The American Egyptologist and archeologist James Henry Breasted (1865-1935) established the study of Egyptology in the United States and became the foremost scholar in this field.

James Henry Breasted was born on Aug. 27, 1865, in Rockford, III. He graduated from North Central College in 1888 and attended Chicago Theological Seminary but transferred to Yale to study Hebrew. He received a master's degree from Yale in 1891 and, on the advice of William Rainey Harper, went to Berlin. There Breasted studied under Adolf Erman, who had just established a new school of Egyptology, concentrating systematically on grammar and lexicography. Breasted received his doctorate from Berlin in 1894 with a dissertation on the solar hymns of Ikhnaton. He also married the same year and made the first of his many trips to Egypt on his honeymoon, spending much time exploring, and learning Arabic.

Upon his return to the United States, Breasted joined the faculty...