'Dig Night' at Emory's Carlos Museum Explores Active Archaeological Sites

Emory University and Carlos Museum faculty and curators will discuss their work in active archaeological sites in Greece, Israel and Egypt at a public program at 7 p.m. Tuesday, Dec 8, at the museum.

Bonna Wescoat, associate professor of art history; Oded Borowski, professor of Hebrew and biblical archaeology; and Peter Lacovara, curator of Egyptian art at the Carlos Museum, will discuss their work at Samothrace in Greece, Tell Halif in Israel, and Malkata, the boyhood home of Tutankhamen, in Egypt. The Carlos Museum will also introduce the new iSITE blogs that will allow the public to follow these digs each season.



Attendees will hear of the ancient Greek Sanctuary of the Great Gods on Samothrace from Wescoat. Home of one of the premier ancient Greek mystery cults, Samothrace offers a unique view of the ancient Greek world. Wescoat has worked at the site for more than 30 years, and Emory students have played an important role in exploring the sanctuary.
 


In 2008, Carlos Museum's Lacovara and the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Diana Patch, associate curator of Egyptian art, began excavations at the site of Malqata, the palace-city of Amenhotep III (1390-1353 B.C.) and later a residence of the young king Tutankhamen.
 


Excavations at Tell Halif, under the direction of Borowski, continue to uncover remains from the end of the eighth century B.C., when the city - possibly biblical Rimmon - was destroyed by the Assyrian king Sennacherib in 701 B.C. in response to the revolt of King Hezekiah of Judah. Among the remains discovered were substantial elements of the fortification system, a pillared house with a large assemblage of storage jars, and a kitchen that included an oven and grinding implements.



Location: 571 South Kilgo Circle, Atlanta, Georgia 30322, U.S.A.

Telephone: 404.727.4282 Fax: 404.727.4292

Hours: Tuesday through Saturday 10 a.m. - 4 p.m. Sunday 12noon - 4 p.m. (Closed on Mondays and university holidays)

Admission:$8. Free for Carlos Museum members and Emory University faculty, students, and staff. Students, seniors, and children ages 6-17: $6 (Children ages 5 and under: Free).

Public Tours: Advanced booking required for weekday or weekend groups of ten or more. For reservations call 404-727-0519. Docent-led tours of the Museum depart from the Rotunda on Level One every Sunday at 2:30p.m. during the Emory academic year (call 404.727.4282 to confirm).

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Global Health Chronicles Celebrates 30th Anniversary of Smallpox Eradication

Historic video and audio interviews, photos, presentations and government papers that document the intense battle to eradicate smallpox are now available online to researchers and the public alike.

The Global Health Chronicles (www.globalhealthchronicles.org), an online archive hosted by Emory University Libraries, publicly launched on Oct. 26, the 30th anniversary of worldwide smallpox eradication. Emory President James Wagner attended the launch event at the university's Robert W. Woodruff Library, along with three former CDC directors and many retired CDC employees featured in the archives. The disease experts present at the event led the fight against smallpox in the 1960s, says former CDC director David Sencer.

"Eradicating a disease is the ultimate in disease prevention; as smallpox is the one human infectious disease that has been completely eradicated there's much to celebrate here," Sencer says. "The Global Health Chronicles site features oral histories of individuals who played a crucial role in that accomplishment. Today's health professionals and students can hear and read of the passion these women and men brought to their work. This site also will be a valuable source of previously unknown material for historians."

Institutions participating in the massive effort to collect and preserve the data in the Global Health Chronicles archive include not only Emory Libraries staff, but also Emory's Global Health Institute and its Rollins School of Public Health, as well as colleagues at the CDC, says Rick Luce, vice provost and director of Emory Libraries.

"The Global Health Chronicles project is another important facet of Emory's continuing mission to create, preserve, teach and apply knowledge in the service of humanity," Luce says. "It's also a great example of Emory collaboration across the campus and with partner institutions."

