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The discovery was first made by students in 2013 while investigating underwater shipwreck remains near the ancient port of Sanitja on the island of Menorca... ancient Punic amphorae, more than 150 of them, lying in situ, still at rest where a seagoing vessel identified with the site known as the Binisafuller wreck gave up its cargo... Archaeologists date the amphorae to between 325-275 BC. It makes the shipwreck the oldest documented one in Menorca. It is a significant discovery because the remains of the port of Sanitja have been most often associated with the adjacent Roman period city of Sanisera....

Georgeos Diaz-Montexano, scriptologist and Egyptologist amateur, has been able to identify the names of the Hyksos kings like pertaining to the group of languages and proto-Greek or Mycenaean's dialects. The true ethnic origin of the mysterious Hyksos that were able to take control of the power of a considerable part of Old Egypt, during centuries XVII to the XVI before Christ, has been always a true challenge for the Egyptologists. However, the generalized opinion more for a long time has been that the Hyksos would be Semitic towns, fundamentally coastal inhabitants of the strip Syrian-Palestine, that is, Canaanites or proto-Phoenicians....

When the Phoenicians arrived on the Iberian peninsula, probably at the end of the ninth century B.C., they came into contact with an indigenous people called the Tartessians... The structure at Cancho Roano... was not a palace at all; it was simply a Tartessian sanctuary, which over time became influenced by Phoenician culture. Scholars have only recently begun to separate Tartessian history from myth. When the Greeks reached the Iberian peninsula a few centuries after the Phoenicians, they called the land Tartessos... According to the fifth-century B.C. historian Herodotus, Tartessian civilization was discovered accidentally by a Greek named Kolaios, who...

April 28, 2006Cornell study of ancient volcano, seeds and tree rings, suggests rewriting Late Bronze Age Mediterranean history By Alex Kwan Separated in history by 100 years, the seafaring Minoans of Crete and the mercantile Canaanites of northern Egypt and the Levant (a large area of the Middle East) at the eastern end of the Mediterranean were never considered trading partners at the start of the Late Bronze Age. Until now. Trenchmaster Vronwy Hankey and foreman Antonis Zidianakis excavate storage jars from the Minoan settlement Myrtos-Pyrgos. The jars were analyzed in the Cornell study using radiocarbon analyses. Cultural links between...

<p>The desert winds swept over the sands and out to the sea. Waters churned and the ships, loaded with wine from the ancient city of Tyre, tumbled in the storm.</p> <p>Swamped, the Tanit and Elissa foundered around 800 B.C., coming to rest upright some 1,300 feet under the Mediterranean, too deep for recovery.</p>

Ancient ivory carvings made by Phoenician artists some 3,000 years ago have long hidden a secret, even while being openly displayed in museums around the world: The sculptures were originally painted with colorful pigments, and some were decorated with gold... These metals are found in pigments commonly used in antiquity, such as the copper-based pigment Egyptian blue or the iron-based pigment hematite. The metals are not normally in ivory nor in the soil where the artifacts were long buried, explains Ina Reiche, a chemist at the Laboratory of Molecular & Structural Archaeology, in Paris. Reiche led the research, which was...

The Phoenicians were originally based in a series of city-states that extended from southeast Turkey to modern-day Israel. They were great seafarers with a taste for exploration. Accounts survive of its navigators reaching places as far afield as Northern Europe and West Africa. They founded settlements throughout the Mediterranean during the first millennium B.C. Carthage, whose Phoenician name was Qart Hadasht (new city), was one of those new settlements. It sat astride trade routes going east to west, across the Mediterranean, and north to south, between Europe and Africa. The people spoke Punic, a form of the Phoenician language... The...

The Afro-Asiatic language family was formerly called Semitic-Hamitic, or, occasionally, Hamito-Semitic. It consists of languages spoken in north Africa and in the Near East, both in the past and presently. Afro-Asiatic is comprised of the Hamitic and Semitic branches. Hamitic consists of four sub-branches, all found in north Africa: Egyptian, Berber, Cushitic, and Chadic; it includes such languages as Coptic, Tamazight, Tuareg, and Hausa. The Semitic branch is divided into East and West sub-branches, and is found in both the Near East and in north Africa. East Semitic includes Akkadian and Chaldean. West Semitic is further divided into Northern and...

Herodotus begins his history by telling us that some Phoenician traders came to Argos, Greece and, on a whim, abducted the king’s daughter Io and took her to Egypt. Later, to show that two could play at that game, the Greeks slid over to Phoenicia and stole their king’s daughter, Europa. (Bad pun: and how these ladies ended up with Jupiter, nobody knows.) “So far,” Herodotus, checking his sums, said, “the scores were even.” But then the Greeks, into the game, decided to do a one-up. The went back to another Phoenician stronghold and kidnapped that king’s daughter, Medea. The...

Lebanese and Spanish archaeologists have discovered 2,900-year-old earthenware pottery that ancient Phoenicians used to store the bones of their dead after burning the corpses. They said more than 100 jars were discovered at a Phoenician site in the southern coastal city of Tire. Phoenicians are known to have thrived from 1500 B.C. to 300 B.C and they were also headquartered in the coastal area of present-day Syria. "The big jars are like individual tombs. The smaller jars are left empty, but symbolically represent that a soul is stored in them," Ali Badawi, the archaeologist in charge in Tire, told Reuters...

