Summer Solstice Each year on the 21th of June visitors from around the world gather at Stonehenge overnight to mark the summer solstice and to see the sunrise above the stones. Live from Stonehenge Summer Solstice 2010 – Pictures, Tweets & Trading Cards The Summer Solstice 2010 at Stonehenge Practical Information Stonehenge and the Solstices – What’s a solstice? Why is this important ? The Solstice at Stonehenge Virtual – Can’t make it to the famous stone circle? Experience the solstice online in our 3D reconstruction! Live music starts at 9pm UK time. Photographs from the 2009 Summer Solstice History The iconic…
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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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Attribution: Tom Blackwell Yorkshire Britain As well as an outstanding view, walkers on Ilkley Moor, West Yorkshire, are treated with an ancient enigma. The Swastika Stone, situated at the Northern edge of the moor has many people pondering its existence. This unusual carving is made up of four spiral arms, one of which has a further appendage. There is a cup in the loop of each arm, and one in the outer ring of each arm. With the cup in the centre of the design, the cups themselves form a 5×5 cross figure. The cups in the swastika align north-south…
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To say that archaeologist Sarah Milledge Nelson has had a productive career would be a gross understatement. The University of Denver archaeologist has held the John Evans professorship. A position that every faculty member, at her university, competes for, but only one person gets each year. She wrote the book on Korean archaeology – literally – and has written or co-written somewhere in the neighbourhood of a dozen books, as well as numerous articles. She’s done fieldwork throughout Korea and extensive work at Niuheliang, a Neolithic site in China. She even pens works of historical fiction. Right now she’s working on…
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Unrolling a papyrus (without destroying it) is an expensive and complicated process. How do you do it without causing the whole thing to crumble into unintelligable flakes? Well, last year the Royal Ontario Museum unrolled a Book of the Dead that had long been in their collection, which dated back to ca. 320 BC, the early Ptolemaic period. And they also made a cool video about how it was done. A group at the ROM called, Friends of Egypt, financed the project. A language expert and specialized conservators were brought in. The book was mounted, and, at the beginning 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…
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As any true seeker of ancient wisdom knows, it ain’t found in a Dan Brown novel. This is despite the bold claim in the preface to his latest epic, The Lost Symbol: “FACT: In 1991, a document was locked in the safe of the director of the CIA. The document is still there today. Its cryptic text includes references to an ancient portal and an unknown location underground. The document also contains the phrase ‘It’s buried out there somewhere.’ “All organizations in this novel exist, including the Freemasons, the Invisible College, the Office of Security, the SMSC, and the Institute…
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When Egyptologist Kei Yamamoto excavated The Terrace of the Great God at Abydos he came across a collection of curiously-fashioned goblets. Were these bottomless vessels evidence of the builders’ reverence to a remarkable place of ancient worship? 3,800 years ago, during the Middle Kingdom period in Egypts history, there was a temple to Osiris at Abydos. Nothing of it survives today, but based on the location of later temples, archaeologists have a rough idea of where it would have stood. They also know that just in front of the Osiris templewas an area known in the Middle Kingdom as the…
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Salima Ikram Leading Expert on Animals in Ancient Egypt Professor Salima Ikram is one of the world’s leading authorities on animals in Ancient Egypt, and has published several books about the culture, which she has loved since childhood. Dr Ikram currently holds the post of Professor of Egyptology at Cairo’s American University, and frequently appears in magazines and on television to discuss Egypt. She is also a grantee of the National Geographic Society’s Committee for Research and Exploration. Born in Lahore, Pakistan, in 1965, Dr Ikram studies Egyptology and Archaeology at Pennsylvania’s Bryn Mawr College. She then earned a M.Phil.…
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The recent discovery of the Staffordshire Hoard has turned up over 1,500 pieces of stunning gold and silver artfacts from the 7th century Dark Ages era. The find has been described as “unparalleled” and represents the largest haul of Anglo-Saxon treasure ever to have been discovered, within an area which was the heartland of theKingdom of Mercia. The Mercian tribe was particularly aggressive in their conquests and fought to expand the land in their control – centered on the valley of the river Trent, what today is the English Midlands – in wars against Northumbria and East Anglia. Out of…