Harvard Semitic Museum

The Harvard Semitic Museum was founded in 1889, and moved into its present location at 6 Divinity Avenue in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1903.

From the beginning, it was the home of the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, a departmental library, a repository for research collections, a public educational institute, and a center for archaeological exploration. Among the Museum's early achievements were the first scientific excavations in the Holy Land (at Samaria in 1907-1912) and excavations at Nuzi and Tell el-Khaleifeh in the Sinai, where the earliest alphabet was found.

The Museum's artifacts include pottery, cylinder seals, sculpture, coins, cuneiform tablets, and Egyptian mummy sarcophagi. Many are from museum-sponsored excavations in Jordan, Iraq, Egypt, Cyprus, Israel, and Tunisia. The museum holds plaster casts of the Black Obelisk of Shalmaneser III, the Laws of Hammurabi, and the Stele of Esarhaddon, as well as a full-scale model of an Iron Age Israelite house. The Museum is dedicated to the use of these collections for the teaching, research, and publication of Near Eastern archaeology, history, and culture.

Architectural firm A. W. Longfellow broke ground on the present Harvard Semitic Museum site on September 27, 1900. Construction was completed in Spring of 1902, and the public portions of the Museum were opened on February 5, 1903. The Museum's facilities were repurposed during World War II, and it was closed to the public from August 1942 through April 1946. It would close again twelve years later in 1958. The Museum reopened on April 5, 1982, and then Harvard President Derek Bok spoke at the reopening ceremony. In December 2012, Harvard announced a new consortium, the Harvard Museums of Science and Culture, whose members are the Harvard Museum of Natural History, the Harvard Semitic Museum, the Peabody Museum or Archaeology & Ethnology, and the Collection of Historical Scientific Instruments.

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