ERIC H. CLINE TO DISCUSS THE HISTORY OF JERUSALEM CONFLICT

Eric H. Cline, an archaeologist who has been widely praised for his ability to present complex historical issues to a lay audience, will discuss the long history of armed conflict over Jerusalem on Friday, April 2, from 5 to 7 p.m. in Carpenter B21. Cline’s talk, titled "Jerusalem Besieged: 4,000 Years of Conflict in the City of Peace," is the 2004 C. Densmore Curtis Lecture. Free and open to the public, it will be preceded at 4 p.m. by a reception in the Quita Woodward Room. The following day, Cline will conduct a seminar with graduate students in the Department of Classical and Near Eastern Archaeology, who administer the Densmore Lecture.

"Jerusalem, a city whose name may mean 'City of Peace,'" Cline says, "has been anything but peaceful during the past four millennia. There have been more than 100 separate conflicts at this ancient site, involving Israelites, Assyrians, Babylonians, Greeks, Romans, Moslems, Crusaders, Ottomans, British, and modern Israelis, Jordanians and Palestinians." Cline’s talk, based on a forthcoming book to be published by the University of Michigan Press, will focus on the history and archaeology of some of the most significant of these conflicts, with particular attention to how they are used in political propaganda by the current generation of combatants.

Cline, an assistant professor of Ancient History and Archaeology in the Department of Classical and Semitic Languages and Literatures at The George Washington University, has published widely on trade, diplomacy and conflict in the ancient world. With many years of experience in excavation and survey in both Aegean and Middle Eastern settings, Cline is currently a senior staff archaeologist at the Megiddo excavations in Israel. The Megiddo site was the topic of his book The Battles of Armageddon: Megiddo and the Jezreel Valley from the Bronze Age to the Nuclear Age , the winner of the Biblical Archaeological Society’s "Best Popular Book on Archaeology" award in 2001.

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