The Institute helped launch the first era of exploration of humankind's remote past in the Near East, the cradle of civilization. Today its collection is of the most significant repositories of excavated art objects and artifacts from major archaeological sites in all of the Near East.

The Oriental Institute Museum was established in perpetuity to preserve, maintain and exhibit the Institute's collection of art, artifacts, manuscripts, photographs, and records acquired through research, division of finds from expeditions and excavations, purchase , and gift. The mission of the Oriental Institute Museum is:
- To care for and preserve the collections and records.
- To provide accurate documentation and information on the collections.
- To make the collections available to students and scholars for research.
- To exhibit the collections in a clear and informative manner.
- To educate the general public and specialized audiences about the art and civilizations of the ancient Near East, and to attract students into this field of research through permanent and special exhibitions, loans, lectures, educational programs, and other events.

The Oriental Institute Museum collection, virtually unparalleled throughout the world, stands today as a permanent resource that allows free scholarly inquiry to continue as fresh intellectual approaches emerge, even as the political vicissitudes of Near Eastern countries affect access to archaeological sites. For its many visitors-adults, school children, and visiting scholars-the museum offers a unique window on our rich and diverse cultural heritage. It is our ethical duty to dedicate ourselves to the task of preserving and enhancing the display of this superb collection for the education of future generations.

The Oriental Institute Museum is a world-renowned showcase for the history, art, and archaeology of the ancient Near East. The museum displays objects recovered by Oriental Institute excavations in permanent galleries devoted to ancient Egypt, Nubia, Persia, Mesopotamia, Syria, Anatolia, and the ancient site of Megiddo, as well as rotating special exhibits.

The Oriental Institute Museum is a major unit of the Oriental Institute, which is a non-profit, tax-exempt organization devoted to the study of the ancient civilizations and cultures of the Near East. The Institute operates as an academic unit of The University of Chicago. The mission of the Institute is to increase and disseminate knowledge by engaging in research and scholarship on the art, archaeology, history, and languages of the geographical region that extends from North Africa and Egypt in the west to the Persian plateau in the east and from Anatolia in the north to Arabia in the south. In historical terms, research at the Institute covers all aspects of Near Eastern cultures and civilizations from prehistoric to recent Islamic times.

The Institute's history goes back to 1902 when James Henry Breasted began the Oriental Exploration Fund at the University of Chicago. The current building was completed in April 1931 and has been in use by scholars ever since.

The Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago is an interdisciplinary research center whose goal is to integrate archaeological, textual, and art historical data to understand the development and functioning of the ancient civilizations of the Near East from the earliest Holocene through the Medieval period. We achieve this by conducting archaeological excavations, artifact analyses, the development of new research methodologies, the stewardship of systematic museum collections, philological studies, historical research, and the development of dictionaries of ancient languages.

Research Activities of the Oriental Institute
The Oriental Institute sponsors both archaeological and text-based research projects.
Text-based research at the Oriental Institute centers on three key lexicographic projects: the Chicago Assyrian Dictionary (CAD), the Chicago Demotic Dictionary, and the Chicago Hittite Dictionary (CHD). A second key project of text?oriented research is the Epigraphic Survey, focused on recording key monuments in ancient Thebes/Luxor in Egypt.

One of the great strengths of the Oriental Institute?s archaeological program is its vast regional coverage across geopolitical boundaries and its time depth; experts in Mesopotamian, Syro-Palestinian, Anatolian, Iranian, Egyptian, and Nubian archaeology and textual studies all work in the same building to offer research, teaching, and field projects for the entire Near East, with a temporal depth of coverage from the Neolithic through the Islamic period, with a concentration on the well attested cultures of the third through the first millennia B.C. This critical mass of scholarship in complementary disciplines is unmatched anywhere in the world.

The Oriental Institute has sponsored archaeological and survey expeditions in nearly every country of the Near East. Eight field projects are currently active in Egypt, Iran, Sudan, Syria, and Turkey. These completed and ongoing excavations have defined the basic chronologies for many ancient Near Eastern civilizations and made fundamental contributions to our understanding of basic questions in ancient human societies, ranging from the study of ancient urbanism to the origins of food production and sedentary village life in the Neolithic period. The Institute also focuses on the development of new methodologies for field research such as the advanced remote sensing procedures and protocols developed by the Institute?s CAMEL (Center for Ancient Middle Eastern Landscapes) laboratory.