The fight to save ancient treasures goes on. There are the bigger battles, the ones to save important heritage sites from war-time destruction see Kashgar, Iran and Iraq. There are the battles against neglect, as in the case of Libya. Then there are the battles against the downright stupid. The careless. The ignorant. The culturally desolate wastelands that can sometimes be found inside the human body. In Western Australia, the state government is set to prosecute a cement and quarrying company for allegedly decimating 10,000-year-old Aboriginal rock art. The Age newspaper reported that the company CEMEX admitted breaching a national…
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After almost 5,000 years of peace and quiet, a warrior thought to date from the eneolithic age has been roused from his sleep. The discovery was made in May this year, after a winter of high tides and storms led to coastal erosion in the area of Nettuno, near Anzio, south of Rome. Click here to see a video of the discovery and excavation. It is thought that the tomb may be part of a larger eneolithic or Copper Age necropolis. The warrior, nicknamed Nello by his finders, is believed to date from the third millennium BC. The discovery was…
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The “Book of the Dead” isn’t as daunting as some horror cinema flick may make it sound to be. In fact, it was a series of spells, pleas and stories which were written and compiled as a guide for the deceased to navigate across the underworld to reach paradise. johnmartine63‘s image shows a scene depicted by figures in the Chicago Field Museum’s exhibition, showing a crucial chapter of the Book of the Dead – Judgement. In the scene, the heart of the deceased is weighed against the Feather of Truth (an ostrich plume, representing the proper order of the universe…
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This year’s Egyptological Colloquium, held in the British Museum‘s fantastic BP Lecture Theatre, was roundly applauded as a great success. No fewer than eighteen gifted minds took to the lectern, as a glut of opinions, theories, excavations and discoveries were explored to a large audience’s enthralment. Some of the speeches were incredibly specialist; others not so. But what is certain is that the past week has seen some of the most compelling and intriguing axioms on one of Ancient Egypt’s greatest pieces of iconography, the Book of the Dead. From colours to kingdoms, magic bricks to evil demons; the colloquium…
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By the middle of the 13th century, Dunwich was a prosperous coastal city with a fearsome royal flotilla, extravagant priories and thousands of happy inhabitants. It was a genuine rival to London, and the envy of Europe. But just two hundred years later the city lay in ruins, torn to shreds by the tyrannical tides of the East Anglian coast; its once-illustrious ramparts reduced to ruins at the bottom of the North Sea. Today the town remains a stunning coastal retreat, and the shattered pieces of its greyfriars’ abbey broods beatifully across the beach. But now a team of experts…
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Atlantis has got to be one of the world’s most longstanding myths. Devised by Plato over 2,500 years ago, its popularity has rarely waned, and has been the birthplace for some of humanity’s most truly bizarre theories. From Gibraltar to the Aegean, it seems everyone’s had their say on the whereabouts of the mysterious island, that was supposedly created by Poseidon. Not all of Atlantis’ proponents, it must be said, are total crackpots. There’s logic, bathymetric studies and topographical data to back their claims – however spurious they may frequently seem. Others most definitely do fit the conspiracy theorist bill,…
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Virtual Qumran designer Dr. Robert Cargill is at the forefront of a rapidly evolving discipline. He uses virtual reality as a tool to conduct archaeological research on Qumran, the site where the Dead Sea Scrolls were found in caves. An archaeologist by training, Cargill has taken it upon himself to learn how to create a virtual reality model of a site, a skill most archaeologists haven’t picked up – yet. He generously took some time off from his busy schedule to talk to me about Virtual Qumran and how virtual reality is changing archaeology. Model Behaviour Archaeologists, Dr. Cargill points out, have…
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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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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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When recently the mummy formerly known as ‘Lady Hor’ underwent a scan, researchers were surprised to find that it should have been ‘Sir Hor’ from the start. Yet, this case of ‘gender confusion’ is not a unique one. The same happened to ‘The Daughter of Amunkhau’ – actually a son – from the Birmingham Museum Collection and according to curator Edward Bleiberg on the Brooklyn Museum’s blog, no less than three of the five male mummies from that museum – including Lady Hor – that were CT-scanned in the last eighteen months were at one time thought to be women.…