A trip to India with my photographer husband, Tim, found us celebrating the New Year in Varanasi, India. There’s actually almost nothing physically ancient in what claims to be the oldest continually inhabited city on earth. The city was once ruled by King Ashoka, but the Moguls, who invaded from the North and ruled India for nearly two hundred years ending 1707, made rubble of the place, and so you look in vain for anything built before the 18th century (although check out the ancient Dhamek Stupa – one of the few surviving ancient sites – if you visit). However,…
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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…
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Two British film-makers have discovered what they believe to be the source of the 1,900-year old aqueduct built by the emperor Trajan in the early second century AD. The underground chambers were found and filmed after some years of research into Roman hydraulics by the documentary-makers Ted O’Neill and his father Michael O’Neill. According to Ted, it took some perseverance to find the location, which was hidden beneath a disused church some 30-40km north-west of Rome. Despite difficulties and delays in getting access to the site, the O’Neills were finally able to enter the underground chambers of the church in…
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The rich and famous people of ancient Egypt lived a decadent lifestyle with fine wine, sex, high fashion, and plenty of partying. How do they compare with their equivalents today – the modern western celebrity set? The main differences might be regarding who were the richest people then, and who are the richest people now. In ancient Egypt the pharaoh was at the top of the pyramid and his family, noble people who owned land, and the priests came after. Scribes, architects and doctors were well off, and skilled craftsmen also had many privileges. Peasants and unskilled workers were low…
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The official announcement is coming a week today (January 27) but news continues totrickle out about the exhibition of the Terracotta Warriors of the First Emperor, Qin Shi Huang, set to hit Toronto in June. Officials have been tight-lipped about this exhibit so what we’ve been hearing has been in drips and drabs. Last week we learned that the Toronto show is going to be the largest Terracotta Warrior’s showever to hit North America. We also learned that it will likely be one of four Canadian stops -with Toronto coming up first. There will be a Canadian tour, Montreal has…
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The remains of a temple of Queen Berenike – wife of King Ptolemy III – have been discovered by archaeologists in Alexandria, Egypt. Dr. Zahi Hawass said the remains discovered are 60 meters by 15 meters, and extend under Ismail Fahmy street. About 600 Ptolemaic statues – amongst which are beautiful depictions of the cat goddess Bastet – were also unearthed. Dr. Mohamed Abdel Maqsoud, Head of Antiquities of Lower Egypt, said that the mission excavating at Kom el Dikka on property of the Alexandria Security Forces included 18 skilled excavators and restorers. The large collection of Bastet statues indicates…
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Discovered inside the Tomb of King Tutankhamun, inside black resin-covered wooden shrines which were accessible via double doors, were 34 ritual figures. Of significant importance during the ritual ceremony, these statuettes are believed to assist the King Tut’s passage to the afterlife. Upon discovering the shrines in KV62, the great explorer Howard Carter found only one of the boxes had been raided by tomb robbers, with the rest laying undisturbed since antiquity. The ritual figures are now housed inside Cairo’s Egyptian Museum and have been captured on film by Sandro Vannini, who has photographed Egypt’s greatest treasures including the famous…
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“There’s a passing on of knowledge for over 1,500 years spanning the whole Bronze Age, between our Stone Age ancestors who built Stonehenge and our Druid ancestors who wrote down folklore that we now take from Ireland, Scotland and Wales,” says Stonehenge Druid Frank Somers. “And that means that folklore has earlier origins going right back.” We’re stood outside a stately Wiltshire manor on a blustery winter’s morning, self apparent in the unruliness of Frank’s flowing locks. Barely yards away lies Bluestonehenge, a stone circle even older than Stonehenge itself: 2009’s biggest discovery. But Frank sees it more than an…
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A splendid exhibition in New York – ‘The Lost World of Old Europe: The Danube Valley’ – brings to the United States for the first time more than 250 objects recovered by archaeologists from the graves, towns, and villages of Old Europe, a period of related prehistoric cultures that achieved a peak of sophistication and creativity between 5000 and 4000BC in what is now southeastern Europe. The cultures mysteriously collapsed by 3500 BC, possibly brining a shift from female to male power. The exhibition – made possible through loan agreements with over 20 museums in Romania, Bulgaria, and Moldova –…
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Heritage Key has learned that the Terracotta Warriorsexhibition, whichiscoming to Toronto in June, will be the largest one ever seen in Canada or the United States. Right now the warriors are at the National Geographic Museum in Washington DC. That show, containing more than 100 objects (including 15 terracotta figures), is billed on its website as being the largest display of terracotta figures and tomb artifacts ever to travel to the US. Dr. Dan Rahimi, of the Royal Ontario Museum, dropped Heritage Key a tantalizing nugget of information today in an interview. In response to a question he said that…