Free Republic

...the teeth of an Egyptian woman who lived over 4,000 years ago show that the lives of women back then may have been more varied than some records suggest. Two patterns of wear on 16 of her 24 teeth are inconsistent with eating, which means she was using her teeth for something else; further analysis suggests she was a craftswoman... "Based on tomb paintings and recovered texts, scholars assert that there were only seven professions open to women throughout ancient Egyptian culture history," they wrote in a new paper. "[Those are] as priestesses in temples dedicated to goddesses (for high...

A team of archaeologists and students are excavating a site in the Nile Delta region of Egypt where, set within desert desolation, ruins still bespeak an important port city that flourished by the 2nd and 1st centuries B.C. Near the present-day city of El-Mansoura, a clearly human-made rise with visible ruins mark the spot of Tel Timai, what remains of the city of Thmuis, an ancient port city and capital of the Ptolemies... "Little excavation has been done in Tell El-Timai," reports Littman, "...At the end of the 19th century Edouard Naville discovered what he labeled as a library in...

A global search has been launched for Holocaust refugees saved by a little-known Portuguese diplomat stationed in France during the Second World War – a man described as “one of the great unsung heroes” of the era by renowned Canadian writer Peter C. Newman, who credits the maverick consul Aristides de Sousa Mendes with helping his own family escape the Nazi death chambers.Sousa Mendes has never received the kind of attention given to Oskar Schindler, the German industrialist credited with saving more than 1,000 Jews from the Holocaust by employing them in his factories.Sousa Mendes’s “courageous” actions to help at...

Sam Mendes’ British publicist Sara Keene has confirmed to guardian.co.uk that the director is indeed in talks to helm the 23rd James Bond film.

HYANNIS - Greed drove a 13-year-old to plot with an adult friend and another boy to kill his own half brother, burn his body and take more than $10,000 worth of drug money - all for a used BMW, prosecutors and sources said. The sordid tale of drugs, violence, cash and a cheap luxury vehicle unfolded yesterday as two 13-year-olds and a 20-year-old were charged with murdering 16-year-old Jordan Mendes, whose torched corpse was found in a pit in the Hyannis woods. Mykel Mendes, 13, and Kevin Ribeiro, 13, were charged with murder and armed robbery as juveniles, according to...

SAM MENDES has the unenviable distinction of having directed one of the three most undeserving Best Picture winners in the last 30 years. In 1999, his directorial debut, American Beauty, won the Oscar and then, immediately, began sliding to oblivion. A paint-by-numbers critique of American middle-class mores, American Beauty was so heavy-handed and obvious as to be insulting even to the elite sophisticates it attempted to flatter. Of course experimentation with marijuana brings happiness. Of course the homophobic, wife-beating Marine father next door is really a closet case. Of course the only well-adjusted adults in the neighborhood are the...