Gaster, Theodor
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Theodor H. Gaster (1906–1992)
scientific staff; Semitic, Egyptian, Mesopotamian material. Semiticist, Biblical scholar, and scholar of history of religions
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active at WHMM 1928 - c.1939/40
Researched and catalogued Assyrian, Babylonian, Egyptian material. Produced gallery displays at Euston Road, including the Assyro-Babylonian cylinder seal display pictured in M0011148.
Educated at the University of London, Gaster received an undergraduate degree in classics in 1928 and a master's degree in Near Eastern archaeology in 1936. Possibly left WHMM and returned in the period c.1933-39? (see Symons 1987, 38). Was working Dec 1937 – July 1939, and took over care of the Egyptian material from R.M. Cox in Sep 1938. Left WHMM to pursue PhD at Columbia University, USA, c.1939/1940. Professor of Religion, Barnard College, Columbia University, 1966–72. Author of Myth, Legend, and Custom in the Old Testament; Thespis: Ritual, Myth, and Drama in the Ancient Near East.
"I remember the constant thrill of recovering some of the most precious antiquities from the Ancient Near East which Wellcome had purchased years ago and which no one had heard of since. They had been packed away in boxes at Willesden and elsewhere and were gradually being unpacked. There was the missing part of the Cesnula Cypriotic collection, most of which went to the Met. Museum in New York; there was also a large portion of the Petrie collection of Egyptian amulets and scarabs, most of which went to university college.; one day I found in an old cigar box some very charred bits of papyrus which were the fragments of the famous ‘Astarte myth’ from the Amherst Collection (subsequently sold to the Morgan Library). Some of the best stuff got sold by auction after the Old Man died."
Symons 1987, pp.14-15.
Symons 1987, oral history pp.14-15.
Obituary: Joseph R. Armenti Theodor Herzl Gaster (1906-1992) Proceedings of the American Academy for Jewish Research Vol. 58 (1992), pp. 19-22
Tags: museum staff; Egypt; Middle East; scientific staff