Free Republic

A bronze coin that was in circulation in the time of King Antiochus IV Epiphanes, who decreed that the Jews must be annihilated and during whose reign the Maccabean revolt made famous in the Chanukah story took place, has been discovered at the Tower of David archaeological site in Jerusalem. The discovery, made during routine maintenance work, was a surprise to archaeologists working at the Tower of David citadel. The archaeologists believed they had thoroughly excavated the site during the last few decades. Nevertheless, chief conservator Orna Cohen noticed a metal object among the stones of the Hasmonean Wall inside...

The temple, 36 feet across, falls within what is believed to be the perimeter of a large ceremonial site in the Tlatelolco neighborhood. Archaeologists excavating the site of a demolished supermarket in Mexico City have unearthed a circular temple built more than 650 years ago for an Aztec deity. The platform, about 36 feet in diameter and four feet tall, was part of the sacred area of the city-state Tlatelolco and was likely dedicated to the god of wind Ehecatl-Quetzalcoatl. It now stands just yards away from the site of the Tlatelolco 1968 massacre, where Mexican soldiers killed protesting students....

Excavators unearth the ancient 'thinking man' jug at at an archaeological site in Yehud, Israel (Israel Antiquities Authority) ================================================================================================================================== An ancient jug bearing the image of a "reflective" person has been discovered in Israel. The vessel dates back to the Middle Bronze Age and is believed to be approximately 3,800 years old. Archaeologists at the site in Yehud said similar pottery jugs have never before been found in the country. The jug is believed to have been a funeral offering to a "respected member of the ancient settlement," a statement from Israel Antiquities Authority said. It was found alongside daggers,...

Archeologists from the Institute for Ancient Near Eastern Studies (IANES) at the University of Tübingen have uncovered a large Bronze Age city not far from the town of Dohuk in northern Iraq. The excavation work has demonstrated that the settlement, which is now home to the small Kurdish village of Bassetki in the Autonomous Region of Kurdistan, was established in about 3000 BC and was able to flourish for more than 1200 years. The archeologists also discovered settlement layers dating from the Akkadian Empire period (2340-2200 BC), which is regarded as the first world empire in human history. Scientists headed...

ANCIENT BEVERAGE BREWED IN MILWAUKEE MILWAUKEE, WISCONSIN — NPR reports that archaeologist Bettina Arnold of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and her research team worked with Lakefront Brewery to try to re-create an alcoholic beverage that had been placed in a bronze cauldron and buried in a grave sometime between 400 and 450 B.C. in what is now Germany. The recipe was based upon the research of paleobotanist Manfred Rösch, who analyzed the residues in the Iron Age cauldron. He found evidence of honey, meadowsweet, barley, and mint—ingredients in a type of beverage known as a braggot.

Full title.......Ghost fleet: Explorers accidentally find a graveyard of more than 40 perfectly preserved ancient shipwrecks at the bottom of the Black Sea............................ The Black Sea Maritime Archaeology Project has been scouring the sea bed of the Black Sea The primary focus is to carry out geophysical surveys, but over 40 shipwrecks have also been found They are 'astonishingly well preserved' due to the lack of oxygen in the Black Sea's 'dead zone' The findings provide new information on the communities living on the Black Sea coast

The eyes of a visiting archaeologist lit up when he was shown the 10 tiny, tarnished discs that had sat unnoticed in storage for two and a half years at a dig on a southern Japan island. He had been to archaeological sites in Italy and Egypt, and recognized the “little round things” as old coins, including a few likely dating to the Roman Empire. “I was so excited I almost forgot what I was there for, and the coins were all we talked about,” said Toshio Tsukamoto of the Gangoji Institute for Research of Cultural Property in Nara, an...

Israeli archaeologists have unearthed a 2,900-year-old gate-shrine they say confirms the biblical story of King Hezekiah, who mandated the worship of God and the rejection of all other deities. The gate-shrine in Tel Lachish National Park was uncovered decades ago, but a new excavation has completely exposed the gate, which is the largest one known from the First Temple period. "The size of the gate is consistent with the historical and archaeological knowledge we possess, whereby Lachish was a major city and the most important one after Jerusalem," said excavation director Sa'ar Ganor. According to the Book of Kings, he...

Archaeologists have unearthed a city-gate and shrine dating to the First Temple Era. An Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) team headed by Sa'ar Ganor discovered the ruins in the Tel Lachish National Park. "Tel Lachish was the most important city in Judea, after Jerusalem," Ganor told Tazpit Press Service (TPS). "This is the biggest city-gate we have found in the Land of Israel." "The size of the gate is consistent our historical and archaeological data that indicates Lachish was a major city and the most important one after Jerusalem," Ganor said. The city gate is approximately 24 by 24 meters in...

Elizabeth Armstrong Moore September 27, 2016 In 1950, a collection of 29 tablets was discovered in the ruins of Ugarit, an ancient city in the northern region of present-day Syria, but only one had survived the intervening centuries well enough to be deciphered. Known as H6, the 3,500-year-old clay tablet revealed a simple hymn specifying the use of nine lyre strings and the intervals between them, much like an "ancient guitar tab," reports ClassicFM, which has recently picked up the story. The resulting melody, it says, isn't just the oldest discovered in the world, but "utterly enchanting." Musician and composer...

