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This ancient house, with large elaborate gardens, pools and fountains, was located not far from the ancient amphitheater on the eastern side of Pompeii. Its walls were heavily decorated with depictions of various mythological scenes including a double frieze, the likes of which have not been found anywhere else in Roman wall painting. It shows scenes of Hercules and Kings of Troy, as well as a series of familiar of Achilles in the trojan war, but they are not in the order that we would expect. We will go in depth on its various mythological scenes including and the only...

The Merneptah Stele (or Israel Stele) is an engraved stone slab which describes Pharaoh Merneptah’s military victories in 1207 b.c.e. The stele itself is dated to the year 1205 b.c.e. Renowned British archaeologist Flinders Petrie discovered this two-meter-tall, inscribed granite monument in 1896 at Thebes. It contains the earliest undisputed extra-biblical reference to Israel to date. Israel is mentioned by name in three different 9th century b.c.e. artifacts: the Mesha Stele, Tel Dan Stele and the Kurkh Monoliths, but the 9th century is still 400 years after the dating of the Merneptah Stele. The mention of Israel in this 3,200-year-old...

You might think that early Americans sounded like Anthony Hopkins and Helen Mirren, and that the American accent developed after independence. It was probably the other way around. Up until the early 1800s, you couldn’t tell whether a person was British or American from their accents. When naval officers tried to free sailors who had been shanghaied into service in the War of 1812, they said they couldn’t tell for sure who was American or British by the way they spoke. The hallmark of the British accent — pronouncing words like “path” and “fast” as “pahth” and “fahst” or “fah”...

Deep in the archives of the Vatican library, a mysterious hand-written book, scrawled with strange symbols, had lain unread for more than 400 years. Its cryptic pages apparently concealed secret remedies "for affections of the human body", according to some text scratched inside the cover. Such healing practices were kept under wraps at the time since they could attract suspicion or even accusations of witchcraft.Known as the Borg cipher, the 408-page-long manuscript is mostly incomprehensible -- coded using 34 obscure symbols with a few Roman letters and a front page written in Arabic. There was no known key to reveal...

The Battle of Qarqar, fought in 853 BCE, stands as a landmark event in the annals of military history, notable for featuring the earliest documented military alliance among a coalition of twelve kingdoms. This confederation was assembled to counter the expansive ambitions of the Assyrian Empire under King Shalmaneser III. The battle, although not decisively conclusive in its military outcomes, offers profound insights into the geopolitical dynamics of the ancient Near East and the complexities of coalition warfare. Background and Strategic Context During the early 9th century BCE, the Assyrian Empire, led by Shalmaneser III, was in a phase of...

La Brújula Verde reports that a German archaeological team under the supervision of the Landschaftsverband Westfalen-Lippe (LWL) recovered an exceptionally well-preserved notebook from a medieval toilet in the federal state of North Rhine-Westphalia. The discovery was made during construction of a new administrative headquarters in the city of Paderborn. The four- by three-inch book contains 10 wooden tablet pages coated in wax, onto which the object's owner etched writing using a metal or bone stylus. The volume was also carefully protected by a leather cover that was stamped with motifs of lilies. Although experts have not yet translated any of...

Archaeologists have recently uncovered fragments of a life-size mural depicting the Greek Trojan War hero Achilles in the remains of a Roman home near Reims, France. The discovery, dating to the 2nd century CE, sheds new light on the cultural reach and artistic sophistication of ancient Roman Gaul. The mural, depicting the mythological tale of Achilles and Deidamia, was found on the western outskirts of what was once the Roman city of Durocortorum, now modern-day Reims. The discovery offers a rare glimpse into the tastes and traditions of the Roman elite who lived far from the empire’s major urban centers....

Examples of podomorphs interacting with the microtopography of the rock. Credit: Oxford Journal of Archaeology (2026). DOI: 10.1111/ojoa.7002 Etched into the ancient rocky outcrops of southern Scandinavia and large boulders left behind by retreating glaciers are footprints, also called podomorphic petroglyphs. Some are barefoot with every toe visible, while others carry the imprint of strapped sandals. A recent study argues that these human footprints created during the Scandinavian Bronze Age, roughly 3,700 to 2,500 years ago, were not mere art or decorative symbols because the petroglyphs weren't placed at random. They were deliberately arranged around water sources and shallow depressions...

The Viking Herald reports that two rare English "Lamb of God" coins were recently unearthed in Jutland. During the eleventh century, English monarchs undertook various initiatives to try to ward off seemingly unending Viking attacks. Around 1009, King Æthelred the Unready even minted unusual coins in the hope of obtaining divine protection. The objects feature a lamb and a cross on one side -- a Christian motif alluding to Christ's sacrifice -- and a dove on the other, a symbol of the Holy Spirit. Not only did these coins fail in their objective, they became somewhat coveted by Viking raiders,...

When the experienced rock carving hunter Tormod Fjeld was driving his daughter Ada to a nearby location, the two of them decided to take a closer look beneath Kolsåstoppen, a hill in Bærum, Eastern Norway.That was when they found something remarkable: magnificent ships carved into the rock.Perhaps these carvings show people in Norway 3,000 years ago -- sitting in their ship, maybe even wearing helmets.They also spotted a large footprint of the sole of a foot, as well as a hand with five thick fingers.And then more ships appeared -- some carved upright, others upside down.

