When you think of King Tut, do you see a young boy, struggling with the enormity of his power; a slender adolescent in control of the world’s greatest empire? Of course not, because you’re like me: you see the magnificent death mask, the coffins, shrines, shabtis, daggers, beds, decrepit mummy(with or without penis) et al. We ancient world-lovers are just magpies with laptops really. But do you ever wonder why, when Howard Carter and Lord Carnarvonburst into the tomb in 1922, they could see so many ‘wonderful things’? Why wasn’t Tutankhamun’s funerary procession made ancient swag, like those of nearly…
-
-
Calling all Chinese males with the last name Cao. Apparently, you might be the key to resolving Chinas latest archaeological controversy. Researchers at Shanghais Fudan University are collecting DNA samples from such people with the hope that they can help prove whether or not a recently discovered tomb belongs to a Chinese warlord. Made public in December, the tomb is believed to belong to Cao Cao, a legendary figure who lived during Chinas famed Three Kingdoms period (184 to 280). A corpse found at the site is the alleged remains of the ancient ruler. While archaeologists claim the find is…
-
Egypt’s Minister of Culture Farouk Hosni and Dr. Zahi Hawass returned a piece of red granite belonging to an ancient Egyptian temple to its rightful place – the base of Amenemhat I’s naos. Both officials are on an inspection tour along the Avenue of Sphinxes that connects the Temple of Luxor with that of Karnak, home to the Ptah temple where the naos is to be found. The naos pieace was returned to Egypt last October by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, after it was purchased by the Museum from an antiquities collector in New York in…
-
Egypts Minister of Culture, Farouk Hosni, and Zahi Hawass, Secretary General of the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA), along with the governor of Luxor, Samir Farag, will embark today on an inspection tour along the Avenue of Sphinxes that connects the Luxor and Karnak temples. During this visit, they will install the piece of red granite that was returned to Egypt by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in its original place at the Ptah temple at Karnak. Built by the 30th Dynasty king Nectanebo I (380-362 BC), the avenue is 2,700 meters long and 76 meters wide, and lined with…
-
On March 13, Hadrian’s Wall all of it will be lit by gas beacons, a once-in-a-lifetime event called Illuminating Hadrian’s Wall. From Wallsend in the east, to Bowness on Solway, approximately 500 beaconsspaced every 250 metres will cover the 84 miles of the Hadrian’s Wall. The first beacon will be lit at Wallsend at approximately 5.35pm (sunset is at 6.11pm), and lighting will progress in sequence east to west with a six-second delay between each beacon firing up; 50 minutes later, the last beacon in Bowness should be lit. The beacons will be 6-8ft tall with a 2-3 foot flame.…
-
Like any major western city, modern London encourages its residents to live a lifestyle focussed upon the secular. On the surface, finance, business, fashion, the career and socialising outwardly seem to be the major concerns of Londoners as they rush around town. However, one does not need to look far to be reminded of the fact London is very much a religious centre, on top of being the hub for so many other preoccupations of British lives. St. Paul’s Cathedral has been dominant in the city skyline, in one form or another, for nearly a thousand years. Westminster Cathedral and…
-
Black and White photography is an artform unto itself – it’s so much more than just clicking “Greyscale” in Photoshop, which will oftentimes just give a bland result. Several adjustments and the right lighting is required to make a black and white image work, and in Robinho’s image of Roman ruins in Apamea, Syria we see a fantastic, dramatic shot. The city of Apamea was adjacent to the Orontes River as served as a treasure city of the Seleucid. It was annexed and formed part of the Roman Empire from 64BC, and it is from the Roman era that many…
-
News of this exhibit has been leaking out in bits and pieces for weeks. But today the official announcement of it was made and full details have been released. The exhibit will be hitting the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto Canada starting in late June. The precise exhibition start/end dates are being arranged. As reported earlier the exhibit will be stopping at the Glenbow Museum in Calgary and the Royal BC Museum in Victoria BC. A stop in Montreal was announced several months back. Also, as hk previously reported, this will be the biggest Terracotta Warriors exhibition ever to hit…
-
Dr Simon Corcoran and Dr Benet Salway of the history department at University College London have found fragments of an important Roman law code that previously had been thought lost forever. Its believed to be the only original evidence yet discovered of the Gregorian Codex a collection of constitutions upon which a substantial part of most modern European civil law systems are built. They made their remarkable find by painstakingly linking 17 pieces of seemingly incomprehensible parchment. Together they form, according to Dr Salway, a page or pages from a late antique codex book rather than a scroll or a…
-
Last week we told the first part of the story of Lord Carnarvon, one of Britain’s greatest explorers: his love of cars, planes, travel, and – most importantly – his obsessive passion for finding Tutankhamun‘s treasures. But what became of the cavalier adventurer, and why is there not a single one of his finds in Britain? By the time Carter and Carnarvon had broken into the tomb of Tutankhaum, Carnarvon was already a frail man. His leg badly disfigured in a car accident in Germany, the aristocrat had only originally come to Egypt on his doctor’s advice, to escape the…