Free Republic

One of these Amarna letters (EA 39) came to light just before the turn of the previous century (1900). Researchers noted references to "ameluti Ia-u-du" and "ameluti tsabe Ia-u-du." The spelling of Ia-u-du is identical to that of later Assyrian cuneiform inscriptions referring to Judah (Judah is our Anglicized form of the Hebrew Yehuda). As such, we would have a translation of the above two passages as "men of Judah" and "soldiers of Judah." Prof. Morris Jastrow Jr. (1861–1921) wrote an article titled "'The Men of Judah' in the El-Amarna Tablets"... the inscription was related to territory in the extreme...

The State Department of Archaeology and Museums (DAM) is engaged in the chemical treatment of a treasure trove of 1,600 palm-leaf manuscripts, dated back to the 17th, 18th and 19th century, at the Andhra Sahitya Parishad Archaeology Museum and Research Institute here. DAM Assistant Director K. Timma Raju told The Hindu that the text in the manuscripts belongs to the fields of ayurveda, mathematics, astrology, Telugu and Sanskrit literature and classical music. "The text of the Hindu epics -- Ramayana and Mahabharata -- is also available in the manuscripts," said Mr. Timma Raju. AMD chemist K. Rambabu said the chemical...

Throughout the ancient world, many people, including Jews, carved and painted words and pictures (we might call them graffiti today) in places that would shock modern sensibilities -- inside and around holy spaces and shrines, pagan sanctuaries, synagogues, and churches; and throughout cemeteries, necropoleis, and tombs in regions of modern Israel, Syria, Greece, Italy, Malta, Sardinia, Tunisia, and Libya. The ancients also made their marks in other locations: upon cliffs and open-air sanctuaries along desert roads and trade routes of Egypt, the Sinai Peninsula, and Saudi Arabia; and around public theaters and hippodromes (horse racecourses) along the Syrian coast (modern...

Along with inventing writing, the wheel, the plow, law codes and literature, the Sumerians are also remembered as some of history's original brewers... dating back to the fourth millennium B.C. The brewing techniques they used are still a mystery, but their preferred ale seems to have been a barley-based concoction so thick that it had to be sipped through a special kind of filtration straw. The Sumerians prized their beer for its nutrient-rich ingredients and hailed it as the key to a "joyful heart and a contented liver." ... The Sumerian invention of cuneiform -- a Latin term literally meaning...

Music, songs and dance have been part of Indian culture. But was there music during the Indus Valley Civilisation? "Yes.... very much...music was there more than 5,000 years ago," says musicologist and computer technology expert Shail Vyas. With the help of the 'Songs of Mystery' project, he has managed to recreate instruments and music of those times. "More work is being done," he said, adding that 20 possible instruments from the Indus Valley Civilisation have been created as Phase-1 of the project, that includes a multi-disciplinary approach involving archaeology, archaeo-musicology, organology, anthropology and advanced mordern technologies. Vyas, a Homi Bhabha...

The mysterious location of the tomb of Alexander the Great might finally have been confirmed. Alexander the Great was a king of the ancient Greek kingdom of Macedon from 336–323 BC and after conquering the Greek city-states he rolled over Persia founding an empire with 70 cities across three continents covering an estimated two million square miles. Now, a piece of masonry from an ancient tomb discovered in the foundations of St Mark ’s in Venice matching the dimensions of a sarcophagus in the British Museum might confirm the location of the tomb of Alexander the Great, and what’s more,...

cave paintings Spot the signs: geometric forms can be found in paintings, as at Marsoulas in France Philippe Blanchot / hemis.fr / Hemis/AFP By Alison George When she first saw the necklace, Genevieve von Petzinger feared the trip halfway around the globe to the French village of Les Eyzies-de-Tayac had been in vain. The dozens of ancient deer teeth laid out before her, each one pierced like a bead, looked roughly the same. It was only when she flipped one over that the hairs on the back of her neck stood up. On the reverse were three etched symbols: a...

There are just 6 plots in every film, book and TV show ever made: Researchers reveal the 'building blocks' of storytelling From Harry Potter and Romeo and Juliet to the stories of Oedipus and Icarus, almost every tale told conforms to one of just six plots, researchers have claimed. A major new analysis of over 1,700 stories identified the core plots 'which form the building blocks of complex narratives'. Researchers used complex data-mining to locate words linked to positive or negative emotion in each story to reveal the set of arcs. An emotional arc is similar to a plot building...

Sinai is often referred to in Arabic as "Ard Al-Fayrouz" (the land of turquoise) after its ancient Egyptian name "Ta Mefkat" or "Khetyou Mefkat", which means turquoise terraces. Minerals were of great use in ancient times -- for making royal jewelry and divine offerings, and more importantly for mummy ornaments and amulets, encouraging pharaohs since the Early Dynastic Period (ca. 3050-2890 BC) to send mining expeditions to extract turquoise and copper from South Sinai. Wadi Maghara, Wadi Kharig, Bir Nasb and Serabit al-Khadem were among the premium mining spots in antiquity... The archaeological sites of Southern Sinai relay aspects of...