A remote desert in Peru has revealed new secrets after an AI-assisted investigation uncovered hidden geoglyphs and traces of an ancient civilization buried in plain sight for centuries. © After Decades of Failed Research, Artificial Intelligence Just Discovered 303 Hidden Geoglyphs in Peru in Just Six Months. Credit: Shutterstock ============================================================= Artificial intelligence has helped archaeologists uncover 303 previously unknown Nazca geoglyphs in southern Peru. The discovery nearly doubles the number of known relief-style figures scattered across the desert and gives researchers fresh clues about how the ancient Nazca people used the landscape around them. The breakthrough came from a joint...

Robert Fooks swung a pickaxe into his kitchen floor to steal a few more inches of ceiling height. Instead, he cracked open a glazed pottery bowl that had been sitting in the earth beneath his 400-year-old Dorset cottage since the English Civil War. Inside sat roughly 1,000 gold and silver coins, untouched since someone buried them in the mid-1640s.The story surfaced after the coins sold at auction in 2024. The hoard lay hidden beneath the kitchen floor at South Poorton Farm until Robert and Betty Fooks decided to lower the ground level during a renovation...The couple bought the property in...

In the ancient Egyptian city of Oxyrhynchus, archaeologists recently discovered a 1,600-year-old tomb with several mummies inside. Some of them were decorated with gold leaf or geometric patterns—features commonly found in burials of this kind.But one of the mummies was unearthed alongside a particularly unusual artifact: a papyrus fragment from Homer's Iliad, the epic poem set during the Trojan War. The ancient Greek text had been tucked beneath the wrappings on the mummy's abdomen during the embalming process."The fact that in this case the text, in Greek, refers to a literary text is truly novel," say Maite Mascort and Esther...

The Times of India reports that researchers led by epigrapher K. Muniratnam Reddy from the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) have decoded a Sanskrit inscription written in Brahmi characters on a seal discovered in what is now Pakistan. The translation reads, "Devadaruvane Svami Kotesvarah," indicating that the fifth-century a.d. seal belonged to a temple dedicated to Shiva, a principal Hindu deity. Reddy and his colleagues explained that the inscription refers to a pivotal story about Shiva set in the Devandaru forest that is recorded in a sacred text called the Skanda Purana. The seal is thought to be the oldest...

A single leaked hint exposed the CIA’s most puzzling code. But dozens of the world’s toughest ciphers are still waiting to be solved. Here’s what you’ll learn in this story: Last month, two journalists decoded part of the famous Kryptos sculpture in front of the CIA building. It’s the latest news in the cryptography world, as ciphers continue to attract code crackers in the CIA—and beyond. The Beale Cipher has attracted perhaps the most decryption enthusiasts of all time. Tens of thousands of people have tried to solve it, to get to the supposed location of a massive treasure. ========================================================================...

An example of Linear Elamite( Image Credit: Darafsh/Wikimedia/CC 3.0) An ancient Iranian mystery has finally been solved, according to a French archaeologist who reports successfully cracking the code to an enigmatic, undeciphered writing system. Known as Linear Elamite, the 4000-year-old script—once considered impossible to decode—has now been unlocked by François Desset, in an achievement that has drawn comparisons to Jean-François Champollion’s famous deciphering of the enigmatic Rosetta Stone. Desset, a 43-year-old archaeological researcher based at the University of Liege in Belgium, says the remarkable ancient script is the only truly “local” writing system from the country’s early history, which is...

Between the 10th and 13th centuries, the monks at the Great Lavra Monastery on Mount Athos, Greece, sporadically broke down a 6th century manuscript and reused its pages as binding material and flyleaves for other texts. In time, Codex H effectively disappeared. These new volumes were spread across Europe and it was only through the enterprise of a sharp-eyed 18th century French monk that researchers today have been able to locate the lost folios among libraries in Italy, Greece, Russia, Ukraine, and France. All the same, while the general content of Codex H, which contains a copy of the Letters...

In the ancient Mitanni Kingdom, an Indo-Aryan language very closely related to Sanskrit was used by the ruling class -- but only for very special occasions... Jack of All Languages explores the surprising linguistic links between ancient Indo-Aryan terms found in Syrian horse training manuals and early Sanskrit. By analyzing archaeological tablets and royal treaties, this investigation sheds light on how a prestige language influenced elite cultures in the Middle East centuries before the oldest known Vedic texts were composed. The Indo-Aryans of the Middle East | 13:16 Jack of All Languages | 7.33K subscribers | 2,142 views | April...

According to a Mexico News Daily report, 16 paintings and petroglyphs have been discovered on cliffs near the Tula River and the La Requena Dam, at central Mexico's El Venado site, which is named for the depictions of deer on rock faces there. Archaeologists from Mexico's National Institute of Anthropology and History investigated the area prior to construction of a passenger train route. The oldest of the newly found artworks has been dated to 4,000 years ago, while the later images were made between about A.D. 900 and the arrival of the Spanish in the early sixteenth century. The rock...

Archaeologists working on a Flanders construction site carefully excavate the remains of British soldiers lost in the battlefield mud during World War I. By analyzing personal items like regimental badges, coins, and equipment found near the site, the team searches for clues that might provide a name to those who vanished in combat. During the past 25 years, only one body of an unknown British Soldier has been identified. These diggers have an important and delicate task to complete, identifying these WW1 soldiers. This clip is from Meet the Ancestors (2002). Fragile Traces of the Fallen WW1 Soldiers | 5:48...