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The inscription, “Christ born of Mary.” Photo: Tzachi Lang, Israel Antiquities Authority ======================================================= JERUSALEM, Israel – Israeli authorities excavating in the Jezreel Valley have unearthed a 1,500-year-old inscription dedicated to Jesus. Excavators found the Greek inscription while digging in the village of et-Taiyiba. The inscription was engraved in stone in what is believed by researchers to be the remains of a Byzantine-era church. The inscription reads: “Christ, born of Mary. This work of the most God-fearing and pious bishop [Theodo]sius and the miserable Th[omas] was built from the foundation...Whoever enters should pray for them.” According to Dr. Leah Di-Segni, a...

(Egyptian Antiquities Ministry) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- A funerary temple belonging to Queen Nearit has been discovered in the ancient Egyptian burial ground Saqqara next to the pyramid of her husband, pharaoh Teti, who ruled Egypt from around 2323 BCE to 2291 BCE, the Egyptian antiquities ministry said in a statement. Made of stone, the temple has three mud-brick warehouses on its southeastern side that held offerings made to the queen and her husband. Near the pyramid, the team of Egyptian archaeologists also found a series of burial shafts containing the remains of people who lived during the 18th and 19th dynasties of...

“Sic semper tyrannis” – Thus always to tyrants, U.S. Navy 149th Fighter Squadron “De oppresso liber” – To liberate the oppressed, U.S. Army Green Berets “Legibus armisque devoti” – Devoted to law and arms, U.S. Army Legal Services Agency “Haec protegimus” – This we guard, U.S. Army Military District of Washington “Hiemes oppugnamus et montes superamus” – We battle cold and conquer mountains, U.S. Army Northern Warfare Training Center “Nous resterons la” – We shall remain there, U.S. Army 3rd Infantry Division “Semper primus” – Always first, U.S. Army 1st Infantry Regiment “Noli me tangere” – Don't tread on me,...

Birds of a feather flock together. When the cat's away, the mice will play. We all know and love these common, American proverbs. Sometimes ironic, often silly and amusing, these sayings test our brains—and our wit. And it's not just in English. Playing with language in literature, conversation, and art has been a hallmark of different cultures for centuries. With this in mind, over 450 years ago, Dutch master Pieter Bruegel the Elder painted his incredible Netherlandish Proverbs. Also known as The Dutch Proverbs, this oil on wood painting is a detailed masterpiece that visually represents over 100 Dutch proverbs....

A nailed-shut amulet uncovered in Turkey in the 1930s, written in Jewish Aramaic and newly translated, pleads for help from Balaam's ass at the track A 5th century ‘curse’ tablet written in Jewish Aramaic from Antioch, Turkey, which was recently deciphered by Tel Aviv University doctoral student Rivka Elitzur-Leiman. (Princeton University) When a typical nailed-shut 5th century curse scroll was uncovered by the University of Princeton in a 1930s excavation under the hippodrome in the city of Antioch (now in Turkey), the team of archaeologists didn’t realize what a unique find they had in hand. It would take almost another...

Chariot racing goes back thousands of years and so do attempts to fix the race... Now it turns out that not only did ancient Greeks and Romans exhort the deities to ruin their rivals' beasts: Jews were hexing the horses too and betting on their favorites. The first-ever evidence of Jewish cursing in sports was found in a rolled-up metal tablet that had been located in ancient Antioch by Princeton University researchers in the 1930s – and had been left rolled up until now. The tablet, about 9x6 centimeters in size, dated to about the 5th or 6th century C.E.,...

Literary survival in an age of tyranny: The F word vs. the law, and legitimacy An often repeated quote, almost always mis-attributed to Voltaire, makes an interesting study of itself, in usually being presented as: "Voltaire once wrote: “To find out who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to criticize.” Who in American politics are people not allowed to criticize?" https://www.quora.com/Voltaire-once-wrote-%E2%80%9CTo-find-out-who-rules-over-you-simply-find-out-who-you-are-not-allowed-to-criticize-%E2%80%9D-Who-in-American-politics-are-people-not-allowed-to-criticize Legitimizing the quote has required its re-attribution to avoid mentioning, much less wallowing into what it was that drove the real author to think as he did. In current context, that history only amplifies...

A seemingly dull marble slab, used for 10 years as a stepping stone in an English garden, is actually a rare ancient Roman engraving, a new analysis finds. The discovery surprised its owner, who learned that the 25-inch-long (63 centimeters) slab — a stone she had previously used as a stair while mounting her horse — dated to the second century A.D. and was worth about $20,400 (£15,000). However, no one knows how the marble masterpiece ended up in England. It was likely carved in Greece or Asia Minor (modern-day Turkey), according to a statement from Woolley and Wallis, a...

A supercomputer programmed to think like the notorious Zodiac killer produced some creepy poetry when fed all the known writings of the elusive criminal, it was learned Thursday. A University of Southern California professor created an artificial intelligence software that was designed to help crack the code of the Z340, the Zodiac killer’s famous cipher. The ciphers, which were sent with letters to the police and newspapers in Northern California during the 1960s and 70s, contain letters and symbols that may hide clues as to the killer’s identity.