Materials collected in the Global Health Chronicles archive include:

Oral histories of epidemiologists, operations officers, their spouses and children who worked in 22 countries in Africa as well as in India, Bangladesh and Nepal, to stop the spread of smallpox.
Previously unpublished field reports and pictures.
Digitized books on the history of smallpox eradication.
Seminars by the leaders of the global program to eradicate smallpox.
Creation of the Global Health Chronicles was funded with support from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Google.org Fund of Tides Foundation and Emory's Global Health Institute, with in-kind support from the CDC, Rollins School of Public Health and the Emory Libraries.

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Carlos Museum Announces Events With World-Renowned Egyptologists

The Michael C. Carlos Museum announces several key Egyptian-themed events for March 2009.

Event highlights include:

"Blessings and Curses in Ancient Egypt," David Silverman, curator of "Tutankhamun: The Golden King and the Great Pharaohs," at the Carlos Museum on March 5 at 7 p.m.
"Mysteries of King Tut Revealed," Zahi Hawass, secretary general of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities, at the Boisfeuillet Jones Atlanta Civic Center on March 19 at 7:30 p.m.
Tour of "Wonderful Things: The Harry Burton Photographs and the Discovery of the Tomb of Tutankhamun" by Peter Lacovara, Carlos Museum’s curator of Egyptian, Nubian and Near Eastern Art at the Carlos Museum on March 20 at 7 p.m.

"Mysteries of Tutankhamun Revealed"

In "Mysteries of Tutankhamun Revealed," Hawass will discuss:

-CT-scans of Tutankhamun’s mummy that were obtained as part of a landmark Egyptian research and conservation project, conducted in cooperation by National Geographic,
the ongoing search for the mummy of Queen Nefertiti, and the discovery of KV63, the chamber recently found in the Valley of the Kings,
-new secrets discovered at the pyramids, and
-his search for the tomb of Cleopatra and Mark Anthony.

A member of the Carlos Museum’s advisory board, Hawass is one of the world's foremost authorities on Egyptian archaeology and is known for his devotion and untiring efforts to promote and protect Egypt’s cultural and archaeological heritage. A book signing will follow his lecture.

Tickets are $8 if purchased in advance at TicketMaster. All tickets are $12 at the door. Carlos Museum members receive two free tickets, while quantities last, to Hawass’ lecture and save up to 20 percent on Carlos Museum membership. View more information on the special membership offer or call 404.727.2623.

"The Blessings and Curses of Ancient Egypt" Lecture

David Silverman, curator of "Tutankhamun: The Golden King and the Great Pharaohs" and Eckley Brinton Coxe, Jr. Professor of Egyptology, Department of Near Eastern Languages, University of Pennsylvania, will speak on "The Blessings and Curses of Ancient Egypt." This event is part of a lecture series bringing distinguished scholars to the Emory campus each year and is generously endowed by the architectural firm Perkins + Will.

Tour of "Wonderful Things"

On March 20 Peter Lacovara, curator of ancient Egyptian, Nubian, and Near Eastern art at the Carlos Museum, will conduct a tour of the companion exhibition "Wonderful Things: The Harry Burton Photographs and the Discovery of the Tomb of Tutankhamun."

Additional March events

"Divine Beasts: Two-part Egyptian Animals Drawing and Painting workshop with Zoo Atlanta" on March 8 at Zoo Atlanta and March 15 at the Carlos Museum from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m.

"Mythology and Iconography of Divine Kingship in Ancient Egypt" a lecture by Lanny Bell, visiting professor of Egyptology, Brown University, will take place at the Carlos Museum on March 30 at 7 p.m.

More Egypt-related events in Atlanta.

"Tutankhamun: The Golden King and the Great Pharaohs" is organized by National Geographic, AEG Exhibitions and Arts and Exhibitions International, with cooperation from the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities. Sponsored by Northern Trust, the exhibition in Atlanta is developed in partnership with the Michael C. Carlos Museum of Emory University and will run from Nov. 15, 2008 to May 17, 2009. Visit carlos.emory.edu for more information.

