UPDATE ON THE ORIENTAL INSTITUTE PLAQUE: Jonathan Hirsch, the President of Chicago Friends of Israel at the University of Chicago, has gone to look at the plaque and sends the following transcription and photo:

Land of the Bible

600 BC to the Present

Three Major Religions Grew in the Southern Levant

Long after the Canaanites and the Israelites, the southern Levant (today primarily modern Israel) has continued to play an important role in the religions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.

These artifacts from the Levant dating to the last 2,500 years reflect these religious traditions: an early jewish "bone box" or ossuary, a mosaic fragment from a church floor, and a fragment from a Dead Sea Scroll.

The golden days of Israel and Judah ended at the hands of the Babylonians with the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple in 586 BC and subsequent mass exile of the Israelites. Although many returned to the southern Levant under the rule of the Persians (539-332 BC), they would not soon regain their autonomy. The city of Megiddo faded from prominence after 332 BC.

But the Israelite religion continued to develop. At the turn of the first millennium AD, several religious sects broke away in response to Roman rule and the local political climate. One of these lines led ultimately to the tradition of modern Jewish religion. Jesus was born into the context, and was hailed by his followers as the Messiah, son of God. Six centuries later, the Prophet Mohammed would visit Jerusalem where he would experience his Night Flight and Ascension to heaven. Today Jerusalem is the third holiest place in Islam, next to Mecca and Medinah.

(Click on the image for a larger version.)

I would say my earlier points stand. The independent Hasmonean kingdom is not mentioned and probably should have been, since one could easily take the plaque to be saying that there was no independent Jewish state in the area again until the modern period. It doesn't say this explicitly, but it lends itself to misreading along those lines.

Also, it's worth underlining that the claim that Muhammad visited Jerusalem is quite misleading, since this "visit" took place only in a vision (and this only according to a post-Qur'anic interpretation of a very enigmatic Qur'anic verse). A reader who did not know this would assume that Muhammad paid a this-worldly visit to Jerusalem by traveling there. This is not without relevance to modern political controversies about Jerusalem and the unfortunate phrasing could cause confusion.

I hope the Oriental Institute rethinks this plaque.

UPDATE (15 November): More here.