Retired psychologist and museum curator Norman Solhkhah is surrounded by fakes.
A whole building of them, in fact.
Since 1997, Solhkhah’s Mesopotamian Museum on the Far North Side has been home to full-scale facsimiles of ancient Middle Eastern artifacts.
A half-block from bustling Devon Avenue, the yellow-brick building sits across from a preschool on Pulaski Road. Inside is Solhkhah’s collection of marble-colored plaster casts and vibrant paintings of Assyrian kings. On one wall, five human-size Assyrian infantrymen stand armed with lances and shields — frozen in plaster and time. Only when viewing the slabs up close do cracks betray the white plaster beneath.
“My purpose is to teach people about history, not show them expensive pieces,” says Solhkhah (pronounced “SOLE-kah,” he says, “like polka”).
It’s not only a way for him to honor his family, his Assyrian heritage, but also an opportunity to educate others about his cultural roots.
The fast-walking Solhkhah, 74, can be difficult to keep up with. The left front pocket of his blue, button-down shirt bulges with business cards. Some are his own full-color cards with a map of ancient Mesopotamia, but most are from friends and contacts. They serve as a Rolodex-in-waiting for numbers that he hasn’t yet programmed into his belt-clipped cell phone that seems to constantly ring.
Solhkhah, although born in Iran, introduces himself as Assyrian, a political and cultural distinction held by a modern population of Christians with origins in the modern-day Iran, Iraq and Syria. In 1959, he moved to the U.S., fleeing the climate of religious persecution in Iran. Starting at age 29, Solhkhah settled in Rogers Park, married an Irish girl, had two sons and worked on multiple degrees at the Illinois Institute of Technology.
After retiring from his psychology practice in 1988, Solhkhah filled the days managing his strip mall properties in Wheeling and Prospect Heights. Still restless, however, Solhkhah’s interest in his ancestral history turned into obsession when he and his youngest son Siris traveled to Helsinki, Finland, for an Assyrian conference in 1995.
Near the end of the event, he learned that a 600-square-foot wooden reproduction of king Shalmaneser II’s painted palace, commissioned for the conference, was to be dismantled. Solhkhah considered purchasing it, although at the time his plans ended there.
“Dad, if you don’t buy it, you’re going to be sorry for the rest of your life,” said Siris, a Chicago psychiatrist.
And buy it he did, from the University of Helsinki for $15,000 (and $5,500 in shipping).
“That became the beginning of my hobby, if you want to call it a hobby,” Solhkhah says. “It’s history, it’s my history. I get satisfaction doing what I’m doing. When you retire, what are you going to do? Go sit home and rock yourself in a chair?”
Occupies a special place
Today, Shalmaneser II’s throne room occupies the back right corner of Solhkhah’s 2,800-square-foot museum. In the front gallery, five glass cases full of maps and ancient stone contracts take up most of the floor space. There isn’t much room for a rocking chair.
Outside, three regal-looking Assyrian bulls guard the front entrance of his modest, single-floor museum. In ancient times, Assyrian kings posted these guardians at their palatial gates, Solhkhah says, to symbolize power of the nation. The tallest is a 10-foot, tan-colored plaster statue with the bearded head of a man, with wings and the body of a lion. The other two guard a darkened glass door under an awning with the words “The Museum” printed in black.
“I couldn’t fit `Mesopotamian Museum,'” Solhkhah says, laughing. “I didn’t have room.”
Although “98 percent” of his artifacts are copies with origins in modern-day Iraq (the rest from Syria), Solhkhah says the name “Mesopotamian” Museum is more fitting because it means “between the two rivers” — namely the Euphrates and Tigris Rivers — which run through the Middle East.
“It’s not Iraqi,” Solhkhah says. “Iraq only showed up after the first World War.”
The museum’s collection, he points out, is devoted to art and culture in the region since 2800 B.C.
