April 7, 2003

Russell to Speak on Archaeology of Middle East
"Wasted is Nineveh; Who Will Bemoan Her?" is the topic of a lecture by John Malcolm Russell of the Massachusetts College of Art, on Thursday, April 10, at 4:30 p.m., in Konover Auditorium.

Russell is a professor of art history and archaeology in the Department of Critical Studies at 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, he 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 looting. 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.

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).

The event is the third in this year's Beverly and Raymond Sackler Art and Archaeology Lecture Series, which brings distinguished archaeologists and scholars working in the fields of Near Eastern and Middle Eastern archaeology to UConn. The series combines new perspectives on archaeology with a concern for how contemporary political, economic, and social situations condition current understanding of the past.

Admission is free and a reception follows.