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One of the significant events in ancient history is the conquest of Babylon by the Persian king, Cyrus the Great. On October 4th, 539 BC, the Persian Army entered the city of Babylon, which was then the capital of the Babylonian state (in central Iraq). This was a bloodless campaign and no prisoners were taken. Later, on November 9th, King Cyrus of Persia visited the city. Babylonian history tells us that Cyrus was greeted by the people, who spread a pathway of green twigs before him as a sign of honor and peace (sulmu). Cyrus greeted all Babylonians in peace...

Avebury Stone Is Found to Rival Stonehenge By Stuart Coles, PA News Archaeologists working at the ancient Avebury stone circle have been surprised to uncover what could be one of the largest standing stones in the country. Experts at English Heritage and the National Trust say the stone could weigh in at 100 tons, rivalling the largest megaliths at its fellow site in Wiltshire, Stonehenge. The surprise discovery was made during work at the 4,500 year-old stone circle to straighten two stones known as the Cove, which have begun to lean over the last 300 years and which it was...

<p>There could be an unexpected beneficiary of the war in Iraq: the environment.</p> <p>More specifically, the late, great Mesopotamian marshes -- a decade ago, the largest wetland by far in the Middle East, and a site considered by many religious scholars as the inspiration for the Garden of Eden in the Bible and Koran.</p>

'Earliest writing' found in China By Paul Rincon BBC Science First attempt at writing .. on a tortoise shell Signs carved into 8,600-year-old tortoise shells found in China may be the earliest written words, say archaeologists. The symbols were written down in the late Stone Age, or Neolithic Age. They predate the earliest recorded writings from Mesopotamia - in what is now Iraq - by more than 2,000 years. The archaeologists say they bear similarities to written characters used thousands of years later during the Shang dynasty, which lasted from 1700-1100 BC. But the discovery has already generated controversy, with...

A depressing thought: the Iraq war proves that in the year 2003 AD, the world has not essentially changed since 2003 BC. A military power can attack a weak nation, conquer its territory and plunder its resources. There is no world law, no world moral order. Might is right. The weapons are of the 21st century, but they serve 19th century aims. This is a classical colonial war. Iraq is becoming an American colony, to remain so for a long time. The pretexts come from the old colonialist phrase-book. A country is conquered in order to "liberate" the natives from...

In 1582 Pope Gregory XIII established our modern calendar and fixed the rules determining the date of Easter. This year Easter falls on April 20, but it can shift from year to year by as much as a month on Gregory's calendar. Finding Easter's date for a given year requires a surprising degree of scientific acumen. The last things one might expect to see in, say, the Book of Common Prayer are tables of numbers and rules for mathematical calculations—but there they are, nevertheless. At first glance, this seems to exemplify a kind of harmony between religion and science, a...

A new, laboratory-based affirmation of the existence of a united Israelite monarchy headed by kings David and Solomon in the 10th century BCE has been revealed as the result of excavations carried out by the Hebrew University of Jerusalem Institute of Archeology. So reports the Jewish Agenda. The findings have particular significance in view of the debate existing among archaeologists as to the authenticity of the Biblical account of the two kings and the period and extent of their reign. The late famed Hebrew University archaeologist Prof.Yigal Yadin argued more than 40 years ago that a series of monumental structures...

UR, Iraq (AP) - This is the place where civilization arose, where an ingenious race of people irrigated fields, forged agricultural tools and devised the written word. Some 6,000 years after this glorious beginning, U.S. forces drove sophisticated machines of war through the cradle of mankind. But the fighting, which was heavy in the nearby city of Nasiriyah, spared the sand-swept ruins of Ur and the two families who remain the site's guardians and guides. "We are proud," said Dhief Nauos of his job as custodian of one of Iraq's greatest historic treasures. Five other men standing outside two humble...

April 14, 2003 7:15 a.m.Our Western MobFrom the graveyard of Kabul to the quagmire of Iraq to the looting of Baghdad. The jubilation of liberating millions from fascism and removing the world’s most odious dictator apparently lasted about 12 hours. I was listening to a frustrated Mr. Rumsfeld last Friday in a news briefing as he tried to deal with a host of furious and crazy questions — a journalistic circus that was nevertheless predictable even before the war started.I thought immediately of the macabre aftermath to the battle of Arginusae in 406 B.C. After destroying a great part...

The trashing of civilisation April 15 2003 This is a tragedy with echoes of past catastrophes: the Mongol sack of Baghdad in 1258, and the fifth-century destruction of the library of Alexandria. For the loss is not just Iraq's but ours, too. Iraq has not been called the cradle of civilisation for nothing. Five thousand years ago it was the birthplace of writing, cities, codified law, mathematics, medicine and astronomy. The House of Wisdom in ninth-century Baghdad kept classical scholarship alive and promoted a vigorous intellectual reaction to it while Europe was stumbling through the dark ages. In 1976 -...

