of the artefact was the highest echelons for the Mullahs in Iran, as they boycotted the exhibition and called it the ‘work of Zionists’.

The full article contains more details.

HT: Paleojudaica

An article in Archaeology magazine highlights a new exhibition at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology entitled Archaeologists & Travelers in Ottoman Lands. The exhibition opened last September and will run through June 26, 2011. Archaeologists & Travelers in Ottoman Lands focuses on the University of Pennsylvania’s Nippur Expedition, and in particular, the lives of three men involved in the excavations of Nippur: Osman Hamdi Bey, John Henry Haynes, and Hermann Vollrath Hilprecht.

Featured are two paintings by Osman Hamdi Bey: “Excavations at Nippur,” which has never before been on public exhibition, and “At the Mosque Door,” which is shown for the first time in one hundred years. Also shown are about 50 photographs by Haynes, whose contributions as an archaeological photographer are only now being recognized, and more than 40 artifacts from the Nippur expedition (1889–1900), including a Parthian “slipper” coffin, Sasanian incantation bowls and glass, and numerous Sumerian cuneiform tablets.

The Nippur Expedition was the first American expedition to the Near East and lasted from 1889–1900. You can read background to the exhibition at the museum’s website and in the article in Archaeology. The exhibition has a companion website here.

For those interested, there is also a book by Bruce Kuklick that tells the story of the Nippur Expedition, Puritans in Babylon: The Ancient Near East and American Intellectual Life, 1880-1930 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996). It recounts the institutionalization of ancient Near East studies in American universities, the hardships of Middle East fieldwork in the 19th century, and the intramural disputes and posturing of the Nippur Expedition’s staff and researchers. The stories of some key personalities ended tragically, with reputations ruined and careers destroyed. (Kuklick also touches on the role ancient Near East studies played in the secularization of universities, and how many scholars working in these disciplines forsook their religious convictions. “The paradox in the evolution of Near Eastern studies was the manner in which the pursuit of Bible truth might undermine the truth of the Bible.” For him, Christian scholars are a curiosity because they are “a stunning counterexample to easy generalizations about the secularization of higher education in America.”)

Additional photos from the University of Pennsylvania’s Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology can be seen here.

HT: Claude Mariottini