Who Did It?

SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION ARCHIVES, VIA WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

Who coined the term “Fertile Crescent”?

1. James Henry Breasted
2. William F. Albright
3. Flavius Josephus
4. Agatha Christie
5. Lawrence of Arabia

Answer: (1) James Henry Breasted

James Henry Breasted (1865–1935) was a renowned and prolific American archaeologist. In 1894, he became the first American to receive a doctorate in Egyptology at the University of Berlin. Almost immediately thereafter, he joined the faculty of the University of Chicago, where in 1919 he founded the Oriental Institute (now called the Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures),^a a world-renowned center for advanced research in the history and archaeology of the ancient Near East. His countless expeditions yielded a wealth of artifacts both large and small that formed the core of the institute’s museum collection.

Breasted popularized the use of the term “Fertile Crescent” to refer to the broad sweep of arable lands running from the Persian Gulf northward through Mesopotamia, westward through Syria to the Mediterranean Sea, and southward along the Levantine coast; many scholars now extend the concept further to include the Nile Valley in Egypt. Breasted recognized that the richness of these lands was a crucial factor in the emergence and flourishing of the early civilizations that developed there, whose agricultural prowess was sufficient to sustain large populations and even contributed to the development of the world’s first cities.