To Emily Teeter, an Egyptologist and a curator at the Oriental Institute, the objects in the museum’s display cases represent the origins of modern civilization, tools people used to do their daily work. To the rest of us, they look like oddly shaped pieces of stone and clay.
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“A lot of professions in the modern world were invented in the ancient Middle East,” says Teeter. She thinks people should know more about them. So she went through the museum’s holdings and found objects that related to 24 different professions. She found 24 people who do those jobs today and asked Jason Reblando, a photographer, to take pictures of them with the objects. The photos are now on display as “Our Work: Modern Jobs—Ancient Origins.” Some jobs—doctor, potter, baker—you’d expect to be thousands of years old. Others—manicurist, game manufacturer, real estate broker—you wouldn’t.
While Reblando photographed the subjects, videographer Matthew Cunningham interviewed them about the changes in their jobs over thousands of years, or lack thereof. Police office Leo Schmitz was surprised and pleased that there were cops in Egypt in 1127 BCE, but he imagined they would investigate a tomb robbery the same way he would. “Police are police, no matter where they are in the world,” he said.
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