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Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database Debuts at Emory

/PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- A group of international scholars will gather at Emory Dec. 5-6 to celebrate the debut of "Voyages: The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database" (www.slavevoyages.org) as it begins its own maiden expedition.

Two years in the making at Emory, the free and interactive Web-based resource documents the slave trade from Africa to the New World between the 16th and 19th centuries, says David Eltis, Robert W. Woodruff Professor of History and one of the scholars who originally published "The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade" as a CD-ROM in 1999. He and Martin Halbert, director of digital innovations for Emory Libraries, directed the work that made the online "Voyages" project expandable, interactive and publicly accessible.

"'Voyages' provides searchable information on almost 35,000 trans-Atlantic voyages hauling human cargo, as well as maps, images and data on some individual Africans transported," says Eltis.

The conference, which also marks the bicentennial of the end of the trans-Atlantic slave trade in 1808, will feature presentations by Eltis' graduate students who have worked on the database, with leading scholars commenting on their papers. Other sessions include "The Slave Trade, the Web site and Atlantic History" and "The Slave Trade, the Website and the Classroom."

David Brion Davis, Sterling Professor of History Emeritus and founding director emeritus of the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance and Abolition at Yale University, will give a keynote lecture on "Comparing the Paths to American and British Slave-Trade Abolition." Following Davis' talk will be the formal launch of the "Voyages" database by Rick Luce, director of University Libraries. For more information on the conference, visit www.ias.emory.edu/events/SlaveTradeConference.pdf.

Database Establishes Links Between America, Africa

Funded by grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities and Harvard University's W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research, "Voyages" is based on the seminal 1999 work, "The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade." That CD-ROM included more than 27,000 slave trade voyages and has been popular with scholars and genealogists alike. However, it is no longer available and had several limitations.

"Everyone wants to know where their ancestors came from," Eltis says. "There are more data on the slave trade than on the free migrant movement simply because the slave trade was a business and people were property, so records were likely to be better. What the database makes possible is the establishment of links between America and Africa in a way that already has been done by historians for Europeans."

Adds Halbert: "The digital and Web-based Voyages publication is intentionally collaborative and can grow and change over time. Scholars who discover new information can add it to the database, and thus share it with their colleagues. In addition, researchers can download the database in a format compatible with the SPSS statistical package."

Slave Trade Database in the Classroom

Halbert, Eltis and their team also collaborated with educators from public and private middle and high schools to create lessons plans and other materials, so that K-12 teachers can take "Voyages" into their classrooms. These and other resources on the site, such as images, introductory maps and essays, help visitors appreciate the reality of the slave trade, says project manager Liz Milewicz.

Henry Louis Gates, the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor at Harvard University and writer/producer of the PBS documentary "African American Lives," credits "Voyages" with shedding an important light on the hidden history of 12.5 million slaves.

"The greatest mystery in the history of the West, I believe, has always been the Africans who were enslaved and shipped to the New World," he said. "Their ancestries, their identities, their stories were lost in the ships that carried them across the Atlantic. The multi-decade and collaborative project that brought us [the Voyages] site has done more to reverse the Middle Passage than any other single act of scholarship possibly could."


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Temple Bombing Documented in Exhibit at Emory August 23

Fifty years ago, exploding dynamite ripped a gaping hole in the brick edifice of The Temple on Peachtree Street, home to Atlanta's oldest and largest Jewish congregation. The Oct. 12, 1958, attack was linked to an epidemic of hate group activity plaguing the South during the civil rights movement.

The impact of The Temple bombing on Atlanta's Jewish community and on the civil rights movement is documented in a new exhibit opening Saturday, Aug. 23 at Emory University.

"'The Bomb that Healed': Rabbi Jacob M. Rothschild, Civil Rights and The Temple Bombing of 1958," will be on display at Emory's Manuscript, Archives & Rare Book Library (MARBL) in the Woodruff Library building through Jan. 5, 2009.

