Feb. 9, 2012

Dr. Konstantinos Politis, eminent archaeologist, who discovered Lot's Cave in Jordan, will be at Shawnee State University from 7 to 8 p.m. on Thursday, Feb. 16 in the University Center's Sodexo Ballroom East.

Politis is leading excavations at Biblical Zoara in Jordan and Ra's al-Hadd in Oman, and he is coordinating a comprehensive documentation of all the mosaics of Syria.

In October 2010, he began a new post as senior fellow at the American Center for Oriental Research and he is also director of the Hellenic Society for Near Eastern Studies in Greece.

Politis will be talking about "The Bible and Archaeology: The Case of Sodom and Lot's Cave" at SSU. In the Old Testament, Zoara is described as being one of the five "cities of the plain" to which Lot and his daughters initially fled after the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah (Genesis 19). His lecture gives a view of the history of this important historic town and its religious significance in early Christian history.

The lecture is free and open to the public, presented as part of the 2011-12 Jane M.G. Foster Distinguished Lecture Series, sponsored by the Department of Social Sciences and the Development Foundation.