American Egyptologist: The Life of James Henry Breasted and the Creation of His Oriental Institute.

• Author: Ambridge, Lindsay J.
• Position: Book review

American Egyptologist: The Life of James Henry Breasted and the Creation of His Oriental Institute. By JEFFREY ABT. Chicago: UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS, 2011. Pp. xix + 510, illus. $45.

James Henry Breasted (1865-1935) was arguably the foremost American Egyptologist of the early twentieth century, but the details of his life have attracted relatively little attention in academic literature. Jeffrey Abt's American Egyptologist: The Life of James Henry Breasted and the Creation of His Oriental Institute rectifies this gap in the history of archaeology and Near Eastern studies. Prior to Abt's work, the significant literature on Breasted was limited to a biography written in 1943 by Breasted's son, Charles; John Wilson's brief biographical sketch (1936) and a chapter in Wilson's 1964 history of American Egyptology; and a recent exhibition catalog of the Oriental Institute, Pioneers to the Past: American Archaeologists in the Middle East, 1919-1920 (2010). At 400 pages of text, 100 pages of endnotes, bibliography, and index, and over 100 images, American Egyptologist is the comprehensive biography of Breasted that has long been needed in the field of disciplinary history.

The book succeeds on two fronts: as a detailed biography of one prominent individual's life, and as a contextualization of that life within the larger intellectual and social currents of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. For those interested in the process of becoming a scholar and the intricacies of professional academic life, Abt provides a wealth of fascinating information; the book is as much a study of academic training as it is the story of the Oriental Institute's founding. Abt reveals the extensive coursework that Breasted undertook to become a philologist and the considerable financial sacrifices that were required for his period of study in Germany. Some readers may find the minutiae of academic life to be a bit dry, but others will appreciate Breasted's struggles--funding setbacks, unpaid leave, departmental politics, and questioning one's place in the academy all shaped the career of this most successful of scholars. Abt's attention to detail is evident in the consistency with which he teases apart the universities, departments, and museums that have long since changed their names or form. For anyone who studies the history of the discipline, such accuracy in reporting the original names and functions of institutions is most welcome. Even those who...