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The sun bears down and dust swirls as Roman centurions, followed by armor-clad legionnaires and bruised gladiators, tramp out of the ancient hippodrome to the trailing sounds of a military march. In the seats all around twenty-first century spectators in modern-day Jordan cheer and applaud the spectacle before them - a one-hour show held in honor of Julius Caesar and part of Jordan's newest tourist attraction. Starting mid-July visitors to Jordan can plunge into the past, reliving in a unique location just north of the capital, Amman, some of the high moments that made the Roman Empire. The setting is...

JERASH, Jordan (AFP) - The sun bears down and dust swirls as Roman centurions, followed by armour-clad legionnaires and bruised gladiators, tramp out of the ancient hippodrome to the trailing sounds of a military march. [Blocked Ads]In the seats all around, 21st century spectators in modern-day Jordan cheer and applaud the spectacle before them -- a one-hour show held in honour of Julius Caesar, and part of Jordan's newest tourist attraction. Starting mid-July, visitors to Jordan can plunge into the past, reliving in a unique location just north of the capital Amman some of the high moments that made the...

Iowahawk Special Guest CommentaryGaius Julius CaesarYo mortal, how you livin'? It's your old pal JC, a/k/a Juicy Julius, a/k/a Flavius Flav. What's it been -- two, three millenniums? Yeah, longtimes. Continued

Cleopatra and Mark Antony were immortalised as two of history’s greatest lovers, but their final resting place has always been a mystery. Now archaeologists in Egypt are about to start excavating a site that they believe could conceal their tombs. Zahi Hawass, director of Egypt’s Superior Council for Antiquities, said yesterday that there was evidence to suggest that Cleopatra and Mark Antony were buried together in the complex tunnel system underlying the Tabusiris Magna temple, 17 miles from the city of Alexandria. The dig, which begins next week, could reveal answers to the many myths surrounding the pair — including...

Academics at The University of Manchester have dismissed the long-held argument that the ancient Egyptian queen Cleopatra was killed by a snake bite. Andrew Gray, curator of herpetology at Manchester Museum, says venomous snakes in Egypt -- cobras or vipers -- would have been too large to get unseen into the queen's palace. He was speaking to Egyptologist Dr Joyce Tyldesley in a new video which is part of a new online course introducing ancient Egyptian history, using six items from the Museum's collection. According to Dr Tyldesley, the ancient accounts say a snake hid in a basket of figs...

Cleopatra, the last queen of Egypt, died from swallowing a lethal drug cocktail and not from a snake bite, a new study claims. According to Christoph Schäfer, a German historian and professor at the University of Trier, the legendary beauty queen was unlikely to have committed suicide by letting an asp -- an Egyptian cobra -- sink into her flesh... "The Roman historian Cassius Dio, writing about 200 years after Cleopatra's demise, stated that she died a quiet and pain-free death, which is not compatible with a cobra bite. Indeed, the snake's venom would have caused a painful and disfiguring...

Archaeological traces found at Taposiris Magna west of Alexandria may indicate the tomb of one of the most famous couples in history, Queen Cleopatra and Mark Anthony, reports Nevine El-Aref A joint Egyptian and Dominican Republic archaeological mission working at Taposiris Magna, an area of great archaeological importance on the Mediterranean coast west of Alexandria and site of a temple dedicated to the god of prosperity, Osiris, and a number of Graeco- Roman catacombs, has discovered several Ptolemaic objects dating back to the reign of the famous Queen Cleopatra. The team was searching the site in the hope of locating...

Archaeologists are to search three sites in Egypt that they say may contain the tomb of doomed lovers Anthony and Cleopatra. Excavation at the sites, which are near a temple west of the coastal city of Alexandria, is due to begin next week. Teams working in the area said the recent discovery of tombs containing 10 mummies suggested that Anthony and Cleopatra might be buried close by.

A flamboyant archeologist known worldwide for his trademark Indiana Jones hat believes he has identified the site where Cleopatra is buried. Now, with a team of 12 archeologists and 70 excavators, Zahi Hawass, 60, the head of Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities, has begun the search for her tomb. In addition, after a breakthrough two weeks ago, Hawass hopes to find Cleopatra's lover, the Roman general Mark Antony, sharing her last resting place at the site of a temple, the Taposiris Magna, 28 miles west of Alexandria.

Egypt: Tomb of Cleopatra and lover to be uncovered Cairo, 24 April(AKI) - Archaeologists have revealed plans to uncover the 2000 year-old tomb of ancient Egypt's most famous lovers, Cleopatra and the Roman general Mark Antony later this year. Zahi Hawass, prominent archaeologist and director of Egypt's superior council for antiquities announced a proposal to test the theory that the couple were buried together. He discussed the project in Cairo at a media conference about the ancient pharaohs. Hawass said that the remains of the legendary Egyptian queen and her Roman lover, Mark Antony, were inside a temple called Tabusiris...

