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The slabs included hieroglyphic inscriptions about the kings' achievements, including King Amenhotep III, also known as Amenhotep the Magnificent and ancestor of King Tut...The ancient artifacts were discovered in the area in 1960, but were lost the following decade during the construction of the Aswan High Dam in Aswan.Archaeologists had rushed to remove them before they were lost underwater, but many couldn't be relocated in time...The researchers used underwater filming and photographing techniques to document the discovery.They are also creating 3D models of the images using photogrammetry - the process of using surface measurements from pictures to create an accurate...

A Sumerian “sacred code” has been deciphered, revealing divinely inspired building instructions echoed in the Bible. Experts have been puzzled since unearthing the 4,000-year-old statue of a leader called Gudea, which features an architectural plan, an inscription claiming he built a temple commanded to him in a dream, and a “ruler” of undeciphered measurements.... British Museum archaeologists have now cracked the “sacred code” of these mysterious measurements after finding a lost temple in Iraq...Dr Sebastien Rey, director of the British Museum’s project in Iraq, said: “It is like the precise measurement we see in the Bible in a much later...

the Venus of Willendorf was discovered in 1908 but originally dates to the Stone Age. One of the oldest surviving art works in the world, the limestone sculpture now resides in Vienna's Natural History Museum, where a woman named Laura Ghianda snapped a pic last December and then posted the image to Facebook. It was promptly removed. A notice from Facebook explained that the naked figure was inappropriate for the social site.... the inability of Facebook's algorithms and human moderators to distinguish obscenity from ancient artifacts provides yet another reason to doubt Facebook's ability to police "fake news." Lately, politicians...

Researchers suggested that the inscriptions are short cultic proverbs related to the religious temple they were found in, which was burned and destroyed thousands of years ago.The temple was located in an ancient settlement called Deir 'Alla, at the center of Jordan Valley, which runs along the Jordan River from the Sea of Galilee in Israel to the Dead Sea...Archaeologists discovered the tablets in a heavily burned part of the excavation site.The team also found ceramics among the ruins, including goblets and ceremonial vessels, along with armor.Sculptures that were a gift from Egyptian Queen Twosret were also found at the...

In this episode, we'll trace English back to its oldest known ancestor: an ancestor it shares with almost all of Europe's languages, as well as some Asian languages. That ancestor is called Proto-Indo-European.I also talk about the controversial Nostratic language family and ask whether there could really be a "Proto-Earth" language. What is Proto-Indo-European? | Tracing English as far back as possible20:45 | RobWords | 515K subscribers | 126,562 views | July 13, 2024

When life gives you a giant mosaic, build a museum-hotel. Digging in the soil of Antakya, a small city near Turkey's Syrian border known to the Greeks as Antioch, Nehmi Asfuroglu discovered one of the world's largest and best-preserved ancient mosaics. It was an archaeologist's dream, but Asfuroglu is a developer, and he was hoping to build a hotel on the site. He could have abandoned the project or concealed the discovery, but instead, he funded a seven-month excavation, abandoning the power tools of hotel construction for the manpower of historians from the local university. He hired architect Emre Arolat...

The mosaic was acquired by the MFA in 2002 from Dumbarton Oaks Research Center in Washington, DC, where it had been stored, unseen, for more than sixty years. Since its acquisition, the fragile mosaic surface has been stabilized, and crumbling concrete and rusting iron backings replaced with new supports. Our conservators are now meticulously cleaning the surface of the mosaic and reconstructing its patterned outer border—work that is taking place on view to the public through early 2006.

The modern search for the Star of Bethlehem began with Johannes Kepler (imperial astronomer for Rudolph II of Germany), who shortly before Christmas in 1603 observed a conjunction (pairing) of Jupiter with Saturn from his observatory in Prague. That this occurred in the constellation of Pisces he thought was important as well – perhaps recalling Rabbi Isaac Abarvanel's belief, noted in his 15th-century commentary on Daniel, that not only does a conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn foretell important events, but in Pisces this holds a special significance for Israel; and such an event might even foretell the coming of the...

A vegetable seller named Babylas was the target of an alarming curse nearly 2,000 years ago. Written on a lead tablet found in Antioch, one of the largest cities in the Roman Empire, the curse calls on the gods to tie up the hapless greengrocer, then “drown and chill” his soul. The curse is described in the German journal Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik by Alexander Hollmann, a classicist at the University of Washington who studies Greek and Roman magic.

While working at the Anglo-Saxon site of Sutton Hoo in England, archaeologists found the missing pieces of a 1,500-year-old copper bucket imported from Turkey. The bucket, which is at least a century older than the famed ship burial, may provide a window into how people lived in early medieval times.A team of archaeologists, conservators and volunteers from Time Team, the U.K.'s National Trust and FAS Heritage discovered the metal fragments in late June during excavation and metal-detecting work at Sutton Hoo.Sutton Hoo is best known for its magnificent seventh-century ship burial, whose 1939 discovery was featured in the 2021 movie...