The new agreement also considers action on other sites within the province, that are related to the one at Cerro del Villar. This Phoenician site was one of the more important colonial sites on the Andalucian Coast. Its foundation dates from the VIII century B.C but due to the constant floods suffered in the area, the Phoenician settlers moved to what is known today as Malaga, which they named 'Malaka' about 570. It was discovered by the archaeologist Juan Manuel Munoz in 1965, and in 1998, the site was declared of general interest by the Andalucian Government... About 2,500 students...

A Punic necropolis dating back to the 4th-5th century BC has been recently discovered at the museum of Sousse during extension and refurbishing works that started last May and are due to be completed by the end of the current year... This discovery comes following last year's discovery of a roman burial vault located near the roman catacombs in the district of Bouhsina in Sousse. The vault which is being restored by the INP, contains 2 tombs with the remains of some 13 members of the same family buried together along with sacred ceramic vessels.

2007-08-17 19:38Sardinia's Phoenician settlement New digs on western coast may unearth ancient Othoca (ANSA) - Oristano, August 17 - An ancient Phoenician colony on the western coast of Sardinia may soon yield some of its long-buried secrets during new excavations. Othoca, founded by the Phoenicians some 2,600 years ago, partly evolved into the modern-day town of Santa Giusta but most remnants of the original settlement lie buried under a thick layer of mud at the bottom of a large lake. Experts believe the lake, separated from the sea by a narrow bridge of land, was once the port of Othoca,...

Phoenician tombs found in Sicily 40 sarcophagi unearthed at necropolis near ancient colony (ANSA) - Marsala (Trapani), August 23 - Archaeologists have unearthed 40 sarcophagi in what was once the sacred Phoenician burial grounds of Birgi, near the ancient colony of Motya . The tombs were discovered by chance by a group of construction workers excavating the foundations of a house close to the westernmost tip of Sicily near Marsala, culture officials said . Archaeologists said the sarcophagi were made of simple stone slabs and resembled those found on display outside the museum on the neighbouring island of Motya (present-day...

Many Lebanese expatriate groups have roundly condemned the Hizbullah, Iran and Syria. Some of them are also calling for Israel to press ahead in its military campaign. The Lebanese Canadian Coordinating Council (LCCC), a coalition of organizations in Canada, has released a statement laying out its vision of what measures should be endorsed by the world community at an international conference on the ongoing warfare in Lebanon. The conference is to be held in Rome on Wednesday, pursuant to a recommendation issued by the United Nations Security Council on July 21, 2006. Among the measures the LCCC is recommending are...

Archaeologists discover remains of Phoenician city By m.p. Wed, 12 Jul 2006, 21:36 The remains of an Archaic Era Phoenician city have been unearthed in Mezquitilla, Vélez Málaga. Archaeologists say it is the largest settlement from that period in Andalucía, and also one of the largest in the Mediterranean. The excavations have uncovered the remains of a block of houses, covering an area of 40 x 12 metres, although the whole city is said to have covered more than six hectares. Kitchen utensils and dishes have also been discovered intact. The site is what remains of the Phoenician city of...

Phoenician city not destroyedLife after supposed death for Motya near Trapani (ANSA) - Palermo, March 14 - An ancient Phoenician city unearthed in Sicily was inhabited after its supposed destruction, the head of an Italian dig team claims . "Our finds, including cooking pans, Phoenecian-style vases, small altars and pieces of looms, show Motya had a thriving population long after it is commonly believed to have been destroyed by the Ancient Greeks," said Maria Pamela Toti . The continued life of Motya had been put forward by various archaeologists over the years but until now no proof had been found...

Phoenician temple found in SicilySite believed to be 'unique', archaeologists say (ANSA) - Palermo, February 28 - An ancient Phoenician temple unearthed in Sicily is "unique" in the West, the head of the Italian dig team claims. "You have to go all the way to Amrit in Syria to find a similar one," said Lorenzo Nigro of the Rome University team. The temple came to light last year after a portion of a lagoon surrounding the Phoenician city of Motya (present-day Mozia) was drained. The pool began to fill up again and a fresh-water spring was found - a fact...

Thanks to political tensions easing in Lebanon, archaeologists have finally managed to locate the sites of ancient Phoenician harbours in the seaports that dominated Mediterranean trade thousands of years ago. By drilling out cores of sediment from the modern urban centres of these cities, geologists have mapped out the former coastlines that the sediments have long since buried. From this they have pinpointed the likely sites of the old harbours, and have marked out locations that, they say, are in dire need of exploration and conservation. The modern cities of Tyre and Sidon on the Lebanese coast were once the...

Posted on Sun, Nov. 13, 2005 Research on ancient writing linked with modern Mideast conflict BY RON GROSSMAN CHICAGO - Professorial colleagues think Ron Tappy has made a landmark breakthrough in our understanding of the world of the Bible. He himself is waiting for the other shoe to drop. This week, Tappy will formally unveil his discovery at the meetings of the American Schools of Oriental Research. Normally a presentation titled "The 2005 Excavation Season at Tel Zayit, with Special Attention to the Tenth Century BCE" would hardly be noticed beyond the scholars who will gather at the Hyatt Penn's...