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Jeffrey Abt, American Egyptologist: The Life of James Henry Breasted and the Creation of His Oriental Institute, University of Chicago Press, Chicago and London, 2011; pp. xix + 510. ISBN 9780226001104 (Cloth, US$45); ISBN 9780226045344 (Paper, US$30); ISBN 9780226001128 (Ebook, US$7 to $30).
For older generations of students of Ancient History in Australia, the name James Henry Breasted will be very familiar as the author of the book that introduced them to the subject: Ancient Times: A History of the Early World, an Introduction to the Study ofAncient History and the Career of Early Man. Breasted is not as well known today, yet even if his works are not as widely read in our time, his impact on the discipline of ancient world studies, particularly Egyptology, is a lasting one and should not be forgotten; Abt's biography of Breasted is therefore very welcome indeed and will go a long way toward ensuring that his work is remembered.
Like many Anglo-Saxon Egyptologists, Breasted came to the subject through his theological interests. His tertiary education began with a "Latin and Scientific Course" at North-Western College; however, this was interrupted by a pharmacy degree, which he took at the Chicago College of Pharmacywhat he learnt here would later prove to be of great value when he edited and published the Edwin Smith medical papyrus, an ancient Egyptian treatise on medicine. He undertook theological studies at Chicago Theological Seminary, where he learned Hebrew with Samuel Ives Curtiss, who encouraged him to think of a career in ancient Near Eastern Studies, perhaps Egyptology, a subject not taught anywhere in America. He then went to Yale as a student of the Hebraist W.R. Harper at Yale, where he also studied other ancient Semitic languages. However, instead of doing his doctorate in the area of Hebrew studies, Harper encouraged him to go to Berlin to study Egyptology with the promise of a position to teach the subject at the newly founded University of Chicago, of which Harper was to be the first President.
In Berlin Breasted studied with Adolf Erman, the founder of modem Egyptian philology. This was a momentous and exciting time in the history of the discipline: when, for example, Erman published the first scientific grammar of Egyptian, Breasted...