CBBC, the BBC’s children’s broadcaster, has announced a brand new kids’ quiz show, in which six contestants will pit their wits again guards and ‘ghosts’, as they spend a night in the British Museum unlocking the secrets of its most famous treasures. Relic will see the children dodging security and completing a number of interactive tasks, as they bid to become ‘guardians’ of the museum. However anyone failing the show will find themselves facing “incarceration in the museum forever”. A BBC release explains, “As the brave adventurers search the museum they must complete complex challenges and confront visions from the…
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I think my mind’s had just enough time to recover from this year’s two day-long Egyptological Colloquium. No less than 18 top experts lent their latest opinions and discoveries to the audience at the British Museum; more than enough for me to cope with. Though I’d like to think of myself as an avid fan of the ancient world, I could never for a second hope to pass myself off as a resident Book of the Dead buff – so there was plenty of new material for my mediocre mind to cope with. So, a good sleep and some brainless…
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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 Egyptian Museum and is only outshone by the limestone bust of exquisite Queen Nefertiti. Scientists at the Technical University of Berlin have discovered the Hatshepsut stone is rich in the minerals magnesite and siderite. No other bust from the Nile region is made of such rock, suggesting that the 16.5cm…
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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 by artist Ottmar Hoerl are in fact breaking strict German code that bans Nazi symbols and gestures.Libya’s Terracotta Army While these terracotta armies grab the limelight, there is another ‘army’ of 4,500 small terracotta figurines, which were uncovered during excavations at the Greek and Roman ruins of Cyrene near Shahhat…
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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 centuries. The enigmatic soldiers hold many myths and mysteries about them, but they are certainly one of the most captivating finds of the 20th Century. There are three pits in the region, as well as other museum structures which can be seen from the air thanks to Google Earth. Another…
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What Have the Etruscans Ever Done for us? “What have the Romans ever done for us?” is a classic question from Monty Python’s Life of Brian (and possibly my favourite Roman-related screen moment of all time). But the Romans too could have asked themselves: “What have the Etruscans ever done for us?” The list would be almost as long as the one reeled off to the irascible John Cleese: language, architecture, engineering, gods, rituals – and much more – were all handed down in one shape or form to the Romans from their Etruscan ancestors. But despite the Etruscans’ advanced…
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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. Mosaics, temples, theatres and Roman homes remain very much intact in these ancient cities, providing valuable evidence of the Roman empire’s occupation of Northern Africa during the first to the fifth centuries AD, as well as the pre-Roman Punic and Greek habitations. But a lack of government funding and scant…
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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 ancient site gets in the way of industry? The findings from a study released by the Western Australian State Government in February this year found industry emissions from surrounding mining projects in the Burrup Peninsula area did not have an effect on the rock art, which some believe to be…
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In what seems like a strange coincidence, two astonishing discoveries providing evidence of the life of Saint Paul have been made within days of each other at two religious sites in Rome. First of all a fourth century fresco of the Christian saint was uncovered on 19 June at the Catacombs of Santa Thekla in Rome. Paul formerly Saul was a Hellenic Jew who converted to Christianity after his religious experience on the road to Damascus but was then executed during the reign of the emperor Nero between 60-67 AD. The Christian catacombs of Santa Thekla, closed to the public,…
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Us in the ‘modern world’ tend to think we’ve got the market cornered for most things, and partying is no different. Clubs, drugs, drink and casual sex may be frowned upon even by our elders at times, but it seems those in the ancient world had rather less stringent morals when it came to partying hard. And new research suggests the neon-lit acid haze of the eighties was far from the first movement to find a love for rave culture. It seems that rolling stones had barely been invented before the ancient world was partying like Keith Richards on closing…