Free Republic

Hezekiah’s religious reforms sought to centralize worshipA millennia-old latrine discovered at Tel Lachish in Israel might reveal some interesting insights into Biblical history. According to Sa’ar Ganor and Igor Kreimerman, who conducted the excavations on behalf of the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA), the latrine could be evidence of King Hezekiah’s religious reforms enacted throughout the Kingdom of Judah in the eighth century B.C.E. The archaeologists detail their discovery in the article “Going to the Bathroom at Lachish” in the November/December 2017 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review. The latrine discovered in what may be a shrine at Lachish. Photo: Courtesy of...

It’s the passion of the painting. Leonardo da Vinci’s haunting last work, depicting Jesus Christ, is coming to New York this month and is expected to fetch an estimated $100 million at a November Christie’s auction, a spokesperson said. “Salvator Mundi is a painting of the most iconic figure in the world by the most important artist of all time,” Loic Gouzer, chairman of post-war and contemporary art for Christie’s New York, said in a statement released by the auction house.

It watched as its then-owner, King Charles I, was beheaded in 1649. It was hanging in Buckingham Palace back when it was still called Buckingham House in 1703. It survived the Nazis’ 1940 London Blitz when its keepers abandoned it in their basement. By 1958, its origins had become so lost in time that it was sold for a paltry $90 to a collector from Louisiana. The long, strange journey of Leonardo da Vinci’s masterwork “Salvator Mundi” takes its next turn Wednesday at Christie’s, when it goes under the hammer for a hoped-for $100 million. It is the first Leonardo...

In a new biography by Keith Koffler, Breitbart News Executive Chairman Stephen K. Bannon shares his reminiscences about Edward Gibbon’s The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, calling the tome one of his six most formative influences, and comparing America’s challenges to those to which our forebearers succumbed. “I’m not a multiculturalist,” Bannon relates in Bannon: Always the Rebel, explaining: America has “an underlying culture, that has been passed down from Jerusalem, to Athens, to Rome, to London. It’s the belief in self-reliance, it’s the belief in the self-determination of the individual. It’s freedom to be...

he world's earliest evidence of grape wine-making has been detected in 8,000-year-old pottery jars unearthed in Georgia, making the tradition almost 1,000 years older than previously thought, researchers said Monday. Before, the oldest chemical evidence of wine in the Near East dated to 5,400-5,000 BC (about 7,000 years ago) and was from the Zagros Mountains of Iran, said the report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), a peer-reviewed US journal.

Part of this gate complex, the archaeological team found, was a large room that appears to have been a shrine. The room contained two four-horned altars, whose horns [cube-like protrusions on the four corners of an altar’s top surface] had been intentionally damaged, and several ceramic lamps, bowls, and stands. [The scholars overseeing the excavation] believe that the destroyed altars corroborate biblical references to King Hezekiah’s reforms: his efforts to centralize worship in Jerusalem and abolish it elsewhere. Most surprising of all was that in one corner of the room, the archaeologists discovered a seat carved of stone with a...

Red SeaBOULDER, Colo.- From his office in Boulder, scientist Carl Drews can pinpoint the spot where his research theorizes the biblical miracle of the parting of the Red Sea took place. Although Drews has never been there, the Google Earth Pro imaging on his computer can zoom in on the place in Egypt where Moses and the Israelites escaped death when the waters parted, according to the Book of Exodus. His virtual "pushpin" comes back with images of what is now predominately agricultural land, with orchards, irrigation canals and grape fields indicating vineyards. It is in the Eastern Nile Delta,...

During the American Revolution George Washington didn’t have any Tier-1 Spec Ops, but he made the most of what he had.When we think of modern day Special Forces, we think of Seal Team 6, Delta Force and the Green Berets. Back in the day of the American Revolution era, what did George Washington have? In a time where warfare was all about marching to fife and drum then lined up in rows to blast away with muskets at fifty paces. What did they know about unconventional warfare? According to retired U.S. Army colonel Robert Tonsetic explains that unconventional warfare was...

Deep within a mine in Canada, there is a pool of water bubbling out of the ground. It’s close to 2 miles below the surface of the earth and, according to the scientists who discovered it, it’s been there for 2 billion years, making it the oldest pool of water in the world.Previously that record was held by a pool further up in the mine, about 1.5 miles down, which was discovered in 2013 and given the age of 1.5 billion years.The scientists date the water by analysing the gases trapped inside. As the CBC explains, gases like helium...

I probably blew the format for starting a thread...and didn't see posted elsewhere. A true hero has moved on. My 56 year old self just went outside, faced the sky, and offered the best salute I've snapped in 35 years. Rest In Peace, Mitch....proud and honored to have had your aquaintance.

