Husband and wife give free public lectures on archaeology

A historic look at human sacrifice will be the topic of a free University of Queensland public lecture on Friday, August 14 at the Abel Smith Lecture Theatre, Campbell Road St Lucia at 8pm.

1998 Visiting Professor of the Australian Archaeological Institute at Athens Professor Sarah Morris will discuss: Isaac and Iphigenia: Human Sacrifice in the Near East and Greece.

Professor Morris' presentation will analyse the literary and artistic evidence of practising human sacrifice, in the Semitic world and in Greek mythology. She will draw on archaeological and ritual evidence from the ancient Mediterranean world.

It will examine why Greek myth is so obsessed with human sacrifice, and every Greek city has a story about this gruesome ritual.

Professor Morris is from the Department of Classics and Institute of Archaeology at the University of California at Los Angeles. She will be accompanied by her husband Dr John Papadopoulos who is also a 1998 Visiting Professor of the Australian Archaeological Institute at Athens.

Dr Papadopoulos, who is Associate Curator of Antiquities at the John Paul Getty Museum, also will present a public lecture on Friday, August 14, at 3pm in room 388, Goddard Building, St Lucia. His lecture is entitled: Arthur Evans, the Palace of Minos at Knossos and the Dawn of European Civilisation.

The lecture is sponsored by the University's Classics and Ancient History Department and the Queensland Friends of the Australian Archaeological Institute.

For further information, contact the Department of Classics and Ancient History, telephone 3365 2633.