• Ann

    3D Aliens land at Stonehenge Virtual

    5,000 years after they’ve helped construct the gigantic stone circle, aliens return to Stonehenge. Early this morning, the tourists standing in line to access the stones had a strange encounter:a little, green almost-human shaped extraterrestrial skipped the queue – the outrage! – and was the first thread on the almost sacred grass around the monument. When asked what took them so long to return, alien scout Verde Raymaker stated:”Well.. errr.. we kinda lost track of the coordinates. Until they unearthed Bluestonehenge, an amplifier doubled the strenght of the signals emitted by Stonehenge, we did not have a clue we we’ve…

  • owenjarus

    Buddhas of Bamiyan Exhibit in Toronto: an Artists’ Perspective on Taliban Destruction

    In April 2008 visual artists Khadim Ali and Jayce Salloum travelled from Karachi Pakistan to Kabul Afghanistan, and then into Bamiyan the region famous for its giant Buddha statues that were destroyed by the Taliban in 2001. We spoke to them about their unique experiences of the site. Ali is Hazara, the same background that many of the people who live in Bamiyan are from. His parents were born just to the south of the region. The Taliban treated the Hazara brutally, killing them and burying them in mass graves. Today the Taliban wage an insurgency in the south and…

  • owenjarus

    Mycenaean Tombs Discovered Near Mycenae Could be From Ancient Egalitarian Society

    A team of archaeologists has unearthed five chamber tombs in the Nemea Valley, just a few hours walk from the ancient city of Mycenae. The tombs date from ca. 1350 1200 BC, roughly the same time that Mycenae was thriving. The people buried in the tombs were likely not from the city itself, but rather from Tsoungiza, an agricultural settlement that lies next to it. The cemetery has been named Ayia Sotira. But despite a wealth of human remains, there have been no discoveries of elite burials. Are the archaeologists yet to discover the prize tombs, or could this be…

  • images

    Sandro Vannini’s Photography: King Tut’s Ritual Figure of Sekhmet

    Housed inside Cairo’s Egyptian Museum are many of the artefacts from King Tutankhamun’s tomb (KV62) including the Ritual Figure of Sekhmet, which was discovered in 1922 by the great explorer Howard Carter and his financier Lord Carnarvon. The two men who had a trusting and close bond, as well as a love for Egyptology as explained by his modern day ancestors in a Heritage Key interview (Watch the video about Carter and Carnarvon). Included in the discovery were 34 ritual figures, believed to be of significant importance in the burial ceremony. Egyptology photographer Sandro Vannini has been capturing many of…

  • owenjarus

    Isis and Osiris: The opera!

    In three weeks the King Tut exhibit Tutankhamun: The Golden King and the Great Pharaohs will be leaving Toronto, heading off to the mountains of Denver. The exhibition has been a huge success, and has prompted a new wave of Egyptomania unseen since King Tut’s 1979 visit to the city. It wouldnt be appropriate for the king to leave without a send-off, and the Art Gallery of Ontario has an interesting one. This Wednesday the gallery will play host to the premiere of Osiris and Isis the Opera. Composed by Colin Mack and directed by Guillermo Silva-Marin, this show will…

  • publication

    The Ancient World with Bettany Hughes

    Ancient World Season with Bettany Hughes by Bettany Hughes Historian Bettany Hughes gives her personal take on the diverse cultures of the ancient world in this 2010 documentary series on More 4. The series begins with an examination of Alexandria, the city founded by Alexander the Great in 332 BC to become the world’s first global centre of culture. The programme explores Alexandria’s role as a powerhouse of science and learning, and focuses on the female mathematician, astronomer and philosopher Hypatia, the subject of the feature film Agora, starring Rachel Weisz. The series also offers a chance to catch Hughes’s…

  • Video

    Episode 8: Spring Equinox at Stonehenge

    Description Nicole Favish heads to Stonehenge to experience the Spring Equinox – the point in the year where the day and the night are of equal length. It’s also one of only four times of the year (the others being the Autumnal Equinox, and the Solstices) where the public are allowed to roam inside the stone circle. Nicole speaks to the Druids and mingles with the crowds to find out more about Stonehenge and what makes this time of year so special there. You can read more about this video in Sean’s blogpost, as well as viewing the full Ancient…

  • jonathan-yeomans

    Bettany Hughes’ TV Tour of the Ancient World Starts on More4

    Channel 4’s digital channel More4 has kicked off a juicy seven-week series of documentaries fronted by historian Bettany Hughes. The Ancient World began on Wednesday 24 March with a new film about Alexandria, the city founded by Alexander the Great in 332BC. Hughes travelled to Egypt in search of the city’s ancient origins, delved beneath the streets and explored the sunken ruins that are all that remain of what was once the largest city in the world. Alexandria is one of the world’s greatest ancient cities. It’s a hugely fascinating place and a topic ripe for exploration. For centuries it…

  • sean-williams

    AWiL Video Series: Stonehenge Spring Equinox and the Druids

    Each year up to 40,000 pour into Stonehenge for the Summer Solstice, banging drums, singing songs and generally having a wild time (here’s a guide on taking photographs at Stonehenge). But it’s just one of four times each year that the stone circle is open to the public, the other three being Winter Solstice and the Spring and Autumn Equinoxes. While some see it as a chance to get up close and personal to one of the world’s best-known landmarks, or just to have a party, to others Stonehenge is a spiritual centre, an ethereal round table from which to…

  • helen-atkinson

    Giant Anubis Poses as Ticket Tout in New York King Tut Exhibition Stunt

    You live long enough in this city and you’ll see things you couldn’t even imagine – like a 25-foot tall Anubis statue being towed around New York harbour, which is what happened yesterday morning. Anubis’s arrival heralds the one-month countdown for the exhibition, Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs, which opens April 23 at the Discovery Times Square Exposition in Manhattan, on the final leg of its journey round North America. Tickets for the show went on sale the same day. The exhibition has already wowed Tutaholics in San Francisco, and exhibitors hope that Tut will cause the…