Mesopotamia under fire
Beverly and Raymond Sackler
Art and Archaeology Lectures, 2002-2003
University of Connecticut

Dr. Peter Miglus, University of Heidelberg
Wednesday, February 12, 2003
Lecture: The Last Days of Ashur, the Capital of Assyria

Dr. Michael Weigl, University of Toronto and Institute for Old Testament Tuesday, March 4, 2003
Lecture: Cultural Heritage Under Fire: Will the Archaeological Legacy of the Middle East Survive?

Dr. John Malcolm Russell, Massachusetts College of Art.
Thursday, April 10, 2003:
Lecture: Wasted is Nineveh; Who Will Bemoan Her?

The Department of Art and Art History of the University of Connecticut, with the generous support of Beverly and Raymond Sackler, takes great pleasure in announcing the second year of the Beverly and Raymond Sackler Art and Archaeology Lecture Series.  This year’s series brings some of today’s most distinguished archaeologists and scholars working in the fields of Near Eastern and Middle Eastern archaeology to the University of Connecticut to present recent research and discuss the critical issues currently facing the field.The dramatic events unfolding in the Middle East, fromthe ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict to the Gulf War and recent responses to the September 11 terrorist attacks, have highlighted the significant contemporary threat to the cultural heritage of humankind as well as the importance of global cultural cooperation.By focusing on the Middle East, this year’s series combines new perspectives on archaeology with a concern for how contemporary political, economic and social situations condition our understanding of the past.

The Beverly and Raymond Sackler Art and Archaeology Lecture Series provides a unique opportunity to explore these and other critical issues in the field on the University of Connecticut campus at Storrs.  Three distinguished scholars have been invited to present lectures on key Middle Eastern archeological sites currently under threat due to political unrest and economic hardship. The first is Dr. Peter Miglus, Professor of Archaeology at Heidelberg University, who will lecture on “The Last Days of Ashur, the Capital of Assyria.” Dr. Miglus’s lecture is scheduled for Wednesday, February 12th at 4:30 p.m.  The second speaker in the series is Dr. Michael Weigl, Associate Professor of Archaeology and Theology at the University of Vienna. Dr. Weigl’s lecture, “Cultural Heritage Under Fire: Will the Archaeological Legacy of the Middle East Survive?” will be held, Tuesday, March 4th, at 4:30 p.m.  Dr. John Malcolm Russell, Professor of Art History and Archaeology in the Department of Critical Studies at Massachusetts College of Art, is the third archaeologist to lecture in the series. Dr. Russell’s lecture, entitled “Wasted is Nineveh; Who Will Bemoan Her?” will take place on Thursday, April 10th, at 4:30 p.m.

All lectures in the Beverly and Raymond Sackler Art and Archaeology Lecture Series are open to the University community and the greater public. Admission is free and a reception follows. The lectures were held at the Thomas J. Dodd Research Center, 405 Babbidge Road, on the Storrs campus of the University of Connecticut. For further details, please contact the Department of Art and Art History, University of Connecticut, 860 486-3930.

Speaker Biographies

Dr. Peter Miglus is Professor of Archaeology at the University of Heidelberg in Germany, where he specializes in the Ancient Near East. Since the mid-1980s, he has conducted important excavations in Syria and Iraq. Author of four books and over forty articles on these sites, Dr. Miglus’s most recent work focuses on the ancient royal city of Assur, the religious capital of Assyria for nearly one and a half millennia and a crucial archaeological site for studying a key period in the history of human civilization. Situated near the Tigris River in Iraq, Ashur will soon be submerged by a proposed dam, designed to bring needed water to Iraqi farmers. Dr. Miglus will speak on his work to help salvage this world-heritage site before it is flooded in 2007. Dr. Miglus holds posts at numerous academic and research  institutes in Germany, including the University of Munich, the Museum of Goettingen and the Institute of Oriental Archaeology at the University of Halle. His most recent studies have appeared in a range of publications including Zeitschrift für Assyriologie; the Baghdader Mitteilungen, and  the Mitteilungen der der Deutschen Orient-Gesellschaft.

Dr. Michael Weigl is Associate Professor of Archaeology and Theology at the University of Vienna in Austria, where he teaches the history, archaeology and theology of the ancient Middle East. He has been Associate Director of excavations at Tel Kinneret, Israel; Betsaïda, Israel and Tel el –Ajjul, Palestine, working with such institutions as the German Archaeological Institute in Jerusalem, the University of Chicago’s Oriental Institute, the Austrian Academy of Sciences and the Palestinian Department of Antiquities in Gaza. Throughout the 1990s to the present, Dr. Weigl has focused attention on the regions of Iraq and Israel/Palestine, documenting the terrible consequences of long-term political turmoil for preserving and studying the extraordinary cultural heritage of such sites as the ancient Levant (Syria-Palestine), the Sea of Galilee, and ancient Mesopotamia – the “Cradle of Civilization.” Dr. Weigl has been a Visiting Professor at numerous universities and institutes throughout the world, including the University of Toronto, the University of Minnesota, the University of Pretoria, South Africa, and the University of Eichstaett in Germany. Author of four books and co-editor of six more, Dr. Weigl is perhaps best known for his research on the Aramaic Achikar traditions. He is also the recipient of many prestigious awards and fellowships from such institutions as the Austiran Ministry of Higher Education, the Austrian National Reserve, the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, and the Austrian Science Foundation.

Dr. John Malcolm Russell is Professor of Art History and Archaeology at the Massachusetts College of Art in Boston, where he teaches the archaeology of the ancient Middle East and Egypt.  He is also the Associate Director of excavations at the ancient Assyrian city of Til Barsib, on the Euphrates river in northern Syria.  Prior to the Gulf War, Dr. Russell was Associate Director of archaeological excavations at Nineveh, Iraq. The author of four books and numerous articles on ancient Assyria, his most recent book, The Final Sack of Nineveh (1998), investigates the destruction of Sennacherib’s palace in Iraq as a result of the looting precipitated by UN sanctions. Dr. Russell’s discovery of a lost Assyrian sculpture in an English boy’s school and his exposure of the looting of Assyrian palaces in Iraq have been widely reported in the media both here and abroad.  He has conducted excavations under the auspices of the University of Liège and the Universities of Berkeley and Columbia. Dr. Russell earned the distinguished Arthur Kingsley Porter Prize for best article in 1988, and his book Sennacherib’s “Palace without Rival” at Nineveh received the Archaeological Institute of America’s James R. Wiseman Award for best archaeology book of 1991.  He is author of The Writing on the Wall: Studies in the Architectural Context of Late Assyrian Palace Inscriptions (1999), and From Nineveh to New York: The Strange Story of the Assyrian Reliefs in the Metropolitan Museum and the Hidden  Masterpiece at Canford School (1997).

For further details, please contact the Department of Art and Art History, University of Connecticut, 860 486-3930.

Beverly and Raymond Sackler
Art and Archaeology Lectures
Art and Archaeology Home
2002
2003: Mesopotamia under fire
2004: Writing Civilization
2005: Egypt
2006: Ancient Near East
2007: The Aztec Empire