SACRAMENTO - A team of volunteer codebreakers has cracked a mysterious cipher sent more than 50 years ago to a newspaper by the San Francisco serial killer who called himself the Zodiac, the FBI said on Friday. The Zodiac Killer — who was never caught — shot or stabbed seven people in the San Francisco Bay Area over the course of about a year in 1968 and 1969, killing all but two of them. During his murderous spree, he sent a series of terrifying letters to the San Francisco Chronicle newspaper. Some of the notes were in code, including a...

The solution to what’s known as the 340 Cipher, one of the most vexing mysteries of the Zodiac Killer’s murderous saga, has been found by a code-breaking team from the United States, Australia and Belgium. The cipher, sent in a letter to The Chronicle in November 1969, has been puzzling authorities and amateur sleuths since it arrived 51 years ago. Investigators hoped the Zodiac, who killed five people in the Bay Area in 1968 and 1969, would reveal his name in one of his many ciphers, but there is no such name in the 340. According to code-breaking expert David...

With many people stuck indoors, visiting many of Earth’s wonders is no longer possible – at least not in person. As a replacement, however, France’s Ministry of Culture is bringing one of the most important archaeological sites in the world to your home with a virtual tour of Chauvet Cave. Filled with some of the best-preserved cave paintings in the world, this free tour guides you through its many chambers, explaining the paintings and their historical relevance throughout. Not only is the tour fascinating, it is also a great way to learn about how our ancestors lived around 25,000-40,000 years...

The Bible tells us very little about the magi. Their story appears but once, in the Gospel of Matthew (2:1-12), where they are described as mysterious visitors "from the east" who come to Jerusalem looking for the child whose star they observed "at its rising." After meeting with King Herod, who feigns an intention to worship the child but actually plans to destroy him, the magi follow the same star to Bethlehem. There, upon seeing the baby Jesus and his mother Mary, the magi kneel down and worship him, presenting him with their three famous gifts -- gold, frankincense and...

An 8-mile-long "canvas" filled with ice age drawings of mastodons, giant sloths and other extinct beasts has been discovered in the Amazon rainforest. The gorgeous art, drawn with ochre — a red pigment frequently used as paint in the ancient world — spans nearly 8 miles (13 kilometers) of rock on the hills above three rock shelters in the Colombian Amazon, a new study finds. "These really are incredible images, produced by the earliest people to live in western Amazonia," study co-researcher Mark Robinson, an archaeologist at the University of Exeter, who analyzed the rock art alongside Colombian scientists, said...

The Hebrew Bible views Egypt as the location of both slavery and refuge. The “wandering Aramean” ancestor mentioned in Deuteronomy 26:5 was a slave in Egypt, whereas the prophet Jeremiah and others chose to flee there after the fall of Samaria/Israel and Judah. This presentation offers a look at the evidence for diaspora life in Egypt found in Papyrus Amherst 63, a long and difficult text written in Aramaic but using the Demotic Egyptian script. The many compositions in the papyrus reflect the religious traditions and collective cultural memory of a group of Aramaic speakers in Egypt, including Samarians and...

Click in the header. (One illustration here, the "thesis defense" of a fool.)

It’s not a language. It’s not an alphabet, either, exactly. The ancient system of writing is one of, if not the, oldest. It was invented around 3,500–3,000 B.C. by the Sumerians and used in the region for more than 3,000 years. [The symbols were initially pictograms, they soon became quite stylized and are indeed made up of varying arrangements of lines and triangles or wedges. Rather than using, for example, a picture of a cow to represent a cow, cuneiform used a symbol that was sort of a stripped-down image of a cow. This made it much more efficient. As...

I reprint today a post on how Shakespeare can enhance your Halloween. It’s worth noting that Shakespeare’s most important audience for his late plays was James I, who was fascinated by the supernatural. There are those ghosts that Puck mentions... My fairy lord, this must be done with haste, For night’s swift dragons cut the clouds full fast, And yonder shines Aurora’s harbinger; At whose approach, ghosts, wandering here and there, Troop home to churchyards: damned spirits all, That in crossways and floods have burial, Already to their wormy beds are gone; For fear lest day should look their shames...

They used clay tablets to keep records of state treaties and decrees, prayers, myths, and summoning rituals, using a language that researchers were only able to decipher around 100 years ago. Now, the Hittites' texts, which were written in cuneiform, are being made fully accessible online. The collection will be based on around 30,000 documents, most of which are written in the Hittite language, but other languages such as Luwian and Palaic will also be represented to a lesser extent. Participating in the joint project are researchers from the universities of Mainz, Marburg, and Würzburg, as well as of the...

In what has been called a once-in-a-generation event, a complete and original copy of Shakespeare’s First Folio sold for a record-setting price just under $10 million at auction earlier this week. The First Folio, published in 1623, was the first complete printed collection of Shakespeare’s plays. Published seven years after the author’s death, the book marked not only the first complete collection of Shakespeare’s works, but also the first time those works were organized as comedies, tragedies and histories. There are around 235 copies known to exist, and only six complete ones owned privately.