Penn Museums world-renowned Mesopotamian Collection from Ur is the centrepiece of a new long-term exhibition exploring Iraqs Ancient Cultural Heritage that opens October 25th.The exhibition will contain field notes of previous expeditions to the region, photographs, archival documents as well as more than 220 extraordinary ancient artefacts unearthed at the excavation. Famous artefacts such as the Ram-Caught-in-the-Thicket, the Great Lyre with a gold and lapis lazuli bull’s head, and Queen Puabi’s jewelry, as well as her headdress and other treasures, will be on display at ‘Iraq’s Ancient Past: Rediscovering Ur’s Royal Cemetery‘. In 1922 – the same year that Howard…
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Come to Xian, and youll no doubt head straight to see the citys famous Terracotta Warriors exhibit, or the mausoleum of Chinas first emperor, Qin Shi Huang. You might make the trip out to the Big Wild Goose Pagoda or Maoling Mausoleum, and check out a couple of the museums, such as the Shaanxi History Museum, Xi’an Banpo Museum and the Xian Museum. But theres a lot more to Xian than these, admittedly stunning, sites. The ancient capital also has a stash of hidden treasures. Heres a handful of my favourites. Tomb of the Second Emperor Whether or not this…
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Workmen may just have downed tools after laser scanning the Sphinx, but a new Egyptian-Japanese venture aims to seek out even more archaeological hotspots along the Nile, using technology at the bleeding egde of science. The far-flung team, headed by Egypt’s National Authority for Remote Sensing and Space Sciences, hopes to reach areas in the river’s western Delta and nearby El-Beheira governorate, whose geography has resisted conventional techniques thus far. The team has already employed satellite imaging and remote sensing devices to map heritage sites in the area, and experts are confident more will appear when a second phase gets…
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Work is ongoing in China on a major project to restore Daming Palace – the 1,100 year-old ruling centre of the Tang Dynasty in modern Xi’an (formerly the Tang capital, Chang’an) – and around it build an expansive National Relics Park. The project was officially launched in October of last year, and is hoped to be completed by October 2010. Daming Palace was established in 634 AD, in the eight year of the reign of Emperor Taizong. It was the largest of three major palaces in Chang’an, and the political hub of the empire for 240 years, until the Tang…
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Attribution: clare_and_ben Swinside England Key Dates The date of the Swinside stone circle is unknown. The Swinside stone circle is a nearly perfect, 29m diameter circle located in the small hamlet of Swinside, in Cumbria, England. The circle is also referred to as Sunkenkirk, a reference to the devil who — as legend has it — cast the stone into the ground to derail plans to build a church. The circle is largely isolated and is embedded in the land miles from the nearest farm track. Though many of the stones remain standing today, several have been bent inwards —…
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Work is ongoing in China on a major project to restore Daming Palace the 1,100 year-old ruling centre of the Tang Dynasty in modern Xian (formerly the Tang capital, Changan) and around it build an expansive National Relics Park. The project was officially launched in October of last year, and is hoped to be completed by October 2010. Daming Palace was established in 634 AD, in the eight year of the reign of Emperor Taizong. It was the largest of three major palaces in Changan, and the political hub of the empire for 240 years, until the Tang moved their…
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Attribution: JJKDC Rome Italy Key Dates Ostia is believed to have been founded by Rome’s fourth king, Ancus Marcius, in the 7th century BC, although only archaeological evidence from the 4th century BC has been found. It was expanded in the first century AD under the rule of Tiberius. By the 2nd century AD, more than 50,000 people lived there, with that number growing further to 75,000 a century later. By the time Constantine I took reign, the town had started evolving from a port into a popular holiday destination for Roman aristocrats. When the Roman Empire fell, the town fell…
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A possible connection has been established between the tiny, 5,000-year-old carved figurine discovered last month at Links of Noltland on Orkney and a lintel stone found on the nearby remote islet Holm of Papa Westray. Archaeologists identified a potential correlation between the distinctive heavy, curved eyebrows and dotted eyes on the so-called Orkney Venus which is thought to be Scotlands earliest representation of the human face and markings that theyd earlier seen etched into the lintel rock, which lies inside a large chambered Neolithic burial cairn. Mike Brooks, of the Historic Scotland photographic unit, was dispatched to Holm of Papa…
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BRITISH WRITER DISCOVERS THE PHARAOHS LOST UNDERGROUND Wednesday, 16 September 2009 A British writer has staked claim to finally finding the lost underground of the Pharaohs which has been rumoured to exist since the construction of the Great Pyramid nearly 5,000 years ago, creating a stir that is set to rock the Egyptological world. Armed only with the forgotten memoirs of a nineteenth century British engineer, history and science writer Andre Coolings, tracked down the entrance to this forgotten tunnel system and was the first to explore it in modern times. Is it possible that Coolings has beaten the Egyptologists…
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In Zahi Hawass in the Valley of the Kings: Part 1, Dr. Hawass caught us up on how excavations were progressing in the Central Valley area of the Valley of the Kings, particularly with the northern side, between the tombs of Ramesses II and Merneptah, and the area to the south of Tutankhamuns tomb. Watch part 2! In my analysis of what the Part 1 said – and left unsaid – I pointed out that theWestern Valley dig was conspicuously absent from the discussion. Well, it remains such. The second video makes no mention of KV64 at all, much less…