"The Church of the East Along the Silk Roads of Central Asia"

"The Church of the East Along the Silk Roads of Central Asia"
Christoph Baumer
President of the Society for the Exploration of EurAsia

Tuesday, March 23, 5:15-7 pm
[Harvard] Center for the Study of World Religions (42 Francis Ave)

A lecture by Christoph Baumer, president of the Society for the Exploration
of EurAsia. The Society conducts archaeological excavations in Uzbekistan,
Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, and Tuva (Russia). Baumer is an explorer
and author working in Central Asia who has made significant archaeological
discoveries in the Takalamakan Desert in Xinjiang and in Tibet, both in
northwestern China. The illustrated lecture will focus on the cultural and
archaeological relics of the Church of the East between Merv in present
Turkmenistan and Dunhuang in Gansu. It will also show new, unpublished finds
from excavations in Uzbekistan. Among them, the excavation of the monastery
of Warkuda and its double-naved church complex, located south of Samarkand,
is the most important archaeological discovery concerning the Church of the
East since the excavation in the late 1990s of the church of Suyab, present
Ak Beshim in Kyrgystan. Hosted by Charles Stang, Assistant Professor of
Early Christian Thought, Harvard Divinity School. An event supported by the
CSWR Faculty Grant program.