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.…
-
-
As this blog is being written a Canadian team is renewing excavations at the site of Madaba, a modern day Jordanian city that has at least 5,000 years of history behind it. The city is well known for its Byzantine mosaics including the 6th century AD ‘Madaba Map’, which is considered to be the oldest known map of the holy land. The Canadian excavations areled by Dr. Debra Foran and Professor Tim Harrison, both of the University of Toronto. Theyhave been taking place, off and on, for more than a decade. The theme of prosperity and collapse runs through the…
-
Plato first mentioned the lost city of Atlantis around 2,400 years ago. But now a team of American archaeologists are unearthing the secrets of a 3,500-year-old partially submerged city lying in the Saronic Gulf of Greece. Lying 60 miles southwest of the modern capital Athens, ‘Korphos-Kalamianos’ is just miles away from the ancient city of Mycenae and was most likely built between 1400 – 1200 BC. Florida State University professor Daniel J. Pullen and the University of Pennsylvania’s Assistant Professor of Classical Studies Thomas F. Tartaron discovered the site whilst conducting an initial 2007 study. Pullen claims the pair were…
-
Thermopylae is the site where a group of a few thousand Greeks held off a Persian army for three days (including a desperate last stand made on Kolonos Hill, led by the Spartans,on the third day of battle). Historians still debate whether the battle was necessary, but in any event the Greeks were eventually successful in repelling the Persian invasion after a naval victory at the Battle of Salamis. This past weekend a team of Greek scientists, at a conference in Australia, announced preliminary results ofan attempt to reconstruct the landscape of the ancient battlefield. The lead investigator, Professor Konstantinos…
-
From ‘Mummy CSI‘, we jump to ‘CSIAncient Greece’. At least, according to the NewScientist. There Ewen Callaway reports on how Stephen Tracy – Greek scholar and epigrapher – makes good use of human intelligence and machine’s computing power to attribute 24 ancient Greek inscriptions to their individual masons. Together with Michail Panagopoulos and Constantin Papaodysseus – both computer scientists at the National Technical University of Athens – they succeeded at attributing the chisel marks to six different cutters, between the years 334BCand 134BC. How? Panagopoulos’ team determined what different cutters meant each letter to look like by overlaying digital scans…
-
London is a massive metropolis, buzzing with energy and bags of history to boot. Well now you can see the city’s top ancient sights, all handily presented in our custom Google Earth flyover. For there’s plenty more to London than its monstrous museums – though they’re all pretty good too – and this map gives you the chance to plan a first-time visit, tell a friend or just take a day out to explore London’s proud heritage. There’s no shortage of events either; check our calendar page for the pick of the city’s listings, which include this year’s British Archaeology…
-
Last week I used Google Earth to show you a tour around the ancient relics of Rome, flyover over the city and looking at all the 3D models with clickables to get extra information from Heritage Key. This week, I’ve decided to spruce up Jon’s tour of the Acropolis of Ancient Greece so you can have a look at one of the most magnificent relics from the ancient age, as well as the New Acropolis Museum. Again, the tour utilises aerial photography with 3D models to give a realistic and innovative look at how the ancient world still exists in…
-
It seems that almost everybody with an opinion has taken the political, and emotional, stance that the Elgin Marbles should return to Athens, so I was surprised to come across an article by Richard Dorment this week which stood firmly on the side on the marbles remaining in the British Museum (Ok, well it was in The Telegraph, so I shouldn’t have been that surprised). For the sake of argument, let’s look at his main points: “Lord Elgin paid the enormous sum of 39,000 to acquire the marbles, and was careful to obtain documents from the Turkish Government approving their…
-
Nowhere in the international arts does the classic meet the modern quite as head on as at the Epidaurus Festival – Athens’ annual celebration of contemporary creativity and performance, which has undergone a radical rebirth in recent years. Once a stuffy institution revolving exclusively around classic Greek dramas staged in ancient venues, under the stewardship of director Yorgos Loukos since 2005, Epidaurus has been dragged kicking and screaming into the 21st century, and now showcases the cutting edge of fresh and vibrant theatre, music, literature, dance and performing arts – both national and international – in the Greek capital throughout…
-
Schools out for summer – it’s playtime now. And while there are plenty of computer games to whet your appetite for the ancient world, there’s also still a lot of fun out there to be had with a bit of glue and some decent instructions. From projects for big kids to those with slightly less nimble fingers, there’s something it seems in the ancient world for everyone. Build Your Own Stonehenge from Running Press may not come with the more than 150 rocks that feature in the life-size version, but it does come with a good two dozen that you…