The famous biblical book alludes to God only once. Historically, though, most interpreters have argued the poem’s about love between the divine and his people.

An ancient oceanic plate under modern-day Iraq is breaking off horizontally, researchers have shown in a new study. This huge ...

A century ago, UChicago scholars argued a controversial idea: Western civilization had its roots in the ancient Middle East—not in Greece or Rome. Today, scholars at the OI and across the University ...

A small but revolutionary group pursued a new idea: That civilization began in the ancient Middle East. In 1919, Breasted founded the Oriental Institute (OI), kicking off a century of archaeology and ...

Dr. Jonathan Valk (Ph.D., New York University) is a historian of the ancient Middle East. He specializes in the history of Assyria in the first and second millennia BCE, a region at the intersection ...