Dawn of American religion found By Roger Highfield, Science Editor (Filed: 15/04/2003) The oldest image of a deity in the Americas has been discovered by archaeologists - pushing back the origin of religion there by 1,000 years. A 4,000-year-old gourd fragment bearing an image of the Staff God A 4,250-year-old gourd fragment found in a looted cemetery on the Peruvian coast, 120 miles north of Lima, bears an archaic image of the Staff God, which was the principal deity in the region for millennia. "Like the cross, the Staff God is a clearly recognisable religious icon," said Jonathan Haas, of...

When mobs in Baghdad entered the Iraqi national museum and destroyed the artifacts, little did they know that they were wiping out large traces of history. Not just of Iraq, but that of the entire world. So, when the museum deputy director Nabhal Amin openly wailed and cried in anguish it was perfectly understandable. She picked up the broken pieces of the artifacts, her helplessness on display for the entire world to see. "They have looted or destroyed 170,000 items of antiquity dating back thousands of years...They were worth billions of dollars," she said, sobbing. The museum grounds were full...

<p>Deep in the ruins of a Hebrew town sacked nearly 3,000 years ago by an Egyptian Pharaoh, scientists say they have discovered new evidence for the real-life existence of the Bible's legendary kingdoms of David and Solomon.</p> <p>The evidence refutes recent claims by other researchers who insist that the biblical monarchs were merely mythic characters, created by scholars and scribes of antiquity who made up the tales long after the events to buttress their own morality lessons.</p>

At a U.S. Central Command briefing on March 26, 2003, it was stated that Iraqi forces have placed military and communications equipment near the 2,000-year-old Ctesiphon arch located on the banks of the Tigris. This situation, similar to Iraq's deliberate placement of fighter planes near the 4,000-year-old ziggurat at Ur during the 1991 Gulf War, illustrates the threat of destruction plaguing the cradle of civilization. Iraqi officials reported in 1992 that 4,000 artifacts went missing during the Gulf War. Only 20 had been returned by 1998. Post-war sanctions on Iraq limited the government's financial ability to preserve antiquities, protect sites,...

Pillagers Strip Iraqi Museum of Its Treasure By JOHN F. BURNS AGHDAD, Iraq, April 12 — The National Museum of Iraq recorded a history of civilizations that began to flourish in the fertile plains of Mesopotamia more than 7,000 years ago. But once American troops entered Baghdad in sufficient force to topple Saddam Hussein's government this week, it took only 48 hours for the museum to be destroyed, with at least 170,000 artifacts carried away by looters. Advertisement The full extent of the disaster that befell the museum only came to light today, as the frenzied looting that swept much...

Genetic evidence links Jews to their ancient tribe By Judy Siegel JERUSALEM (November 20) - Genetic evidence continues to provide additional proof to the claims that the Jewish people are descended from a common ancient Israelite father: Despite being separated for over 1,000 years, Sephardi Jews of North African origin are genetically indistinguishable from their brethren from Iraq, according to The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. They also proved that Sephardi Jews are very close genetically to the Jews of Kurdistan, and only slight differences exist between these two groups and Ashkenazi Jews from Europe. These conclusions are reached in an...

Baseball: ancient Egypt's favourite ball game April 10 2003 at 05:30AM Charleston, South Carolina - Egyptologist and baseball fanatic Peter Piccione made the connection between pharaohs and fly balls soon after he first viewed hieroglyphics at Hatshepsut's temple in Deir-el-Bahari. There was King Thutmose III - large, strong and the ruler of Egypt in 15th century BC - holding a slender stick that looked like a bat in one hand and a grapefruit-sized ball in the other. Before the ancient pharaoh, depicted on a wall at the shrine of Hathor, there are two priests, each with a ball in his...

Carbon-14 dates from Israel may help settle a scholarly debate that has raged over the past decade: whether David and his son Solomon, founders of the ancient kingdom of Israel, were the larger-than-life nation builders the Bible describes or largely mythical figures, as some recent historians have claimed. The new dates from Tel Rehov, a major Iron Age site in northern Israel, favor the traditional view that King Solomon was both real and powerful. "The implications are enormous for recreating the history of ancient Israel," says archaeologist Lawrence Stager of Harvard University. Researchers led by Amihai Mazar of the Hebrew...

Scientist Defends Account of Exodus By RICHARD N. OSTLING The Associated Press Thursday, April 10, 2003; 12:18 PM A British scientist is making two claims about Jewish history this Passover season that could surely spark discussion over the Seder meal. Colin J. Humphreys of Cambridge University has concluded that science backs traditional beliefs that the Israelites' exodus from Egypt was led by Moses pretty much the way the Bible and the Haggadah ritual tell it. He also says that Mount Sinai, where Scripture says Moses received God's Law, is located in Saudi Arabia, not Egypt's Sinai Peninsula - moving a...

Khufu and the chamber of secrets November 28 2002 at 02:24PM By Owen Coetzer History calls it a tomb. Yet no mummy was ever found in it. It is attributed to the 4th Dynasty pharaoh Khufu, (Cheops in Greek) yet the only reference to his name is upside-down in red paint on some quarry blocks discovered by sheer accident in an almost totally inaccessible pressure-relieving vault high above the so-called King's Chamber. In fact, no inscriptions of any kind appear anywhere in the Great Pyramid. And absolute proof is still needed - after some 4 500 years - to attribute its...