1996) and of U.S. archaeology in general. Although many of the museum’s early expeditions were focused on the gathering of objects for its collections, the overall collections are distinguished by their abundant scholarly documentation. Furthermore, in the 1970s, the UPM was an early and visible proponent of the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization’s convention on looted archaeological materials.

More than a century after the museum’s founding by a group of wealthy and civic-minded Philadelphians and enlightened university administrators under the leadership of William Pepper, it is interesting to note that the UPM, with geographically extensive field projects, cutting-edge laboratory research, a successful traveling exhibit program, active conservation and loan programs, an award-winning website, and a highly regarded education department, has retained the same general mission that its founders established in the late nineteenth century. That is to say, through research, care, and study of collections, and dissemination of knowledge to both the scholarly world and the public at large, the museum is still wedded to its original mission of advancing an understanding of the world’s cultural heritage.

Jeremy A. Sabloff

See also

Mesopotamia

References

Conn, S. 1998. Museums and American Intellectual Life, 1876–1926. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Haller, D. 1999. “Architectural Archaeology: A Centennial View of the Museum Buildings.” Expedition 41, no. 1: 31–47.

Kuklick, B. 1996. Puritans in Babylon: The Ancient Near East and American Intellectual Life, 1880–1930. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Madeira, P., Jr. 1964. Men in Search of Men: The First Seventy-Five Years of the University Museum of the University of Pennsylvania. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

Rainey, F. 1992. Reflections of a Digger. Philadelphia: University Museum, University of Pennsylvania.

Winegrad, D. 1993. Through Time, across Continents: A Hundred Years of Archaeology and Anthropology at the University Museum. Philadelphia: University Museum, University of Pennsylvania.

Ur

A major Sumerian city most closely connected with the excavations of sir leonard woolley, Ur was first explored in 1854 by J.E. Taylor, a representative of the british museum. sir henry rawlinson, the prominent nineteenth-century linguist, identified the name of the site from cuneiform cylinder seals that were brought