There is some interesting news coming from Tayinat that Heritage Key will be reporting on soon as part of a larger article. Tayinat is the site in southeast Turkey that has been making media headlines for the discovery of a tablet cache. It wasfound in atemple that was reported, in many outlets, to have stood during the Dark Ages. I sat down with Professor Timothy Harrison, the project leader, to learn about what they found. News on the tablet discovery First bit of news, an update on the tablet cache discovered this summer. In 738 BC Tiglath Pilesar III destroyed…
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Canada probably isnt the first place you think of when it comes to Latin. The countrys rather chilly climate doesnt exactly inspire images of the Mediterranean. By the time the language arrived in the country, in the 16th century, Latin was a long dead language. There is no evidence that any ancient Roman ever set foot in this land. Nevertheless, according to this article written by the Globe and Mails Ingrid Peritz, Latin is becoming an increasingly popular subject in the countrys post-secondary institutions. Peritz’s article reports that, in general, enrolment in Latin classes has been rising in recent years.…
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Unrolling a papyrus (without destroying it) is an expensive and complicated process. How do you do it without causing the whole thing to crumble into unintelligable flakes? Well, last year the Royal Ontario Museum unrolled a Book of the Dead that had long been in their collection, which dated back to ca. 320 BC, the early Ptolemaic period. And they also made a cool video about how it was done. A group at the ROM called, Friends of Egypt, financed the project. A language expert and specialized conservators were brought in. The book was mounted, and, at the beginning of…
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When Egyptologist Kei Yamamoto excavated The Terrace of the Great God at Abydos he came across a collection of curiously-fashioned goblets. Were these bottomless vessels evidence of the builders’ reverence to a remarkable place of ancient worship? 3,800 years ago, during the Middle Kingdom period in Egypts history, there was a temple to Osiris at Abydos. Nothing of it survives today, but based on the location of later temples, archaeologists have a rough idea of where it would have stood. They also know that just in front of the Osiris templewas an area known in the Middle Kingdom as the…
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Two ancient mastodons recently discovered in Northern America suggest that the Clovis people of the region, thought to have brought about their own extinction, may have been blasted by a massive exploding comet from outer space. The mastadons – one from a site in Upper New York State, the other in the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM)in Toronto Canada – reveal evidence that a comet may have exploded above Northern America 12,900 years ago. The Clovis people, who inhabited Northern America at the time, were big game hunters. Until recently, it had been thought that they had contributed to their own…
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Nazi Egyptology is a complex subject. As Professor Thomas Schneider said, there is no uniform ‘Nazi Egyptology’ discipline. Instead there are a number of German Egyptologists who were thrown into the academic hole of the Third Reich – who each reacted to it in their own way. An interesting story that I didnt put into the article The Real Story of Nazi Egyptology, forbrevity reasons, is that of Friedrich Wilhelm von Bissing. Bissing was a professor at Munich. He is perhaps most noted for his work at Abu Ghurab, done at the turn of the century, where he excavated the…
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If you want to keep up with celebrity news a Toronto newspaper is a good place to get it. The Toronto International Film Festival is in full swing, with its long list of celebrities and accompanying red carpet antics. But theres one story in particular that might be of interest to archaeology fans out there. Michael Moore (of Fahrenheit 9/11 fame) is out with his new movie, Capitalism: A Love Story. He held a 45 minute press conference in Toronto to publicize it and hes given a number of media interviews about his ideas. The movie, from what Ive read,…
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As this is being written, New Yorkers and out of town visitors are taking in,Afghanistan: Hidden Treasures from the National Museum, Kabul, now on display at the Met. As Heritage Keys Helen Atkinson writes,the exhibit isa real treat. But, while youre looking at the artefacts, heres an ancient mystery you may want to consider. The crown on the top is on display at the show. As the caption notes its from Afghanistan and dates from the 1st century AD. Now, take a look at the second photo. This crown dates from between the 3rd and 5th centuries AD but was…
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Thomas Schneider is exploring a subject that has never been studied before. The University of British Columbia professor is examining the history of German Egyptology during the Nazi era. The period that lasted from when Hitler became chancellor of Germany in 1933 – until he committed suicide in his bunker in 1945.The research is a work in progress and Professor Schneider continues to receive new archival documents and information. He plans to turn his work into a book length manuscript. While popular fiction, such as the Indiana Jones trilogy, depicts action packed films about this topic, the real story is far more complex. Professor Schneider…
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Mad Honey, more scientifically known as grayanotoxin, is a toxic substance humans have been dealing with for thousands of years. The way how it is created is quite simple. A bee takes nectar from a toxic rhododendron plant (available in Turkey, the United States, British Columbia and the UK). The toxic substance is then deposited at a beehive. The odds of getting any ill-effects from this substance, from the honey at your local grocery store, are pretty much nill. By the time commercial honey is diluted the amount of material from a rhododendron is extremely low or non-existent. However, if…