W.F. Albright Institute of Archaeological Research

DEDICATED SINCE 1900 TO THE STUDY OF THE ANCIENT NEAR EAST The history of the Albright is the history of American archaeology in the Near East. Our fascinating history is replete with turn-of-the-century adventures on horseback, wars at our front door, an assassination, monks buried in the backyard, and countless contributions and innovations. The Dead Sea Scrolls were first examined and photographed in our library basement, and Flinders Petrie’s head may have had a stopover in our offices on the way to London. Overnight, boundaries and borders, even our host country, have changed several times. As Philip J. King recounts in his American Archaeology in the Mideast: A History of the American Schools of Oriental Research, the changes, here describing the aftermath of the Six-Day War, could be head-snapping: The new international boundaries that resulted from the war restricted the scope of the School’s field trips. Before 1967 it had been easy to travel to most of the Arab countries from East Jerusalem; now that was no longer possible. However, as compensation, Israel (which had been off-limits for field trips from 1948 to 1967) now welcomed visits from residents of the Jerusalem School. It was a strange reversal of the previous situation, but such vicissitudes are routine in the Mideast. (184)