Submitted by Meral Crifasi on Tue, 02/23/2010 - 15:24
We have partnered with Turkey holiday specialist HolidayMate to offer you a grand prize - a week's holiday for two in Turkey. One lucky competition participant will win the prize at the end of our 12 week Ancient World in London series. For those of you suffering the grey London weather, here are some details to mull over:
Submitted by Sean Williams on Mon, 02/22/2010 - 16:36
Want to star in an Ancient World in London video, and learn about the stars at the same time? Then join Heritage Key and famed astronomy writer Paul Murdin at a cool London restaurant this Wednesday at 6:30pm, as the Secrets of the Universe author gives a special presentation on how ancient civilisations and British astronomers have discovered the cosmos.
The talk, entitled 'Unlocking the Wonders of Astronomy', will show how man's obsession with the heavens has endured for thousands of years, from the first cities of Sumer to the technological breakthroughs of today's most powerful nations. The presentation will be held at Cicada, a hip restaurant in the heart of the City of London.
Submitted by Nick Gilbert on Thu, 02/11/2010 - 14:32
We've come a long way from the time when Ugg would mutter inanities to Uggetta in the cave, present her with a wad of crushed up flowers and move in for the kiss- and if she resisted he would reach for his club, gives it the old 'knock on the head and drag away' routine. Nowadays, for example, we do all the inanities on dating websites or in noisy bars. The rules of romance and courting have been shifting rapidly in the last 50 years and now many people are so clueless as to what they are supposed to do that they're paying experts to teach them how to make that connection. Our expectations from marriage and our relationships are also different. How much has the nature of what is perceived as 'romantic' changed from the past? How much do we even know about what brought people together thousands of years ago?
It’s been another fascinating and prolific 12 months in archaeology, with discoveries – ranging from a multi-million pound medieval gold hoard to a lost Roman city, a “missing link” in human evolution and a prehistoric erotic figurine – coming thick and fast from the four corners of the globe.
Chances are you have never heard of Khirbet ez-Zeiraqoun, also known as Khirbet ez-Zeraqon. It’s a 25 hectare fortified town in Northern Jordan that was occupied during a period known as the “Early Bronze III” (2700 BC -2300 BC).
Khirbet ez-Zeiraqoun was excavated in the 1980’s and 90’s, and the analysis of this site continues today. However, unlike the great finds mentioned above, this site has received little publicity. While there are scholarly articles you will be hard-pressed to find anything in the popular realm.
Nippur is an extremely important ruined ancient Mesopotamian city, situated in modern Iraq. While never an especially powerful political centre, it was a hugely influential religious centre as the base of the cult of Enlil, the supreme god of the Sumerian pantheon, whom the Mespotamians believed created mankind. It is also one of the most ancient cities in human history, at around 7,000 years old.
During its peak, around 2500 BC, Nippur boasted multiple large temples, government buildings and businesses. Its inhabitants were very literate for the time - over 40,000 inscribed clay Sumerian and Akkadian tablets have been found there, bearing all from epic tales such as the Creation Story to legal documents, medical records and school texts. Powerful trading connections have been revealed in the range of objects originating from such other civilizations as Babylonia, Egypt, Persia, the Indus Valley, and Greece.
A clay tablet dating from the start of the second millennium BC is actually a list of literary texts from a Sumerian library. It originates from Nippur (in ancient Mesopotamia, modern-day lower Iraq), which was one of the most important Sumerian cities. It is on display at the Department of Oriental Antiquities at the Louvre.
Submitted by Bija Knowles on Thu, 10/29/2009 - 10:14
Everyone makes them (some of us more compulsively than others): scribbled on post-it notes, or kept mentally in our imaginations – we all make lists. And we're not the only ones either; lists have been around for a long time – possibly since the first writing systems and certainly since Sumerian scribes began to keep accounts in the fourth millennium BC in Mesopotamia. So what is it about the beauty of a list – its numerical order, hierarchy, completeness – that makes them such a part of how we like to categorise, order and understand the world?
Penn Museum’s world-renowned Mesopotamian Collection from Ur is the centrepiece of a new long-term exhibition exploring Iraq’s Ancient Cultural Heritage that opens October 25th. The exhibition will contain field notes of previous expeditions to the region, photographs, archival documents as well as more than 220 extraordinary ancient artefacts unearthed at the excavation. Famous artefacts such as the Ram-Caught-in-the-Thicket, the Great Lyre with a gold and lapis lazuli bull's head, and Queen Puabi's jewelry, as well as her headdress and other treasures, will be on display at 'Iraq's Ancient Past: Rediscovering Ur's Royal Cemetery'.
We have partnered with Turkey holiday specialist 
We've come a long way from the time when Ugg would mutter inanities to Uggetta in the cave, present her with a wad of crushed up flowers and move in for the kiss- and if she resisted he would reach for his club, gives it the old 'knock on the head and drag away' routine. Nowadays, for example, we do all the inanities on dating websites or in noisy bars. The rules of romance and courting have been shifting rapidly in the last 50 years and now many people are so clueless as to what they are supposed to do that they're paying 
Chances are you have never heard of Khirbet ez-Zeiraqoun, also known as Khirbet ez-Zeraqon. It’s a 25 hectare fortified town in Northern Jordan that was occupied during a period known as the “Early Bronze III” (2700 BC -2300 BC).
Penn Museum’s world-renowned Mesopotamian Collection from Ur is the centrepiece of a new long-term exhibition exploring Iraq’s Ancient Cultural Heritage that opens October 25th. The exhibition will contain field notes of previous expeditions to the region, photographs, archival documents as well as more than 220 extraordinary ancient artefacts unearthed at the excavation. Famous artefacts such as the Ram-Caught-in-the-Thicket, the Great Lyre with a gold and lapis lazuli bull's head, and Queen Puabi's jewelry, as well as her headdress and other treasures, will be on display at '
