Lorenzo Nigro

Lorenzo Nigro (Rome, 13 December 1967) is an Italian archaeologist. He is full professor of Archeology and Art History of the Ancient Near East and of Phoenician-Punic Archeology at Sapienza in Rome; he is also an Italian writer and watercolorist.

He is active in Jordan, Palestine and western Sicily. On the island of Mozia, in the province of Trapani, he has identified several archaic structures - such as the Temple of Kothon and the Sacellum of Astarte - and a series of other important monuments and finds; since 2004 he has directed the Archaeological Expedition of Sapienza University of Rome which operates in Tell es-Sultan, ancient Jericho, Tell Sheikh Abu Zarad (ancient Tappuah), and Bethlehem in Palestine, and in the Ammonite fortress of Jamaan and in the ancient city of Khirbet al-Batrawy, which he discovered in Jordan. In the latter archaeological site in 2010 he discovered the Royal Palace, with numerous important finds from the third millennium BC, including five copper axes, a necklace with 630 pearls and several potter's wheels. He directed the project of the Italian Cooperation "Oasis of Jericho" for the protection and enhancement of 13 archaeological sites in the Oasis of Jericho and, in the last three years, he has written two archaeological novels for the publisher Il Vomere: Jericho. The Revolution of Prehistory (Marsala-Rome 2019); The geniuses of Mozia (Marsala-Rome 2020), dedicated respectively to the Neolithic age in the oldest city in the world and to the saga of Giuseppe Whitaker's family and to the mystery of Garibaldi's treasure.

Since 2009 he has been a member of the Scientific Council of the G. Whitaker Foundation, Palermo, for which he edited the edition of several volumes.

Biography

The topic of his thesis, discussed in 1992, is the public palatial architecture of Palestine in the Bronze Age; the text is then published in the scientific series "Contributions and Materials of Oriental Archeology" two years later. His interest in the Syrian-Palestinian area will result a few years later in the excavations carried out in Jericho, and in Jordan, more precisely in the city of Khirbet al-Batrawy which he discovered in 2004. In 1997 he obtained his PhD, developing a research on the vessels of the Royal Tombs of Ebla, especially in the phase between the Middle Bronze I and II in Syria and Palestine (thesis published, but not authorized, in the Ebla Materials and Archaeological Studies Series, VIII). He is the author of more than twenty monographs and two hundred and thirty articles on archeology from Syria-Palestine, Mesopotamia, Egypt and the Mediterranean.

He taught "Biblical Archeology and Geography" at the Pontifical Lateran University (1996-2000) and the Pontifical Biblical Institute (2000-2006), and from 1998 to 2005 he was head of the Oriental Antiquities Department of the Vatican Museums. After succeeding Antonia Ciasca in the chair of Phoenician-Punic Archeology at the Roman University, he is also professor of Archeology and History of Art of the Ancient Near East, always at Sapienza in the Science Department of Antiquity. He is the Coordinator of the Oriental Studies Section of the same Department. He has been director of the scientific journal "Vicino Oriente" since 2000 and was editor of the "Historical Atlas of the Ancient Near East", "Contributions and Materials of Oriental Archeology", "Orient-Express" (Paris), "Quaderni di Gerico "," Sciences of Antiquity "," Near & Middle East ", published by the Department of Oriental Studies of the" La Sapienza "University. He is the founder and scientific editor of the series Quaderni di Archeologia Fenicio-Punica (QAFP) and Rome La Sapienza Studies on the Archeology of Palestine & Transjordan (ROSAPAT), in which the results of the excavations in Motya, Jericho and Khirbet al-Batrawy are systematically published. He is the Director of the Museum of Near East, Egypt and Mediterranean of the "La Sapienza"

He won the Kress Lectureship of the Archaeological Institute of America for the 2015-2016 academic year, the International Solunto Award 2020 dedicated to Sicilian excellence for his career as an archaeologist in Mozia in Sicily. He also won the Colosseum Award of the Municipality of Rome (2010) for his discoveries in Jordan.

References

    Biografia ufficiale a Lorenzo Nigro, su lasapienzamozia.it. Sito della missione archeologica a Mozia, su lasapienzamozia.it. Sito della missione archeologica a Khirbet al-Batrawy (Giordania), su lasapienzatojordan.it. Sito della missione archeologica a Gerico (Palestina), su lasapienzatojericho.it.

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