Tulane's Harl to present next AIA Lecture on March 9

A theater excavated at Aezanis.
A theater excavated at Aezanis.

Tulane's Harl to present next AIA Lecture on March 9

calendar icon25 Feb 2015    

Dr. Kenneth Harl
Dr. Kenneth Harl
Lincoln, Neb.--Kenneth Harl, professor of ancient history at Tulane University, will present a lecture titled “The Shrine of Zeus and Cybele at Aezanis:  The Hellenization and Romanization of Phrygian Cults” on Monday, March 9 at 7:30 p.m. in Love Library Rm. 102.

His lecture is free and open to the public.

The site of Aezanis, today the modest Turkish village of Çavdarhisar, boasts one of the finest preserved Roman temples in the Mediterranean world. Excavations show this ancient Phrygian sanctuary to the Anatolian mother goddess and weather god at Aezanis were dramatically transformed in the reign of Hadrian (AD 117-138) when the city was enrolled in the Panhellenion, an ancient equivalent of the United Nations.  

Imperial and local patronage transformed the city’s religious life, and so the economic and social identity, into a Greek one.  By the study of the coins and the surviving monuments, it is possible to document these changes as a model of how most cities in Asia Minor reinvented themselves as Greek cities loyal to the Roman order.
 
Harl has been a professor in the Department of History at Tulane University since 1978. He received his Ph.D. from Yale University.  Harl has published widely on ancient numismatics, Roman economy and  and the cults of Roman Asia Minor.   
 
Harl’s lecture is sponsored by the University of Nebraska–Lincoln, the Department of Art and Art History at UNL, and the Lincoln-Omaha Society of the Archaeological Institute of America.
 
The Archaeological Institute of America is North America’s oldest and largest archaeological organization. With more than 250,000 members and more than 100 societies across the U.S. and the world, they are united by their shared passion for archaeology and its relevance to our present and future. For more information, visit www.archaeological.org.
 
Upcoming AIA Lincoln-Omaha Society lecture:
April 13 at 7:30 p.m.: Philip Sapirstein, University of Nebraska–Lincoln, "Doric Architecture and Egypt," Love Library Auditorium Rm. 102.