LONG before Shakespeare portrayed her as history’s most exotic femme fatale, Cleopatra was revered throughout the Arab world — for her brain. Medieval Arab scholars never referred to the Egyptian queen’s appearance, and they made no mention of the dangerous sensuality which supposedly corrupted Julius Caesar and Mark Antony. Instead they marvelled at her intellectual accomplishments: from alchemy and medicine to philosophy, mathematics and town planning, a new book has claimed. Even Elizabeth Taylor, who famously played the title role in the 1963 epic Cleopatra, would have struggled to inject sex appeal into this queen. Arab writers depict Cleopatra’s court...

There is more than one reason to be wary today. It’s Super Tuesday II and, yes, it is the Ides of March - the day Julius Caesar was assassinated by a coalition of his friends and family. Butt that’s not the only significant political take-down that took place on March 15; in 1917 Czar Nicholas II was forced to abdicate his throne thus ending the 304-year-old Romanov dynasty that ushered in Bolshevik rule. He and his family are taken captive and later executed before a firing squad.So a little heads up for politicians and proletariats alike: when the people finally...

Explanation: Today, February 29th, is a leap day - a relatively rare occurrence. In 46 BC, Julius Caesar, featured here in a self-decreed minted coin, created a calendar system that added one leap day every four years. Acting on advice by Alexandrian astronomer Sosigenes, Caesar did this to make up for the fact that the Earth's year is slightly more than 365 days. In modern terms, the time it takes for the Earth to circle the Sun is slightly more than the time it takes for the Earth to rotate 365 times (with respect to the Sun -- actually we...

Dutch archaeologists claim they have proof Roman emperor Julius Caesar spent time in what is now present day the Netherlands, after finding remains of a battle site near Oss in Brabant. They say they have found the location where Caesar fought against two German tribes in 55 BC and that this is the first battle field in the Netherlands. Archaeologist Nico Roymans of Amsterdam's VU University, says this is the first time the presence of Julius Caesar on Dutch soil has been proved. Until now, the site of the battle, which Caesar describes in his account of the Gallic...

Archaeologists from TVAS have unearthed the grave of a warrior who died at around the time of Caesar's Gallic Wars, in the 50s BC... The Iron Age people of this area were in essence pro-Roman, and the Emperor Claudius, a century later, launched an invasion, initially, to restore the local king Verica to his throne. Our deceased does not seem rich enough to have been a king, but his weaponry, and likely date of death, suggest he may have been one of the mercenaries Caesar claims were accustomed to fight for the Gauls against him, which he used as one...

An international team is using Geographic Information Systems (GIS) modelling to assess Julius Caesar's account of his war with a Celtic tribe. According to Caesar, more than a quarter of a million Helvetii were settled in the Swiss plateau before they decided to abandon their territory and invade Gaul in 58 BCE. In his Gallic Wars he says the Helvitii were running out of food. UWA archaeologist Tom Whitley is developing a GIS model to test Caesar's population estimate and is testing geophysical techniques to see if they can detect signs of the migration and war. He is using the...

Friends, Romans, Countrymen, lend me your ears. Earlier this week, a 38-year-old man dressed as Julius Caesar was arrested after allegedly channeling his inner tyrant and fighting with San Francisco cops in the Richmond District. According to police, the incident happened at about 3:20 a.m. on Sunday when the suspect had hopped a ride with a Lyft driver at 26th Avenue and Geary Boulevard. The Lyft driver called the cops after the fake Julius Caesar allegedly made drunken advances toward him, making things a little uncomfortable in the car. Police arrived at the scene where they found the suspect just...

The temple built by Romulus to celebrate the hand of Jupiter giving Roman troops their unstoppable force has been found at the foot of the Palatine Hill, Italian archaeologists say. The ruins of the shrine to Jupiter Stator (Jupiter the Stayer), believed to date to 750 BC, were found by a Rome University team led by Andrea Carandini. "We believe this is the temple that legend says Romulus erected to the king of the gods after the Romans held their ground against the furious Sabines fighting to get their women back after the famous Rape (abduction)," Carandini said in the...

The rich heritage of Tunisia, maybe the only place where the Arab Spring stands a chance Modern-day Tunisians, more Westernized than most Arabs, see themselves as descendants of the great Carthaginian general who invaded Italy. The Arab Spring began in Sidi Bouzid, a small Tunisian town, at the end of 2010. In a desperate protest against the corrupt and oppressive government that had made it impossible for him to earn a living, food-cart vendor Mohamed Bouazizi stood before City Hall, doused himself with gasoline, and lit a match. His suicide seeded a revolutionary storm that swept the countryside and eventually...

Spot Where Julius Caesar Was Stabbed Discovered Archaeologists believe they have found the first physical evidence of the spot where Julius Caesar died, according to a new Spanish National Research Council report. Caesar, the head of the Roman Republic, was stabbed to death by a group of rival Roman senators on March 14, 44 B.C, the Ides of March. The assassination is well-covered in classical texts, but until now, researchers had no archaeological evidence of the place where it happened. Now, archaeologists have unearthed a concrete structure nearly 10 feet wide and 6.5 feet tall (3 meters by 2 meters)...