Susan B. Downey
PROFESSOR
Ph.D., Yale University, 1963
Office: A148 Fowler
Phone: (310) 825-4169
Fax:
310-206-4723
E-mail:
downey@humnet.ucla.edu
Mailing Address:
308 Charles E Young Dr. North
A210 Fowler Building/Box 951510
Los Angeles, CA 90095-1510
UCLA Appointments
Department of Art History
Research Interests
Classical archaeology; Near East after the Greek conquest (ca. 300 BC–300 AD)
Research Summary
The Temple of Zeus Megistos (The Greatest) in the Greek colony of Dura-Europos (Syria), was excavated in 1937 by Yale University but the work was never published. The excavator, Frank Brown, left a manuscript covering only the first period and annotated plans of the phases of the building. The earliest phase was assumed to date to the Greek period. In 1992, under the auspices of the Mission franco-syrienne de Dura-Europos, I correlated the existing remains with the 1937 photographs (which revealed appalling degradation), cleaned the building, and identified the elements Brown used in his reconstructions. Excavations in 1994 seem to show that the temple was not the first structure on the site.
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