The professor's chair in Semitic languages at Uppsala University - 400 year anniversary

3 June 2005 - 3 May 2006  

This exhibition was opened by Professor Bo Isaksson on the 3 June 2005. The exhibition was arranged to coincide with the symposium The professor's chair in Semitic languages in Uppsala - 400 years,  1605-2005 ( 21-23 September 2005).

The Semitic languages have been traditionally and generally divided into Assyro-Babylonian, Hebrew, Aramaic and Ethiopian. In time, they span from several thousand years before our calendar to the present day and geographically they stretch from the Atlantic to Iran and Afghanistan in the east, from southern Turkey as far south as Ethiopia and Nigeria. They have borne up the three great religions: Judaism, Christianity and Islam. The culture of the Near East and North Africa has for many thousands of years left its imprint on our own. Arabs and Jews in the Middle Ages saved the scientific heritage of the ancient world for the West. The Orient with its customs, its people steeped in traditions and its impressive and dangerous nature has always exerted an attraction on us.

The exhibition is a journey of 400 years at Uppsala University and one of its oldest fields of research, the Semitic languages. It begins with Karl IX's letter establishing the professor's chair and the dominant research topic of the times, the Old Testament and its studies of the Jewish holy texts. The journey then goes to Mecca and invaluable manuscripts of the Koran.  It continues with the division of the Semitic languages, different characters and alphabets and reaches the 19th century with its great diversity of research, finally landing in today's penetrating studies in the area. The exhibition also highlights the rich cultural contacts that Sweden has had with the Near East and North Africa and the importance of these contacts. Swedish studies in situ are given due exposure, as are the lives and activities of the large immigrant groups in Sweden. 

This long journey over time is well illustrated by a chain of portraits, of those it has been possible to find, of the professors that have been the incumbents of the chair during these 400 years.

The main thrust of the exhibition is its focus on the history of education and it is a distillation of the rich research that has been and is still being carried out in the subject. This wealth is particularly apparent in the exhibition catalogue, which is in both Swedish and English.

The curators of the exhibition were:   Hans Nordesjö (Senior librarian)

and  Xtina Wootz (senior administrative officer).

You can buy the exhibition catalogue from the shop in Carolina Rediviva or order one by phone +46(18)471 3900 or by e-mail.