This month in Harvard history
Feb. 29, 1672 – President Charles Chauncy dies in office. Feb. 10, 1853 – Jared Sparks steps down as President; James Walker, Class of 1814, immediately succeeds him to become Harvard’s 18th President....
View ArticleTake a lunch break to ancient Israel
The Semitic Museum is sponsoring a free, docent-led tour of “The Houses of Ancient Israel: Domestic, Royal, Divine” today (March 8) at 12:15 p.m. The museum, located at 6 Divinity Ave., maintains...
View ArticleFree tour through ancient times
The Semitic Museum will sponsor a docent-led tour of its “Ancient Egypt: Magic and the Afterlife” and “Cyprus, the Cesnola Collection” exhibits on April 12 at 12:15 p.m. The event is free and open to...
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Chorus auditions this weekend The 150-voice Harvard-Radcliffe Chorus will hold auditions for all voice parts this Saturday (Sept. 15 from 1 to 5 p.m.) and Sunday (Sept. 16 from 6 to 10 p.m.). The...
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HARVARD BRIDGE PROGRAM, IOP RECOGNIZE 23 NEW CITIZENS The Harvard Bridge to Learning and Literacy Program, and the Harvard Kennedy School’s Institute of Politics (IOP) recognized 23 Harvard employees...
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HARVARD-AFFILIATED MEEI NAMED ONE OF AMERICA’S BEST HOSPITALS The 2008 edition of America’s Best Hospitals, published by U.S. News & World Report, assigned Harvard-affiliated Massachusetts Eye and...
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HARVARD-AFFILIATED STUDY RUNS IN JOURNAL OF COMMUNITY PSYCHOLOGY A new, Harvard-affiliated study on effective community partnerships (titled “Staying at the Table: Building Sustainable...
View ArticleSemitic Museum extends docent deadline
The Semitic Museum is currently seeking volunteer docents for the coming year. Docents will provide guided tours to school groups and the general public on the museum’s collection of archaeology of the...
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JOINT CENTER ACCEPTING GRAMLICH FELLOWSHIP APPLICATIONS The Joint Center for Housing Studies (JCHS) is accepting applications for the Edward M. Gramlich Fellowship in Community and Economic Development...
View ArticleIsraelite bread-making discussion at the Semitic Museum
On Thursday (April 23), the Semitic Museum will host half-hour discussions at 11 a.m. and 1 p.m. (appropriate for grades three through six) on how ancient Israelites made bread — from planting to...
View ArticleSemitic Museum to host tour of ‘The Houses of Ancient Israel’
The Semitic Museum will host a lunchtime tour of “The Houses of Ancient Israel: Domestic, Royal, Divine” on May 21 at 12:15 p.m., offering a view of life in an ancient Near Eastern agricultural...
View ArticleHistory shines through the glass
“All glass is beautiful,” Belgian researcher Patrick Degryse said, gently turning a delicate, Roman-era vessel, its bluish sheen glowing under the fluorescent lights of the Semitic Museum’s basement...
View ArticleThe future of archaeology
When he first stumbled on the field that would become his life’s work, Peter Der Manuelian was a fourth-grader in suburban Boston. The object of his attention was 5,000 years old. He was transfixed by...
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Baking in the details
In the basement of Harvard’s Semitic Museum, Alex Douglas looked at the pieces of baked clay in front of him, teasing out how they fit together into a small tablet, thousands of years old and marked...
View ArticleFrom Iraq and back, via 9/11 and Harvard
A group of 4,000-year-old clay tablets that survived looting, confiscation by U.S. customs officials, and the 9/11 terrorist attacks is shedding light on what everyday life was like in ancient Iraq as...
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Desert mystery
There’s a mystery in the Syrian desert shielded by the conflict tearing apart the Middle Eastern nation. In 2009, archaeologist Robert Mason of the Royal Ontario Museum was at work at an ancient...
View ArticleFive Harvard museums free for Smithsonian National Museum Day Sept. 29
On Saturday, Sept. 29, five Harvard University museums —the Harvard Art Museums, Harvard Museum of Natural History , Peabody Museum of Archaeology & Ethnology, Semitic Museum, and the Collection of...
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An ancient statue, re-created
As part of a repair job 3,300 years in the making, Harvard’s Semitic Museum is seeking to undo some of the destruction wrought when Assyrians smashed the ancient city of Nuzi in modern-day Iraq,...
View ArticleA director for Museums of Science and Culture
Dean Michael D. Smith of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) announced today that Jane Pickering has been named executive director of the Harvard Museums of Science and Culture. Pickering is...
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A different take on Tut
In recent years, DNA analysis has shed light on the parents of Egypt’s most famous pharaoh, the boy king Tutankhamun, known to the world as King Tut. Genetic investigation identified his father as...
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