Material objects play a role in all religions. Jewish women
light candles for the Sabbath; Christians sprinkle or douse bodies
with water to baptize; Hindus offer coconuts and clarified butter
to images of the gods and goddesses; the ancient Incas...
Reliquaries were designed as receptacles for tiny bundles of
sacred stuff such as handfuls of dust, pebbles from Biblical sites
in the Holy Land, tiny fragments of the hair, clothing, and even
bone of those deemed to be saints and martyrs by the...
It has been nearly sixty years that I have been engaged in an
active scholarly life. My first article came out fifty-eight years
ago, and there are still now two or three studies in the process of
being printed or ready to appear on the Internet. In...
Several years ago, I was increasingly disturbed by the direction
taken by American foreign and domestic policy. It seemed to me that
many key actions were inspired by mistaken notions about the way
the Cold War ended and the causes and implications...
Jihadism today has a strong transnational and anti-Western
character, but this was not always the case. The first jihadists
were revolutionaries who fought in their home countries against
their respective governments from the 1940s onward. Only in...
In 2004, a Member of the Classics section of the School of
Historical Studies I was chatting with told me that some badly
burnt papyri dating from the sixth century had been found in a
church during excavations at Petra in Jordan. Modern
technology...
The recovery of Mesopotamian mathematics was pioneered in the
early thirties by Otto Neugebauer (1899-1990), an eminent Member of
the Institute for Advanced Study whose association with the
Institute spanned forty-five years. Neugebauer began his...
The splendid portrait of Erwin Panofsky, late Professor in the
School of Historical Studies, installed in the Institute’s
Historical Studies–Social Science Library, was commissioned from
Philip Pearlstein in 1993. The portrait was the result of a...
On November 20, 1958, J. Robert Oppenheimer (right), Director
(1947–66) of the Institute for Advanced Study, and George F. Kennan
(center), then Professor in the School of Historical Studies and
former Ambassador to Russia, conferred with nine...
“I remember going into Professor Habicht’s office—he always had time no matter how busy he was—and saying ‘How would you like it if IG II2 2971 dates to around 250 instead of 314?’ . . . I did not expect to hear anything for a day or two, as I had interrupted him in the midst of his work. Was I ever mistaken! About one half hour later I opened my door to his knock…”
