Harvard Museum of the Ancient Near East

Name: Harvard Museum of the Ancient Near East
Address: 6 Divinity Avenue, Cambridge, MA, 02138, US
Telephone: +16174954631
Price range: $

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Harvard Museum of the Ancient Near East

We are a FREE museum that explores the rich history of cultures connected by the family of Semitic languages.

Founded as the Harvard Semitic Museum in 1889, the museum moved into its present location in 1903. From the beginning, it was the home of the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, a departmental library, a repository for research collections, a public educational institute, and a center for archaeological exploration. Among the Museum's early achievements were the first scientifi

c excavations in the Holy Land (at Samaria in 1907-1912) and excavations at Nuzi and Tell el-Khaleifeh in the Sinai, where the earliest alphabet was found. During World War II, the Museum housed Naval offices and was closed to the public. In the 1970's, academic activities resumed in the museum, which is again home to the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, and to the University's collections of Near Eastern archaeological artifacts. These artifacts comprise over 40,000 items, including pottery, cylinder seals, sculpture, coins and cuneiform tablets. Many are from museum-sponsored excavations in Israel, Jordan, Iraq, Egypt, Cyprus, and Tunisia. In 2020, the museum was renamed the Harvard Museum of the Ancient Near East to better reflect the diversity of its collections. The museum remains dedicated to the use of these collections for the teaching, research, and publication of Near Eastern archaeology, history, and culture. Exhibitions include a full-scale replica of an Iron Age house, life-sized casts of famous Mesopotamian monuments, authentic mummy coffins, and tablets containing the earliest forms of writing. Like the artifacts it displays, the museum itself has a rich and nuanced history.

08/27/2026

Staying up for the lunar eclipse tonight? Read about the alleged "substitute king" ritual among Babylonians.

A near-total lunar eclipse wraps up August's trifecta of two major eclipses and the Perseids.

07/17/2026

In 1799, Napoleon’s army came across a stone slab in the Egyptian city of Rashid (𝘤𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘦𝘥 𝘙𝘰𝘴𝘦𝘵𝘵𝘢 𝘣𝘺 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘍𝘳𝘦𝘯𝘤𝘩). Carved in 196 BCE, it showed the same text in three scripts: Greek, Demotic (𝘢 𝘤𝘶𝘳𝘴𝘪𝘷𝘦 𝘌𝘨𝘺𝘱𝘵𝘪𝘢𝘯 𝘸𝘳𝘪𝘵𝘪𝘯𝘨), and Hieroglyphs (𝘧𝘰𝘳 𝘴𝘢𝘤𝘳𝘦𝘥 𝘵𝘦𝘹𝘵𝘴).

The Rashid (Rosetta) Stone contains an official decree written by a council of priests to celebrate the first anniversary of 13-year-old King Ptolemy V’s coronation. Visit the 𝐄𝐠𝐲𝐩𝐭 𝐄𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐧𝐚𝐥: 𝟒,𝟎𝟎𝟎 𝐘𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐬 𝐨𝐟 𝐅𝐚𝐬𝐜𝐢𝐧𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 exhibition to see a recreation of the iconic stone made by Chief Curator Adam Aja and Collections Manager Jasmine Shevell.

07/10/2026

In late May 2026, I had the privilege of meeting Dr. Peter Der Manu...

06/26/2026

Congratulations to our director, Peter Der Manuelian, and Harvard archaeology professor Jason Ur on winning new Harvard funding for this ambitious project!

Their groundbreaking initiative—along with two colleagues—is transforming Harvard’s Giza Project The Giza Project at Harvard University into an active AI Innovation Hub, which will include revolutionary natural language processing of 6,500 pages of unique handwritten Arabic excavation diaries (1913-1947). By creating a "digital twin" of the Giza Pyramids and establishing ethical guidelines for AI reconstruction, this project is shaping the future of international AI research and development.

