The ANU Friends of the Australian Archaeological Institute at Athens in conjunction with the Friends of the ANU Classics Museum warmly invite you to a lecture by Dr Ross Burns entitled 'Palmyra'.

Refreshments afterwards in the ANU Classics Museum.

Palmyra has just been retaken by the Syrian army after almost 12 months in the hands of the so-called ‘Islamic State’. During its occupation, IS destroyed some of the most significant monuments of the Roman era in the Middle East, or indeed anywhere. What did this desert oasis on the eastern fringe of the Roman-controlled world offer to its Syrian and international visitors, as well as to historians and archaeologists? Why is it still so important? Dr Burns examines what is left after IS’s deliberate campaign of destruction, and what hope there is for the ‘lost’ monuments reconstruction.

Dr Ross Burns is the author of two works on the history and archaeology of Syria. His 'Monuments of Syria' is the most often-quoted source on the background to the country’s main monuments. His history of Damascus (2005) will be matched in August by a counterpart on Aleppo (Routledge). He maintains a website which seeks to keep alive the memory of Syria's rich tapestry of remains, as well as tracking the destruction over the last five years. Dr Burns was Australia's Ambassador to Syria in the mid-1980s.

Dr Burns’ website is at www.monumentsofsyria.com  and much of his nearly-100,000 photo archive is also available on the website of Manal-Athar, an open archival project run out of the Dept of Archaeology at Oxford University— http://www.manar-al-athar.ox.ac.uk/