From pre-dynastic times, early Egyptians made their way to the Sinai Peninsula over land or across the Red Sea in search of minerals. Their chief targets were turquoise and copper, which they mined and extracted in the Sinai mountains. Archaeologists examining evidence left 8,000 years ago have concluded that some of the very earliest known settlers in Sinai were miners. In about 3,500 BC these mineral hunters discovered the great turquoise veins of Serabit Al-Khadim. Some 500 years later the Egyptians had mastered Sinai and set up a large and systematic mining operation at Serabit Al-Khadim, where they carved out...

A startling message on a 1,200-year-old granite slab created by the Vikings appears to predict climate change, experts say. The research, published in Futharc: International Journal of Runic Studies, looks at the message that was written after Viking warrior Varin’s son died in battle in the 9th century, foreseeing a new “climate crisis,” similar to the weather conditions that happened nearly 300 years prior. “This study proposes instead that the inscription deals with an anxiety triggered by a son’s death and the fear of a new climate crisis similar to the catastrophic one after 536 [AD],” researchers, led by Per...

The Edward VIII Sovereign, as the coin is known, is one of the most coveted coins in the world and was produced as part of a “trial set” for the King when he ascended the throne in January 1936. However, they were never circulated to the public because the King abdicated that same year to marry Wallis Simpson. The King further broke with tradition with the design of the coin. Historically, it is the custom that each monarch should face the opposite way to his or her predecessor when new currency is produced. However, Edward insisted on being depicted facing...

A rare Victorian gold coin considered to be one of the most beautiful ever produced has fetched a record £532,000. The 1839 'Victoria Una and the Lion' five pound coin shows the 20-year-old queen leading a lion representing the British Empire. It depicts Victoria as Una, from the Elizabethan poem The Faerie Queene by Edmund Spenser.

William Shakespeare’s Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies, known as the First Folio, could fetch between $4 million and $6 million at an upcoming auction at Christie’s New York. The book was published in 1623 by his friends and fellow actors John Heminges and Henry Condell after Shakespeare died in 1616 at age 52. Containing 36 of Shakespeare’s plays, the First Folio is the first authoritative collection of his plays and ranks as one of the greatest works of world literature. The copy was offered for sale from the collection of Mills College in Oakland, Calif. It’s one of only six complete...

The Welsh language could be set to thrive over the long-term, according to projections of whether endangered languages will flourish or fail. New Zealand’s native language on the other hand is projected to become extinct. More than half of the world’s estimated 7000 languages are expected to go extinct by 2100. But the Welsh language, spoken by about half a million people today, is expected to “thrive in the long term”, based on a model looking at how proficiency in languages changes over time. By contrast, te reo Maori, the language of the indigenous Maori in New Zealand, which nearly...

At 3:30 a.m. on Sunday, Israeli police say, authorities arrested five Palestinian antiquities dealers in Jerusalem and confiscated items dating back thousands of years from their homes and shops: papyrus fragments from the Egyptian Book of the Dead, the bust of an Etruscan woman, a fresco from Pompeii depicting swimming fish. They also seized more modern objects — two black luxury Audi vehicles — and more than $200,000 in cash.

The billionaire owners of craft giant Hobby Lobby are under federal investigation for allegedly looting hundreds of ancient artifacts from the Middle East for use in their personal “Museum of the Bible,” according to a report. The Green family has been under investigation since 2011, the Daily Beast reports, when Memphis customs seized nearly 300 clay tablets en route to the Hobby Lobby headquarters in Oklahoma City. …

One of America’s most famously Christian businesses is amassing a vast collection of Biblical antiquities. The problem is some of them may have been looted from the Middle East. In 2011, a shipment of somewhere between 200 to 300 small clay tablets on their way to Oklahoma City from Israel was seized by U.S. Customs agents in Memphis. The tablets were inscribed in cuneiform—the script of ancient Assyria and Babylonia, present-day Iraq—and were thousands of years old. Their destination was the compound of the Hobby Lobby corporation, which became famous last year for winning a landmark Supreme Court case on...

An archaeologist has admitted that around 1,400 cuneiform tablets might have been stolen from Irisagrig, a 4,000-year-old lost Sumerian city in modern day Iraq. While the robbers obviously know the location of the ancient city, the authorities don’t! In a Live Science article we learn that ‘only looters have the location’ of this ancient city and perplexed archaeologists said this haul of newly examined tablets describes not only the palace of Irisagrig and the animals kept on the grounds, including lions and dogs; but that they also detail a festival held in a temple dedicated to a god of mischief....

The Israeli Antiquities Authority (IAA), which issued a release surrounding the findings, said the archaeologists were "surprised" when they made the discovery. The IAA added that the area in which the discovery was made was an "ancient industrial area" that was active for several hundred years. The archaeologists said in the release that the gold coins could have been "a potter’s personal 'piggy bank.'" Robert Kool, a coin expert at IAA, said one of the coins appears to date to the 8th or 9th century, between 786 and 809 A.D., during the reign of Caliph Harun al-Rashid. In another part...