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Archaeologists from the Israel Antiquities Authority have unearthed parts of a Roman and Byzantine settlement just outside the modern city of Kiryat Gat. The researchers believe the settlement was founded in the first century b.c. and flourished for more than 600 years, thanks to its location along an important road connecting the Judean Mountains with the coastal plain. The settlement seems to have been especially prosperous during the fifth and sixth centuries a.d., based on evidence of an extensive building campaign as well as distinctive types of pottery, coins, and decorative marbles found at the site. Also dating to this...

One of the most spectacular Byzantine mosaics ever discovered in Israel was finally revealed to the public for the first time, according to a statement released by the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA). The so-called Be'er Shema (Birsama) mosaic was first uncovered three decades ago near Khirbat Be'er Shema in the western Negev, but spent years undergoing intensive conservation and preservation work. "Over the ensuing years since its discovery, the mosaic floor's state of conservation deteriorated," said IAA's Ami Shahar. "Upon completion of our expert team's intensive efforts, the results enable the public to view and appreciate a spectacular 1,600-year-old work...

Haaretz reports that archaeologists uncovered rare and somewhat perplexing figurines from two 1,500-year-old Christian burials at the site of Tel Malhata in the Negev Desert. The discovery was made during salvage excavations on the grounds of the Nevatim airbase, where previous archaeological work has revealed a rich history of human occupation from the Bronze Age through the Byzantine period. During the latest excavations, teams located some 155 tombs, but two burials contained objects different from anything else found at the site -- bone and wooden figurines with facial features resembling Africans. Two of them were carved from ebony, a rare...

Archaeologists believe they have rediscovered the lost Byzantine city of Tharais in southern Jordan, according to a Türkiye Today report. The settlement is thought to have been an important religious and trading center along the Roman and Byzantine road network connecting Zoar to central Jordan. The city appears on the famous sixth-century a.d. Madaba Mosaic Map, the oldest surviving map of the Middle East, but its exact location has remained a mystery. Over the past several years, an archaeological project has reexamined historical documents and inscriptions, while conducting field surveys outside of the modern town of El-'Iraq near the southeastern...

A sixth-century "mini" ice age may have been "the straw that broke the camel's back" that led to the final disintegration of the Western Roman Empire, a new study claims...By studying rocks carried by icebergs from Greenland all the way to Iceland's west coast, a team of researchers has uncovered what they believe is more evidence for the severity of this mini ice age. Their findings, published April 8 in the journal Geology, point to the prolonged cooling being a key factor in the eventual decline of the Western Roman Empire — although not all historians agree...Economic crisis, government corruption,...

He had no doubts at first, but slowly they emerged. He was struck, he says, by the fact that the first coins bearing Muhammad’s name did not appear until the late 7th century — six decades after the religion did. He traded ideas with some scholars in Saarbrücken who in recent years have been pushing the idea of Muhammad’s nonexistence. They claim that “Muhammad” wasn’t the name of a person but a title, and that Islam began as a Christian heresy. Prof. Kalisch didn’t buy all of this. Contributing last year to a book on Islam, he weighed the odds...

Built as Byzantium around 657 BC and then renamed Constantinople in the 4th century CE after Constantine the Great made the city his capital, the city of Istanbul officially received its present name on this day in 1930. Surprisingly, the capital of the Byzantine Empire was not renamed after the Ottomans captured it in 1453. Variations of “Constantinople” continued to be used by the Turkish-speaking conquerors long after they took control of the city. “It’s a fact that the Ottomans called Istanbul ‘Kostantiniyye,’ among other names, in thousands of their official documents,” said Christoph Herzog, chair of Turkish studies at...

As part of the series of tapestries by Peter Paul Rubens on the life of Constantine, we find a vignette from the early life of the first Christian Roman emperor showing him slaying a lion with an audience of Roman soldiers looking on. This is an odd anecdote from the life of Constantine and one that is not commonly known. Was it based on an actual event? Or was it one of those medieval interpolations meant to enhance the reputation of an ancient hero as a courageous and powerful hero? Let's take a look at the ancient sources. We know...

This video explores how books were published and distributed in ancient Rome. Why the Romans Stopped Reading Books | 10:25 toldinstone | 555K subscribers | 71,742 views | March 21, 2025 Chapters0:00 Introduction0:30 Literacy and texts1:19 Libraries2:09 Scrolls and codices3:13 Bookstores and booksellers4:07 Helix5:13 Publication6:17 Luxury and vintage books7:14 Bestsellers8:10 The end of the book trade

In the article dedicated to the Mardaites, the Christian highlanders who maintained their autonomy between Byzantium and the Caliphate, we mentioned the Akritai (or Akritoi), a group of light infantry soldiers who guarded the eastern frontiers of the Byzantine Empire...they were recruited from the region's peasants, provided they were of Hellenic origin; Armenians were also included... These were free men who, as mentioned earlier, cultivated the farms granted to them... An alternative view identifies them more as landowners rather than laborers, meaning they did not personally work the land but had workers for that purpose. Some even amassed large estates...