Zahi Hawass, who heads the ScanPyramids science committee overseeing the project, said there was no new "discovery". He said he had met other scientists from ScanPyramids who "showed us their conclusions, and we informed them this is not a discovery," he told AFP. "The pyramid is full of voids and that does not mean there is a secret chamber or a new discovery," he said. In a statement on Friday, the head of the government's antiquities council Mustafa Waziri also criticised the announcement. "The project has to proceed in a scientific way that follows the steps of scientific research and...

In 2015, divers discovered a hoard of more than 2,000 gold coins on the ocean floor off the coast of Caesarea – the largest stash ever found in the region. On an overcast morning in February 2015, Zvika Fayer was scuba diving off the ancient Israeli port town of Caesarea when he saw a glimmer on the sand. He’d gone diving in the area dozens of times before, and loved it for the teeming fish and scattered remains of shipwreck cargo and pottery that he sometimes glimpsed on the ocean floor. Many of Israel's underwater archaeological zones are open to...

The finding marks the first time archaeologists have discovered female remains in the area. A consortium of archeologists and researchers from Tel Aviv University have discovered the 3,200-year-old remains of a pregnant Egyptian woman in Southern Israel’s Timna Valley, adjacent to an ancient Egyptian temple in an area once known as “King Solomon’s Mines", according to a report in Haaretz. Situated in an arid climate with scarce natural resources to sustain life, few human corpses – and no previous female remains – have been unearthed near the copper mines, which were believed to have been exploited for 500 years between...

A skeleton found 138 years ago in Stirling has been identified as a Bronze Age farmer who worked the land more than 4,000 years ago. The discovery makes the man the earliest known resident of the ancient capital of Scotland. The farmer, who died in his twenties, has been nicknamed "Torbrex Tam", after the area of Stirling in which he was found. Tam's facial reconstruction has been carried out by a forensic artist to discover what he would have looked like. The remains were found in 1879 when workmen digging for gravel hit the slabs of a stone-lined cist. The...

Aachen city archaeologist Andreas Schaub told the dpa news agency Tuesday the road is about six meters (yards) wide and is thought to possibly date back to the second century. Schaub says the road could have connected the important settlement in Aachen to what is today the Dutch city of Maastricht.

The Hebrew Bible has several references to King Hezekiah's reforms and attempts to centralize worship in Jerusalem. 2 Chronicles 29-32 describes his efforts during the first year of his reign to cleanse and refurbish the Temple in Jerusalem, believing that his ancestors had not worshipped the God of Israel dutifully. 2 Kings 18:4 narrates that "he removed the high places (bamot), broke down the pillars (masseboth), and cut down the sacred pole (asherah)."

What about DNA? We have gotten a number of comments from people, who are concerned about DNA-contamination. Are we contaminating preserved ancient DNA material on the surface of the artefacts by touching the objects with our bare hands? It is important to have a realistic picture of the preservation conditions at the ice. The vast majority of the objects have been repeatedly exposed to the elements, even though they still look incredibly well preserved, compared to “normal” artifacts. The inside structure of the artifacts is in fact remarkably intact, but the surfaces are weathered to a varying degree. This would...

One day around 2,000 years ago, a Roman named Marcus Novius Tubula ordered an elaborate sundial, University of Cambridge researchers report after finding it intact two millennia later during excavation in the Roman town of Interamna Lirenas, near Monte Cassino, in Italy. Carved in limestone and 54 centimeters in width, the sundial's concave face was engraved with 11 hour lines intersecting three day curves. Thus the device could give indicate the season: the winter solstice, equinox and summer solstice, the archaeologists say. Its gnomon (pointer) was mostly gone, but a bit of it survived under lead fixing.

The "Pylos Combat Agate," as the seal has come to be known for the fierce hand-to-hand battle it portrays, promises not only to rewrite the history of ancient Greek art, but to help shed light on myth and legend in an era of Western civilization still steeped in mystery. The remarkably undisturbed and intact grave revealed not only the well-preserved remains of what is believed to have been a powerful Mycenaean warrior or priest buried around 1500 B.C., but also an incredible trove of burial riches that serve as a time capsule into the origins of Greek civilization. But...

A rare map of Australia from the 17th century —before Europeans had fully explored the continent —resurfaced after 350 years. Now, it's finally been restored and put on public display in Australia's capital, Canberra. Dutch cartographer Joan Blaeu created the map called "Archipelagus Orientalis," or "Eastern Archipelago," in 1659. (This newfound copy was printed in 1663.) Much of the eastern coastline of the continent is missing in this vision of Australia. But the map is notable for including the earliest details of the sighting of Tasmania by the seafarer Abel Tasman, who planted a Dutch flag on the island during...