Lord Elgin isn’t the only Brit taking the blame for removing some of ancient Greece’s greatest marble treasures – and the Parthenon is far from the only place raided by a zealous Brit in a bid to bring the ancient world to the smoggy streets of London. During an extensive dig carried out between 1857-59, Newton and his merry band of hacks travelled to the Ottoman – now Turkish – peninsula of Datca, where they began excavating the famous merchant city of Knidos – a picturesque Monte Carlo of the ancient Greek world, famous for its wealth, opulence and magnificent…
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If I told you a story about the eighth king of Rome, the clever ones among you might notice that something doesn’t quite add up. Your minds might start whirring, scanning the memory for facts about early Roman history… way back when, before the Republic even. And then you remember: of course! Ancient Rome was a city built on seven hills… and it had seven kings. Seven: no more no less. You might well be thinking: ‘Anyone who tries to tell me about the eighth king is either a joker or just sadly misinformed!’ Well, in that case the joke…
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The Domus Aurea, also known as the Golden House, was the emperor Nero‘s grand palace, with more than 150 rooms gilded, frescoed and clad in marble. Spanning an area of eight hectares, it was built over the Oppio, Celio, Palatine and Esquiline hills in Rome in 65 AD, following the great fire that destroyed 10 of the city’s 14 neighbourhoods. When Nero killed himself just three years after its construction, the Domus Aurea was opened as a public park. Some of it was destroyed immediately and the giant lake, known as the Stagnis Neronis, was filled so that the foundations…
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One can’t ‘tour’ the Middle East and visit Egypt without having seen the pyramids.And if you happen to be the President of the United States of America, you get the VIPtreatement: Dr.Zahi Hawass as a guide for an exclusive guided visit in the pyramids and tombs. A comment by Kate Burgess on Dr.Zahi’s facebook profile reads: ‘President Obama was so lucky to have you as his guide.‘ Areversed world?;) Watch the video here on drhawass.com, or click play:
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Does anyone know anything of the enigmatic running in an eternal circle, appearing to have two ears each, but on closer inspection, actually only having three ears? From what Ive found out, the earliest known appearance of this motif is in the Mogao caves near Dunhuang, China dating from the Sui to Tang dynasties (581-907 AD). This motif can be found in several places along the Silk Road, and appears to have adopted by the different religions along the way. It has been found in 13th century Mongol metal work, and on a copper coin, dated 1281 found in Iran.…
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Maya writing at a glance has a lot in common with Egyptian hieroglyphics. It’s a similarly baffling system of detailed glyphs, often found carved on stone stelae, altars, wooden lintels and roof beams, painted on ceramic vessels or written in a type of book made of bark paper called a codex. Early European explorers of Maya lands in the 18th and 19th centuries agreed, and often referred to Maya writing as “hieroglyphics” or “hieroglyphs”, despite the fact that it has no relation at all to its Egyptian equivalent. In reality, Maya writing is a complex and highly individual mix between…
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The British Museum houses a suspiciously large stash of ancient relics, pillaged from around the world by British explorers back when there were no laws against that kind of thing. But the countries of origin of many of these treasures now want them back, and the repatriation of artefacts has become a hot potato between the UK and countries such as Egypt, Turkey and China. Image of the New Acropolis Museum by Skoobie99. The UKs argument had, in the past, been that the origin countries do not have appropriate venues to house and display the ancient artefacts. With two major…
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Queen Tiye was known primarily as the wife of Amenhotep III and the mother of Akhenaten. She was also the mother of Sitamun, who also eventually married Amenhotep III, as well as at least 4 other children. Amenhotep III thought highly of his wife, and Tiye was similarly devoted to her husband. Several statues and stelas depict the royal couple together, and in many of them Tiye is portrayed as being as tall as Amenhotep III. Her husband also devoted many shrines and temple, as well as an artificial lake, to her. Tiye was considered a chief, albeit unofficial, advisor…
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Egypt’s first ever DNA lab exclusively dedicated to the study of ancient mummies which is located in the Egyptian Museum and helped with the quest of identifying Hatshepsut’s mummy will get a ‘sister’ lab at the Faculty of Medicine, Cairo University. One of the main purposes of the new lab is to independently reproduce the results obtained in the first lab, as a crucial element of DNA testing is independent replication of the results. DNA of mummies is different from that of people alive: “It is very old and fragile, so we have to extract and multiply it before tests.”…
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When in 79 ADthe Vesuvius errupted full force, it destroyed Herculaneum and Pompeii, covering them with tons of ash, rock and debris.At the same time, it left scientists with an ‘instant capture of time’, capturing daily life in those Roman towns.Now professor Brent Seales and his EDUCE – ‘Enhanced Digital Unwrapping for Conservation and Exploration‘ – team will have a crack at deciphering some of the items ‘preserved’ due to being in the air-tight vault of ashes: two 2,000-year-old papyrus scrolls found in a villa that is thought to have belonged to Julius Caesar‘s father in law Lucius Calpurnius Piso…