Read the full story below to see how they are turning an academic archive into a hub for global innovation:
https://tinyurl.com/FrontiersofInnovation

Read about all of the winners in the Gazette:
https://tinyurl.com/FrontiersInnovationGazette

06/17/2026

It's not common that Father's Day and the Solstice coincide on the same day. Celebrate both on Sunday, June 21, at our annual, free Summer Solstice event. Watch science demos, performances from The Revels, make a flower crown, and more. See more details here: https://tinyurl.com/Solstice2026

Photo ⓒ Tony Rinaldo

06/15/2026

While you're in town for the World Cup, stop by our museum 11am-4pm Sunday-Friday. We always offer free admission!

For those who didn’t manage to snag arena tickets, or are simply look for different events across Boston, here’s our guide to some museums, quirky stops, and Sail Boston events to keep you entertained...

05/28/2026

Happy Harvard Commencement day! Congrats to graduate Ashwin Sivakumar 26'. Ashwin's thesis focused on bird wing evolution, working off of CT scans taken in the Edwards Lab, The Department of Organismic & Evolutionary Biology at Harvard.

He's also been an integral member of the Harvard Museums of Science & Culture student board, presenting Song Sparrow specimens at Visitas and helping host the annual Zagmuk party at the Harvard Museum of the Ancient Near East Harvard Museum of the Ancient Near East.

Ashwin Sivakumar ’26 wanted to understand how birds evolved such a diversity of wing shapes. Working with the Edwards Lab, led by Alexander Agassiz Professor of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology Scott V. Edwards, Sivakumar used CT technology to scan a variety of wings. The results, outlined in h...

04/29/2026

When soldiers in Napoleon’s army came across a stone slab in the Egyptian city of Rashid (called Rosetta by the French), a race was launched to crack the code of ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs. The stone showed the same text in three languages: Greek and two forms of Egyptian. Once deciphered, the stone was revealed to be an official decree carved in 196 BCE to celebrate King Ptolemy V.

The original stone is in the British Museum, and the Harvard Museum of the Ancient Near East has a copy. Chief curator Adam Aja and Collections Manager Jasmine Shevell created a more sturdy copy of the copy by making a fresh silicone mold, pouring resin into it, and painting the hardened resin to resemble the original. See their handiwork on the museum’s second floor.

04/21/2026

Meet Vanessa, one of our Harvard student tour guides. A member of the Class of 2028, Vanessa is concentrating in Social Studies and Human Biology, Behavior & Evolution. She gives tours in the Harvard Museum of the Ancient Near East and the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology.

Vanessa describes her tour-giving style as interactive, fun, and interesting. She especially enjoys the way children interact with the exhibits, noting that "anytime that I have kids on the tours, they ask the funniest and most curious questions." If you find yourself on one of her tours at the Peabody, she might point out her personal favorites: the large Maya monument sculpture casts and the Resetting the Table exhibitions, both located on the 3rd floor.

When she isn't at the museums, you might find her reading (she’s a Harvard student, so no surprise there), involved with research, or tutoring local 4th–6th graders. See the tour schedules: https://tinyurl.com/PeabodyTours
https://tinyurl.com/HMANETours

04/16/2026

Meet Xiaoying, a first-year master’s student at Harvard Divinity School and one of our dedicated HMSC tour guides.
Xiaoying joined our team last fall and leads tours at both the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology and Harvard Museum of the Ancient Near East.

Her tour-giving style is interactive, energetic, and passionate, as she loves narrating the background stories of different objects. "Each time, it leaves me with a sense of wonder and amazement," she says of the experience of stepping into histories previously unfamiliar to her.

On her tours, Xiaoying enjoys sharing about shadow puppets—like this garuda figure—on the fourth floor of the Peabody Museum, giving meaning to their shapes and vibrant colors. She even keeps a shadow puppet bookmark given to her by her Indonesian teacher.

Visitors might be surprised to learn that Xiaoying finds the temporarily empty display cases on the fourth floor to be one of the most striking parts of the museum. She views these spaces not as a waste, but as a powerful representation of ethical stewardship and an intentional choice to respect the origins of objects and their communities. See museum websites for the schedules: https://tinyurl.com/PeabodyTours
https://tinyurl.com/HMANETours

Address

6 Divinity Avenue
Cambridge, MA
02138

Telephone

+16174954631

Website

https://hmane.harvard.edu/

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