ABSTRACT
In December 1931 an impressive new building for the Oriental Institute at the University of Chicago was inaugurated. This house contained offices for scores of scholars who worked as archaeologists and philologists in the field of the ancient Near East, libraries, a great lecture hall, and a fairly large museum where the finds from a number of excavations conducted by the institute, principally in Mesopotamia and Egypt, were on display. This was, and is, one of the most important and prestigious research institutions in the field.
