Dec. 6, 2005

No Stone Unturned

The George Washington University’s Eric H. Cline Brings His Passion for the Military History of the Mediterranean World from the Field to Classroom

BY JAMIE L. FREEDMAN

Summer mornings, as archaeologist Eric H. Cline grabs his excavation tools and prepares to unearth the past, he often shakes his head in disbelief and asks himself: “They pay me to do this?”

Archaeology has been in Cline’s blood since the age of seven, when his mother gave him a copy of The Walls of Windy Troy, a biography of Heinrich Schliemann. From that moment on, he was hooked. “By the time I finished reading it, I’d announced that I was going to be an archaeologist,” states Cline, chair of GW’s Department of Classical and Semitic Languages and Literatures and associate professor of classics and anthropology. The book, which still holds a place of honor on his office bookshelf, was re-presented to Cline by his mother years later as a college graduation gift when he earned his undergraduate degree in classical archaeology from Dartmouth.

Among the leading historical experts on the Middle East, Cline specializes in the military history of the Mediterranean world from antiquity to the present, as well as the interconnections between Greece, Egypt, and the Near East in the Late Bronze Age. An experienced field archaeologist with 19 seasons of excavation to his credit, he is associate director of the much-publicized Megiddo Excavations (biblical Armageddon) and co-director of archaeological excavations at Tel Kabri, one of the largest Bronze Age cities in Israel.

After two decades on the job, the thrill has not faded a bit for Cline. “It’s an amazing feeling to walk over an ancient mound and know that, with every step I take, there are multiple layers of human occupation under my feet,” he states, explaining that the remains of some two dozen ancient cities lie one on top of another at Megiddo. “I enjoy the thrill of discovery and the sense of the unknown that accompanies unearthing the past.”

The former Fulbright scholar is equally passionate about the other aspects of his job. A sought-after lecturer, he has presented more than 160 scholarly talks on his work over the past decade. “It’s always a challenge to give audiences 4,000 years of history in a 90-minute lecture,” he exclaims, adding that it’s his obligation as an archaeologist to “breathe life” into his findings by “recreating the ancient past in words as well as in writing for both scholarly and popular audiences.”

Cline’s enthusiasm for archaeology has spread rapidly during his five years at GW. “We’ve experienced a fourfold increase in archaeology majors since 2000,” he says, noting that GW is one of a select group of universities that offers an undergraduate archaeology degree. “This semester, there are 108 students in my Introduction to Archaeology course, up from 25 students in 2000. We’re going places and our reputation is spreading across the country.”

Year after year, he garners rave reviews from his students for his animated, passionate teaching style. “I love what I do and want my students to come away from my class with a lifelong fascination with archaeology,” says Cline, who won GW’s Morton Bender Award for Teaching in 2004 and the Archaeological Institute of America’s National “Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching” Award in 2005.

Cline also is an award-winning author, with seven books and more than 70 articles and book reviews on the ancient world to his credit. In 2000, to mark the new millennium, Cline published Battles of Armageddon, a book recounting the 34 bloody conflicts that have been fought at the ancient site — best known by Bible students as the place where the cataclysmic battle between the forces of good and evil will unfold. The book received the 2001 Biblical Archaeological Society Publication Award for “Best Popular Book on Archaeology” and was a main selection of the Natural Science Book Club. Cline’s latest book, Jerusalem Besieged, tracing the 118 battles for control of Jerusalem over four millennia, has met with equal acclaim and was recently featured as a main selection of the Discovery Channel Book Club.

“When I was researching the military history of Jerusalem for the book, I was struck by how often historical events are used and abused as propaganda by modern day leaders,” notes Cline. Intrigued by this phenomenon, Cline begins and ends each chapter of Jerusalem Besieged with examples of recent political and military leaders using propaganda based on ancient battles in their speeches.

Cline is now hard at work on his latest project, a 14-segment course on tape entitled “Archaeology and the Iliad: Did the Trojan War Take Place?” He is already making plans to return to Israel this summer to continue excavations at Megiddo and Tel Kabri, accompanied by several of his young GW protégés. “It’s a lot of fun to take my students on digs,” says Cline, who is the highest ranking American on the Megiddo excavations, which made international headlines in November following the discovery of the remains of one of the earliest churches in the world. “Some of the best people on the digs are my GW students.”

He has high hopes for Tel Kabri, where previous excavations uncovered the remains of a palace with Minoan-style fresco paintings dating from the 17th-century BCE. “Last summer, which was my first at the site, we found evidence that the known palace is built on top of another palace and was twice as large as previously thought,” exclaims Cline, who took eight current and former GW students with him on the dig.

Whatever the coming excavation season brings, Cline knows that he’ll enjoy every minute of it.

“Archaeology is the perfect combination of hard physical labor during the day, followed by hard mental labor at night, intertwined with the great mystery and promise of what we’re going to find tomorrow,” says Cline. “There’s always the feeling that just around the corner, we’re going to unearth something that sheds light on the roots of our civilization. It’s the ultimate quest.”

Send feedback to: bygeorge@gwu.edu