Ancient Civilizations

In 1919, UChicago Egyptologist James Henry Breasted formed the Oriental Institute (OI)—a world-renowned museum and interdisciplinary research center dedicated to the study of early civilizations in Western Asia and North Africa. 

OI archaeologists carried out large-scale expeditions in modern-day Iraq, Turkey, Egypt, Iran and Israel, unearthing massive temple complexes as well as objects of everyday life. For over 100 years, these items have helped researchers sketch a portrait of life in the some of the world’s oldest cities. 

The careful documentation of hundreds of thousands of inscriptions helped scholars to unravel the mysteries of cuneiform—the world’s oldest writing system. First developed in Sumer, an ancient Mesopotamian city, cuneiform was eventually adopted by others, like the Akkadians and Babylonians for their own languages. 

UChicago scholars have worked to decipher languages that haven’t been spoken for thousands of years. The Chicago Assyrian Dictionary, finalized after nine decades, was the key to unlocking ancient legal codes, literature and economic transactions. Other UChicago dictionary projects are examining the Hittite and Demotic languages.

Today, UChicago scholars partner with local experts to document and preserve ancient sites and culture. Data collected in the field supports research in the Departments of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, Classics, Anthropology, History, Art History and the Divinity School—scholarship which bridges the ancient past to our lives today.

Black Holes

Black holes fascinate both the public and scientists—they push the limits of our understanding about matter, space and time.

They are created when massive stars collapse at the end of their lives (and perhaps under other circumstances that we don’t know about yet.) One of the first steps toward the discovery of black holes was made by University of Chicago Prof. Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, who realized that these stars would have to collapse after they ran out of fuel.

Many at the time were shocked and skeptical, but other scientists calculated that the star would continue forever to fall inward toward its center—thus creating what we called a black hole—and the idea became increasingly accepted. In the latter half of the 20th century, eminent theoretical scientists, including Steven Hawking at Cambridge, John Wheeler and Jacob Bekenstein at Princeton, Chandrasekhar and Robert Wald at the University of Chicago, and many others, explored the details of the mathematics and physics behind black holes.

Today we know the universe is full of black holes. In the past decade, University of Chicago scientists have helped us hear the echoes of their collisions and take images of the light swirling around them.

And black holes have helped us learn many things about the universe. For example, they have helped us test Einstein’s theory of general relativity, which describes how mass, space and time are related to one another. Scientists think they can tell us much more about these and other essential rules of the universe.

Explore UChicago Library’s archival collections on black holes:

• Prof. Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar papers
• Papers relating to Physical Sciences, Astronomy and Astrophysics