Residents of Leptiminus, a city in Roman occupied Tunisia, ate a diet heavy in vegetables and marine life (including Grouper). However they avoided millet and legumes, dietary staples in other parts of the Empire. They also avoided eating large amounts of the local fish sauce which they were trying to…
- Part 108
Hatshepsut Bust Fake Claim for Berlin
An article on Spiegel Online on Sunday made a shocking claim the bust of Hatshepsut, in Berlin Museum, may in fact be a fake. IOL reports: The bust in brown granite of female Pharaoh Hatshepsut, who ruled Egypt for 22 years, is one of the draws at the German capital’s…
Libya’s Terracotta Army
Terracotta armies are certainly in the news at the moment. The long-awaited third dig of Qin Shihuang’s tomb finally got under way last month in China, while a slightly more idiosyncratic clay army was causing some consternation in Germany last week: prosecutors are investigating whether the saluting garden gnomes created…
How the Brooklyn Museum’s male mummies were misdiagnosed as female
When recently the mummy formerly known as ‘Lady Hor’ underwent a scan, researchers were surprised to find that it should have been ‘Sir Hor’ from the start. Yet, this case of ‘gender confusion’ is not a unique one. The same happened to ‘The Daughter of Amunkhau’ – actually a son…
Google Earth Tour: Ancient China – The Terracotta Army
Imagine being one of the local farmers in Xi’an, China, drilling a new water well only to break into a pit containing one of the most unbelievable sights that a man can ever see. Over 6,000 life sized terracotta figures buried under the ground and never seen by anybody for…
Moving in on Madaba’s Iron Age Squatters
As this blog is being written a Canadian team is renewing excavations at the site of Madaba, a modern day Jordanian city that has at least 5,000 years of history behind it. The city is well known for its Byzantine mosaics including the 6th century AD ‘Madaba Map’, which is…
INTERVIEW- Artist Joshua Neustein on responding to the Dead Sea Scrolls
The Institute for Contemporary Culture (ICC) at the Royal Ontario Museum, the Koffler Centre for the Arts and the Julie M Gallery are presenting works by New York based abstract artist Joshua Neustein. His exhibition of works explores the themes and ideas mentioned in the scrolls. There was a time…
Who Owns Antiquities?
On a recent trip to the British Museum, it occured to me:”Who owns all this?” It’s a pretty complex question to be asking though. As I wandered past the Elgin Marbles, I overheard a couple of tourists discussing how Greece wanted the ancient relics back. Apparently hacking the marbles off…
Cultural Crisis in Libya as Roman Statues Looted
Libya’s Roman and Greek heritage is disappearing as we speak according to a report in the UAE English language paper The National. Sites such as Leptis Magna, Cyrene and Sabratha have been extremely well preserved by Libya’s dry climate and the encroachment of the Sahara, which covered them for centuries….
The Preservation Issue: colliding values
Preservation of ancient sites is not a recent issue. Youve only to look at sites in Egypt and Turkey, and the perilous conditions of worldwide rock art, to see how the long term problems of increased visitors (and hence increased profits) affects an ancient site. But what happens when an…