Most of Solhkhah’s collection was molded circa 1891, from items in the British Museum. The casts later made their way to Harvard University’s Semitic Museum, which, short on space for its growing collection, gave its pieces to Solhkhah on permanent loan in 2000.
John Russell, archeologist and art historian at Mass College of Art, says replica collections used to be very common in museums and in historical studies.
“In the 19th Century, it was understood you could learn a lot by studying those,” says Russell, author of “The Final Sack of Nineveh.” “A well-done reproduction is a great way to experience things that you can’t get from the fragments alone.”
The ancient empire of Assyria (roughly 2400 B.C. to 612 B.C.), with its agricultural origins and rich art heritage, has fascinated archeologists such as Russell for years.
But this “dead civilization” has very lively roots in modern Assyrians, who have been migrating to the U.S. since the early 20th Century after forced conversions, persecution and murder by Islamic powers.
“We aren’t welcomed too nicely in the Islamic world,” Solhkhah says. “I don’t want to make my life sound tragic, but my father and my brother were killed in 1946 because they were Christians. It’s a continuing process there. . . . “
Census results
Nearly 14,000 Cook County residents checked “Assyrian/Chaldean/Syriac” in their 2000 census survey, although Solhkhah says there are probably more.
“We have a lot of businesses, grocery stores and bakeries in Skokie, Niles and Rogers Park,” says Isho Lilou, director of the Assyrian National Council of Illinois.
Lilou estimates the Assyrian community in Cook County may be as large as “80,000 to 100,000” because some may have marked their ancestry as “Arab/Arabic,” “Iranian” or some other geographical distinction.
“There’s no question that the personal part [of the museum] has been the family legacy,” says Roman, the eldest of his two sons and also a psychiatrist, based in New York.
Solhkhah’s passion for the museum isn’t shared by everyone, however.
“Most of the rest of the family thinks he’s kinda crazy and doing wasteful things with the money,” Roman says, laughing. “Maybe they think it is better spent on them.”
Solhkhah pays for most of the restorations, maintenance and additions to the museum. In effect, his real estate investments fuel his archeological interests.
“The museum itself does not produce money. You cannot take the money with you,” Solhkhah says, philosophically. “God is not interested in your money. What am I going to do with it?”
A staff of volunteers run the museum on weekdays from 1 to 6 p.m., although Solhkhah himself says he spends 20-30 hours a week at the site — more if he’s restoring a piece. Although the Mesopotamian Museum has been open for more than six years, Solhkhah says few people outside the local Assyrian community have visited it.
“That man is working very hard to establish the museum,” Lilou says. “He’s just not trying to reach a neighborhood, but everywhere.”
It’s an uphill battle Solhkhah is fighting and he’s hoping to increasing community awareness of the museum by reaching out to high schools, offering it as a field trip opportunity. He’s also participating in the education program for the 70th Annual National Convention of the Assyrian American National Federation in Rosemont Aug. 28-Sept. 1. During those five days, Solhkhah will book shuttles between his museum and the convention center.
And for the second year in a row, he’ll have a handful of interns helping out from the Urhai Community Service Center.
In the meantime, Solhkhah continues to do restoration work and talk to the occasional tour group. Although Solhkhah often travels abroad for conferences and archeological digs, he has declined to visit his native village in Iran.
“I talked with him about it and he’s absolutely refused to go because he thinks it’d be too painful,” Roman says. “Remembering the persecution is too difficult. Very painful.”
Honoring his father
Roman says his father seldom discusses his father, Abraham, or his brother, Owner, but Roman says the museum is his father’s way of paying tribute to them.
“It’s a way to honor them and share with the future generations,” Roman says.
When asked directly about this, Solhkhah only grows uncharacteristically quiet. What would his father say about the museum?
“`Bravo,'” Solhkhah says. “I think he would say, `Bravo.'”
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Situated at 6301-07 Pulaski Rd., the Mesopotamian Museum is open 1-6 p.m. Monday-Saturday and Sunday by appointment. For more information, call 773-251-8000.