The influence of the bombing was not what the bombers might have expected, says curator Ellen G. Rafshoon.

"The bombers had intended to intimidate Jews, who were seen as co-conspirators along with blacks in the civil rights struggle, but this act of terror had the opposite effect," says Rafshoon, a history professor at Georgia Gwinnett College. "When The Temple's spiritual leader, Rabbi Rothschild, returned to his office the following day, he was greeted with mailbags filled with sympathetic messages from Atlanta and from across the nation."

The overwhelming support extended to the congregation gave Atlanta Jews the confidence to become more active in bridging the divide between whites and blacks, Rafshoon notes. That is why Rothschild's widow, Janice, has referred to the otherwise tragic event as "The Bomb That Healed."

The exhibition, which draws on Rabbi Rothschild's personal papers and includes letters, photographs and published clippings, will show how the rabbi worked openly to build support for desegregation among Atlanta's religious and civic leaders. For example, he participated in plans to desegregate Atlanta's schools peacefully.

"This was an especially significant achievement, considering that some of Atlanta's Jews feared challenging Atlanta's rigid racial order," explains Eric Goldstein, associate professor of history and Jewish studies at Emory. "They themselves had often been victims of social discrimination, and even virulent attacks such as the lynching of Leo Frank in 1915. They hoped that if they kept a low profile, discrimination would pass, and they would eventually be accepted."

Goldstein explains that with Rabbi Rothchild's encouragement and the more accepting environment they found in the wake of the bombing, many Atlanta Jews found they could confront discrimination, both against themselves and African Americans, and even become leaders in the cause.

One of the most rewarding moments in Rabbi Rothschild's career will be highlighted in the exhibition: the rabbi's successful organization of the South's first racially integrated banquet, which honored Martin Luther King Jr. after he won the Nobel Peace Prize.

That event, held at the Dinkler Plaza Hotel on Jan. 27, 1965, was attended by 1,400 guests. In a letter thanking Rabbi Rothschild for the tribute, which will be on display at the exhibition, King confided that the encouragement he received that night would sustain him during the "many dark and desolate days of struggle" ahead.

The banquet evening, King wrote, "was a testimonial not only to me but to the greatness of the City of Atlanta, the South, the nation and its ability to rise above the conflict of former gen erations."

Other Events Commemorating the Bombing

The exhibition, which is free and open to the public, is being held in conjunction with several other events commemorating the bombing:

Rafshoon will present a slide show about the exhibition; Temple congregants, including the rabbi's widow, Janice Rothschild Blumberg, will share their memories of the attack. 9:45–11:45 a.m., Oct. 12 at The Temple, 1589 Peachtree St., N.E., Atlanta, 30309. For more information and to RSVP, please contact Ronnie VanGelder, program director for The Temple, at rvangelder@the-temple.org.

"Jews in A Changing South," the 33rd Annual Conference of the Southern Jewish Historical Society. Hosted by the Tam Institute for Jewish Studies and Emory University, Nov. 1-3. Lodging at Emory Conference Center hotel; most events on the Emory campus. Registration plus SJHS dues, $160; registration for SJHS members, $125; full-time students, $50. All Atlantans invited to attend special portions of the program at reduced rates. Registration deadline is Oct. 1, 2008.

More Information: "Jews in A Changing South" or email egoldst@emory.edu
Among the conference sessions is "The Bombing and Beyond: Jews, African Americans and Social Change in Atlanta during the 1950s and 1960s," a discussion featuring several activists and politicians of the era and moderated by writer and journalist Melissa Fay Greene, author of "The Temple Bombing." Co-sponsored by The Temple. 7:30 p.m., Nov. 2 at The Temple, 1589 Peachtree St., N.E., Atlanta 30309.

More information and to RSVP: Ronnie VanGelder, program director of The Temple.

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