Archaeologists working at a site in Turkey uncovered a rare, threatening seal from the ancient Hittite empire, according to a report published Sunday. The terracotta seal was found throughout excavations at the Büklükale (Kaman-Kalehöyük) site in Turkey and is believed to have belonged to the Hittite royal family, according to Anatolian Archaeology. Inscribed on the seal are the words (roughly translated): “Whoever breaks this will die.” Archaeologists led by Dr. Kimiyoshi Matsumura reportedly found the seal in 2023 and translated the cuneiform, finding the surprising threat. Researchers believe that Hittite laws were focused on fines rather than the death penalty...

Poem penned by U.S. Founding Father discovered in English schoolBy Simon Caldwell Catholic News Service LONDON (CNS) -- A poem written by one of the U.S. Founding Fathers has been discovered in the archives of a Catholic high school in England. Charles Carroll of Carrollton, one of the signers of the 1776 Declaration of Independence, wrote the poem in Latin in 1754 when he was a student in his final year of high school in Saint-Omer, France. It was found in the archives of Stonyhurst College in Clitheroe, England, by Maurice Whitehead, a professor at the University of Wales, Swansea,...

Zen, important school of East Asian Buddhism that constitutes the mainstream monastic form of Mahayana Buddhism in China, Korea, and Vietnam and accounts for approximately 20 percent of the Buddhist temples in Japan. The word derives from the Sanskrit dhyana, meaning “meditation.” Central to Zen teaching is the belief that awakening can be achieved by anyone but requires instruction in the proper forms of spiritual cultivation by a master. In modern times, Zen has been identified especially with the secular arts of medieval Japan (such as the tea ceremony, ink painting, and gardening) and with any spontaneous expression of artistic...

A hoard of 1,700-year-old coins has been discovered in central Israel by researchers from the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA), according to a Live Science report. The 94 silver and bronze coins, which date to between A.D. 221 and 354, had been hidden in a public building in Lod, a city known to the Romans as Diospolis. The building is thought to have been destroyed during the last known Jewish revolt against Roman rule, known as the Gallus Revolt, for Flavius Claudius Constantius Gallus, who ruled the eastern provinces of the Roman Empire at the time. The cities of Tiberias and...

A study shows that repetitive tasks carried out by ancient Egyptian scribes – high status men with the ability to write who performed administrative tasks – and the positions they sat in while working may have led to degenerative skeletal changes.Researchers in Prague, Czech Republic, examined the skeletal remains of 69 adults males, 30 of whom were scribes, who were buried in the necropolis at Abusir, Egypt...They identified degenerative joint changes that were more common among scribes compared to men with other occupations.These changes were in the joints connecting the lower jaw to the skull, the right collarbone and the...

Found this on Twitter while perusing the material generated by last night's debate.This is gettin' real y'all.

Dravidians are an ethno-linguistic people group predominantly found in southern India, Sri Lanka, but also Pakistan, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, and the Maldives. The historical origin of Dravidians is a highly contested topic with theories that are often heavily politically motivated. But an increasing number of archaeological, linguistic and genetic studies seem to slowly uncover an ever-developing yet consistent story. Dravidians probably started out from the southwest of Iran (around Zagros mountains) when migrants from the Proto-Elamite period of the Elam civilization, probably in a bid to escape the increasingly domineering Sumerian civilisation and to spread their own culture (proto-elamite scripts are...

A small, 1,600-year-old papyrus fragment discovered in a German archive has been revealed to contain the earliest known copy of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, an early Christian text describing the childhood of Jesus that once enjoyed enormous popularity but was not canonized into the New Testament.

None of the United States Presidents in the first 61 years of the nation’s existence were actually born in the country they led. The reason for this is simple enough: The first seven U.S. Presidents — George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe, John Quincy Adams, and Andrew Jackson — were all born before 1776, and therefore before the United States was an independent nation. The first President who could actually claim to have been born a U.S. citizen was the country’s eighth President, Martin Van Buren. Van Buren was born in 1782 in Kinderhook, New York,...

Ever since archaeologists started digging up ancient Hittite records, researchers have endeavored to link them to the legend of the Trojan War from Greek mythology. Many of these records mention prominent individuals by name. According to some researchers, King Priam of Troy actually appears in these Hittite sources. What do the facts really show? Who was King Priam of Troy? King Priam was the famous king of Troy during the Trojan War. It was his son, Paris Alexander, who took Helen back to Troy and inadvertently caused the enormous war with the Greeks. Priam himself was allegedly a powerful monarch....