Full title: Human skeleton discovered at Antikythera shipwreck after more than 2,000 years at the bottom of the sea Buried beneath sand and the fragments of ancient pottery, researchers have discovered the 2,000-year-old remains of a sailor who died upon the ill-fated 'Antikythera ship.' Archaeologists have investigated the famous shipwreck off a tiny Greek island for which it's named for over a century, revealing a trove of remarkable artefacts – including the mysterious 'Antikythera Mechanism,' thought to be a 'guide to the galaxy.'

Archaeologists believe they have found the location of the battle between David and Goliath, narrated in the Book of Samuel, in a mysterious two-gated city from the early 10th century. Known by its modern name, Khirbet Qeiyafa, the site is located in the the Elah Valley, 20 miles southwest of Jerusalem. The excavation project took nearly seven years, and was led by Professor Yosef Garfinkel, the Yigal Yadin Chair of Archeology at Hebrew UniversityÂ’s Institute of Archeology in Jerusalem, together with SaÂ’ar Ganor from the Israel Antiquities Authority and Professor Michal Hazel of Southern Adventist University of Tennessee. Through the...

O n the surface, Oppenheim looks like your typical German town resting along the banks of the Rhine River. But there's more to Oppenheim than beer halls and a Gothic-style cathedral from the Middle Ages. Beneath its narrow cobblestone streets lies something deeper—an entire labyrinth of tunnels and cellars. “The town is practically honeycombed with cavities,” Wilfried Hilpke, a tour guide with Oppenheim’s tourism office, tells Smithsonian.com. Hilpke should know. For the past ten years, he’s spent much of his time leading hour-long hardhat tours of Oppenheim’s elaborate tunnel system, taking visitors through a journey that covers just a fraction...

How smart were human-like species of the Stone Age? New research published in the Journal of Archaeological Science by a team led by paleoanthropologist April Nowell of the University of Victoria reveals surprisingly sophisticated adaptations by early humans living 250,000 years ago in a former oasis near Azraq, Jordan. The research team from UVic and partner universities in the US and Jordan has found the oldest evidence of protein residue -- the residual remains of butchered animals including horse, rhinoceros, wild cattle and duck -- on stone tools. The discovery draws startling conclusions about how these early humans subsisted in...

Cairo (AFP) - The Egyptian Museum in Cairo is showcasing for the first time the earliest writing from ancient Egypt found on papyrus, detailing work on the Great Pyramid of Giza, antiquities officials said Thursday. The papyri were discovered near Wadi el-Jarf port, 25 kilometres (15 miles) south of the Gulf of Suez town of Zafarana, the antiquities ministry said. The find by a French-Egyptian team unearths papers telling of the daily lives of port workers who transported huge limestone blocks to Cairo during King Khufu's rule to build the Great Pyramid, intended to be his burial structure. One document...

The archaeological site of Hattusha, the capital of the Hittite civilization which entered the UNESCO World Heritage list in 1986, was visited by a number of ambassadors in Turkey over the weekend as part of its two-day 30th anniversary celebrations organized by the governor’s office in the Central Anatolian province Çorum. The ancient site is notable for its cuneiform inscriptions, one of the most important discoveries at the site, consisting of official correspondence and contracts, as well as legal codes, procedures for cult ceremonies, oracular prophecies and literature of the ancient Near East. The cuneiforms entered the UNESCO Memory...

Excavating toilets might not seem like glamorous work. But this team of archaeologists were not complaining when they unearthed 87,000 artifacts dating back to the American Revolution while digging up 250-year-old outhouses in Philadelphia. The Commonwealth Heritage Group made the fascinating find on a dig at the site of the new Museum of the American Revolution, which opens next year. Twelve of the brick bathrooms were uncovered during the dig just two blocks away from Philadelphia's Independence Hall, the Huffington Post reported. Intricate crockery, finely detailed jugs, wig curlers and an array of beads were found during the excavation....

Along a river in northern Germany, thousands of men lined up for a pitched battle. Some had come great distances, determined to seize or hold this modest waterway. They went at it mercilessly, leaving hundreds dead, many shot in the back while fleeing. Victory was decisive. [1250 BC]

Maltese prehistory may have just been extended by 30,000 years. The verdict of experts from the London Natural History Museum has revived the theory that a tooth discovered in Għar Dalam in 1917 may prove Neanderthals once roamed the island. The claim is not new. It was made in the 1920s by two British anthropologists, but four decades later the theory no longer had credence. “Anyone who wrote a history book from 1964 till today will say there were never any Neanderthals on Malta. According to them, the first people to come here were Sicilian farmers around 7,000 years ago,”...

Archaeologists in Cambodia have found multiple, previously undocumented medieval cities not far from the ancient temple city of Angkor Wat, the Guardian can reveal, in groundbreaking discoveries that promise to upend key assumptions about south-east Asia’s history. The Australian archaeologist Dr Damian Evans, whose findings will be published in the Journal of Archaeological Science on Monday, will announce that cutting-edge airborne laser scanning technology has revealed multiple cities between 900 and 1,400 years old beneath the tropical forest floor, some of which rival the size of Cambodia’s capital, Phnom Penh.