The world-renowned ISAC Museum aims to understand, reveal, and protect the past.

Right at 58th and University is one of the world’s greatest centers for understanding the story of our lives as humans together; envisioned as a “laboratory for the study of the rise and development of civilization,” ISAC is the University of Chicago’s—and one of the world’s—very first interdisciplinary institutes. The ISAC Museum houses some 350,000 artifacts, excavated mainly by ISAC archaeologists, and includes a comprehensive archive that documents our fieldwork and other research. Together, the ISAC Museum collections comprise one of the best resources in the world for the archaeology, art, history, and languages of West Asia and North Africa, allowing us to understand, reveal, and protect the past.

The ISAC Museum displays objects recovered by ISAC excavations in permanent galleries devoted to ancient Egypt, Nubia, Persia, Mesopotamia, Syria, Anatolia, and the Levant, as well as rotating special exhibitions. As you explore these galleries, you’ll discover how people thousands of years ago forged a collective identity—confronting, as we do today, issues of autonomy, diversity, and unity. We start here. Whether you’re a current, aspiring, or amateur archeologist, artist, humanist, scientist, historian, philosopher, or linguist, we invite you to visit and learn about the beginnings of our lives as humans, together.