I am making a short expedition to Berlin’s Museum Island which is establishing itself firmly as a major destination in Europe for Ancient World artefacts. This week the Neues Museum is re-opening to the public after a massive renovation project. The place looks amazing and is as much about the modern world as the ancient. Iwill be traveling over there to learn more about the design of this impressive building and complex of museums as well as to get a good look at one of the most iconic artefacts on display anywhere in the world — the Nefertiti Bust (Nofretete…
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English Heritage has unveiled the design for its proposed new Stonehenge visitor centre, after months of anticipation. The plans were revealed as a planning application for the complex was sent to Wiltshire Council for approval. Located at Airman’s Corner some 1.5 miles west of the landmark, the new centre will include exhibition space, a caf, shop and toilet facilities for the million-or-so people who flock to the ancient stones each year. It will comprise two single-storey buildings, one made from wood, the other glass, and a transit system will allow visitors to move to and from the centre. Loraine Knowles,…
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Kashgar has for centuries been a destination for visitors from all over the world. Originally, it was a pivotal point on the ancient Silk Road trading routes, standing at the crossroads of the route linking Kyrgyzstan to Islamabad in Pakistan, and the one heading to modern-day Istanbul and Damascus from the larger Chinese cities to the east. Today, a team from the Asia Institute at Australia’s Monash University, working with Chinas Xinjiang Normal University, is hoping to help put Kashgar back on on the traveller’s map this time not as a trade destination, but as a tourist one. Monash’s Kashgar…
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The discovery of a unique amphitheatre and other structures at Rome’s ancient maritime port is putting the archaeological site of Portus on the map. For decades it’s been a much over-looked site next to Fiumicino’s international runway and scholarly attention has focused on neighbouring Ostia Antica, but experts now believe it is a unique site that should rank alongside monuments such as Stonehenge or Angkor Wat. I spoke to Professor Simon Keay, director of the Portus Project and leading expert in Roman archaeology at the University of Southampton and the British School at Rome about the findings of the excavation,…
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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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An architect and a classical archaeologist have come together to give a new perspective on one of Rome’s ancient roads, via Tiburtina. The result is a book just published, Via Tiburtina – Space, Movement and Artefacts in the Urban Landscape, which examines the constantly changing urban space of the road. The project involved six years of studying almost every inch of the ancient road and takes an interdisciplinary look at the road through the ages and from various angles, including its history during antiquity, the Renaissance and up to its continued use today. The origins of via Tiburtina date back…
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The first day of the ‘Achievements and Problems of Modern Egyptology‘ conference was full of new discoveries, though it started on a typically soggy Moscow day. After participants arrived at the Presidium of Russian Academy of Sciences on comfortable buses, they went in and received a slightly altered conference program – containing lecture lists and ‘Return to Egypt’; a book about the history of Russian Egyptology. The conference started with an opening speech by vise-president of Russian Academy of Sciences Alexander D. Nekipelov, dedicated to the history, development and achievements of Russian archaeology in Egypt, from the research of Vladimir…
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The infamous excesses of Emperor Nero have made a spectacular comeback yesterday, as archaeologists unveiled his legendary rotating banquet hall. Experts excavating in the Domus Aurea (Golden Palace, literally ‘Golden House’) on Rome’s Palatine Hill have found what they claim to be the remnants of a platform and mechanism described by the ancient historian Suetonius, in his opus The Twelve Caesars. The incredible discovery was made during routine maintenance work at the Palace, which is now located beneath theBaths of Trajan. “This cannot be compared to anything that we know of in ancient Roman architecture,” says head archaeologist FrancoiseVilledieu. An…
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The Museo delle Antichit Egizie (Museo Egizio) in Turin is currently undergoing a makeover that is set to change the layout and design of the venue that is home to the biggest collection of Egyptian artefacts outside Egypt. In an interview yesterday, Alain Elkann, president of the Fondazione Museo delle Antichit Egizie, gave Quotidiano Arte a idea of what we can expect to see at the new-look museum. A Trip up the Nile One of the innovations is that visitors can expect to be taken through a reconstruction of a Nile environment by an escalator linking the four floors of…
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New research suggests the giant step pyramids of the ancient Mayas may in fact have been used to make music on a colossal scale. Experts were already aware of the ‘raindrop’ sounds made by the footsteps of those ascending Chichen Itza‘s famous El Castillo pyramid. Yet the comparison of El Castillo’s sonic phenomenon with another of Mexico‘s Maya structures has led two scholars to conclude that creating ‘rain music’ was the pyramids’ main function. Jorge Cruz of the Professional School of Mechanical and Electrical Engineering in Mexico City and Nico Declercq of the Georgia Institute of Technology, USA compared the…