The Bulgars were Turkic semi-nomadic warrior tribes that some believe can be traced back to Central Asia. ... The main Bulgar tribes were first united under one ruler, Khan Kubrat of the Dulo clan, between 630 and 635 AD. ... Not long after his death...Kubrat’s five sons separated and settled in various parts of Europe. The eldest son, Batbayan, remained in his homeland and ultimately became a vassal of the rival Khazar tribes. The second son, Kotrag, migrated to Volga (part of Russia) and founded his own country, Volga Bulgaria. Most importantly for us, the third brother, Asparuh, led his...

During excavations at the Khirbat el-Masani site, a Byzantine monastery dated between the 4th and 7th centuries, several tombs were uncovered. Among them, one stood out in particular: a burial where the individual had been wrapped in chains, an ascetic practice symbolizing the sacrifice of the body and detachment from the material world. Traditionally, this type of penance has been associated with male anchorites, leading archaeologists to assume that the remains belonged to a man. However, the poor preservation of the bones prevented a conclusive osteological determination of the individual's sex.Faced with the inability to rely on traditional osteological methods,...

This video explores the burial place of every Roman and Byzantine emperor, from Augustus to Constantine XI. | Where Every Roman Emperor was Buried | 13:52toldinstone | 538K subscribers | 43,428 views | January 24, 2025

The famous Sutton Hoo burial site may have also included graves of soldiers recruited by a foreign army, new research has revealed.Helen Gittos, 50, an associate professor of early medieval history at the University of Oxford, has released a new research paper into the Anglo Saxon wonder near Woodbridge in Suffolk.She has put forward a theory that those buried at Sutton Hoo could have been recruited by the Byzantine Army in the eastern Mediterranean in 575 AD, based on items found during excavations...During the Covid-19 pandemic, Dr Gittos examined distribution maps of copper items that travelled from the eastern Mediterranean...

Well-known academic and go-to source for U.S. intelligence and military agencies, Professor John Esposito of Georgetown University, insists that nothing bad was happening during the "five centuries of peaceful coexistence" between Muslims and Christians prior to the First Crusade, which was launched by cynical and evil Europeans, forever turning Islam against the West. Is that true? My answer follows:5 Centuries of Peace?

...The usual story is that the fragments remained untouched for 880 years until the invasion by the Umayyad caliph Muawiya I. However, literary and geological evidence suggest a more complex, and more likely, story involving several reconstructions, finishing with a devastating earthquake in 142...The little we know about the statue comes from the frustratingly brief writings of Philo... Strabo... and Pliny... however none of these authors describe what it actually looked like, apart from its height. It is generally assumed that the head of Helios resembled that on Rhodian coins... and that it topped a rather austere vision of the...

A shipwreck dating to the sixth or fifth century b.c. has been discovered near Sicily along with a collection of ancient anchors, according to a report from CBS News. The wreck was found buried under sand and rock 20 feet underwater off Santa Maria del Focallo, at the southern tip of the island. The excavation was carried out by underwater archaeologists from the University of Udine in collaboration with Sicily's superintendent of the sea. Researchers determined that the ship's hull was built using a simple early shipbuilding technique known as "on the shell." Further study of the wreck may help...

The iconic Hagia Sophia in Istanbul (Constantinople) will undergo extensive restoration, including the dismantling of its dome, to preserve the historical and structural integrity of the world-renowned monument, according to the Turkish newspaper Hurriyet. Ahmet Gulec, a member of the project’s scientific committee, said damage to the dome’s lead cover and cement materials made the restoration necessary. “The underside of the dome is covered in mosaics, making structural intervention from below nearly impossible” Gulec explained. The team will remove the lead cover and other harmful materials to ensure the building’s safety. Ottoman-era construction techniques “We will use materials and techniques...

If you’re ever despairing about the state of the world, you can — at least, according to some scholars — be thankful it’s not the year 536 CE. To be fair, it’s medieval scholars, not 21st-century ones, who called 536 CE the worst year to be alive. But hear them out, because it sounds pretty bad. That year, a massive volcano erupted, historians believe, filling the air with volcanic ash. Of course, the majority of people affected by the disaster had no idea what was happening — they just knew it was very suddenly very dark for a very long...

For decades it was merely a sidewalk stone at a home in the Middle East, its significance unbeknownst to its owner. Now, the oldest inscribed tablet of the Ten Commandments is set to auction for $1 million to $2 million... The relic is the only complete tablet of the Ten Commandments in existence from the Late Byzantine period, which ranged from 300–800 A.D. ... Sotheby’s is set to auction the 1,500-year-old piece on Dec. 18. ... This is really one-of-a-kind,” Mintz said. “It’s one of the most important historic artifacts that I’ve ever handled.” ... The marble relic weighs a...