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The project, called Contexts of and Relations between Early Writing Systems (CREWS)... is led by Dr Philippa Steele of the University's Faculty of Classics... For instance, today the notion of "alphabetical order" is used to arrange everything from dictionaries to telephone books, but why is the alphabet organised the way it is? Alphabetical order as we would recognise it first appeared over three thousand years ago in Ugaritic, written in a cuneiform script made of wedge-shaped signs impressed on clay tablets. The Ugaritic alphabet was in use in the ancient city of Ugarit, uncovered at Ras Shamra in modern Syria....

Excavations at Idalion, Cyprus: Crossing Cultures in the Eastern Mediterranean 8 p.m. JCCGW Theatre 6125 Montrose Road Rockville, MD Ann-Marie Knoblauch | Virginia Tech University Co-Sponsored by the Hellenic Society Prometheas Cyprus was an important trade center and cultural ‘crossroad’ in antiquity, controlled and influenced in different periods by the Mycenaean civilization, the sea-faring Phoenicians and Philistines of the Bible, Archaic Greece, the Persians in Mesopotamia, Egypt, the Roman Empire, and even Christian Byzantium. The ancient site of Idalion is fortuitously situated near the copper-rich mountains of Cyprus and the harbors of the coast.  This prime location led to 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...

A team of biologists at Lebanese American University estimates that 1 in 17 persons around the Mediterranean carries genetic markers distinctive to the ancient Phoenician people who resided in what is now Lebanon. The Phoenicians spread out in a trade diaspora two millennia ago, establishing colonies from Spain to Cyprus. The team also found that one third of Lebanese have the markers for Phoenician descent, and that these are spread evenly through the population, among both Christians and Muslims. In fact, all Lebanese have broadly similar sets of genetic markers. The lead researcher commented, "Whether you take a Christian village...

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 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...

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...

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...

A flake of limestone (ostracon) inscribed with an ancient Egyptian word list of the fifteenth century BC turns out to be the world's oldest known abecedary. The words have been arranged according to their initial sounds, and the order followed here is one that is still known today. This discovery by Ben Haring (Leiden University) with funding from Free Competition Humanities has been published in the October issue of the 'Journal of Near Eastern Studies'. The order is not the ABC of modern western alphabets, but Halaham (HLHM), the order known from the Ancient Egyptian, Ancient Arabian and Classical Ethiopian...

More than 30 ancient anchors have been discovered near the small Sicilian island of Pantelleria. Leonardo Abelli of the University of Sassari says that the anchors were abandoned by the Carthaginians during the First Punic War more than 2,000 years ago. The Romans had captured the strategically located island with a fleet of more than 300 ships. “The Carthaginian ships that were stationing near Patelleria had no other choice than hiding near the northern coast and trying to escape. To do so, they cut the anchors free and left them in the sea. They also abandoned part of their cargo...

Professor Elizabeth Lyding Will (1924 - 2009...) was one of the world's leading authorities on amphoras, an ancient two-handled container that her research demonstrated to be vitally important for tracing ancient trade patterns and for opening windows on tremendous amounts of information about ancient life and commerce. In a 2000 article entitled "The Roman Amphora: learning from storage jars," she discusses the diverse uses of "the lowly Roman amphora -- a two-handled clay jar used by the Canaanites, Phoenicians, Greeks and Romans to ship goods," describing both its main usage for the transportation of liquids including wine, olive oil, and...

The replica of a Phoenician ship from 600BC has arrived home in western Syria after a two-year voyage circumnavigating the coast of Africa.

SIDON: The British Museum's excavation team in Sidon have recently unearthed a new grave containing human skeletal remains belonging to a Canaanite warrior, archeology expert and field supervisor Claude Doumet Serhal told The Daily Star on Monday. According to Serhal, the delegation made the discovery at the "Freres" excavation site near Sidon's crusader castle. "This is the 77th grave that we have discovered at this site since our digging activities has started ten years ago with Lebanese-British financing," she said. According to Serhal, the remains go back to 2000 B.C., with a British archeologist saying the warrior had been buried...

In Heaven + Earth (Global Warming: The Missing Science), Ian Plimer, Professor of Mining Geology at The University of Adelaide, Australia, asks us to embrace big-picture science views; for to recognize our limits is a sign of maturity. "Climate science lacks scientific discipline," says the pro-amalgamation Professor, and in order to see more clearly we need to adopt an interdisciplinary approach. This requires humbleness. In Chapter 2: History, Plimer travels back in time, thousands of years, in fact, to debunk Gore's catastrophic global warming myths. I particularly like his research on the ancient Greeks. For Plato (427-347 BC) advanced the...

In looking over the history of the past 500 years, four nations stand out for having completely and massively altered world civilization in a way that no others have, before or after: England, Spain, France, and Portugal. No other empires even come close. The Muslim conquests were landbound except for island hopping. Chinese and Mongolian conquests were landbound. Even in ancient times, Greek, Roman, and Persian conquests were essentially land operations, except for river fording. Yes, they all had navies, but were not defined by them. What separates the English, French, Portuguese, and Spanish was that these nations had vast...

In looking over the history of the past 500 years, four nations stand out for having completely and massively altered world civilization in a way that no others have, before or after: England, Spain, France, and Portugal. No other empires even come close. The Muslim conquests were landbound except for island hopping. Chinese and Mongolian conquests were landbound. Even in ancient times, Greek, Roman, and Persian conquests were essentially land operations, except for river fording. Yes, they all had navies, but were not defined by them. What separates the English, French, Portuguese, and Spanish was that these nations had vast...

Archaeologists rewrite timeline of Bronze and Iron Ages, including early appearance of alphabet FOR RELEASE: Dec. 19, 2001 Contact: Blaine P. Friedlander Jr. Office: 607-255-3290 E-Mail: bpf2@cornell.edu ITHACA, N.Y. -- Using information gleaned from the sun's solar cycles and tree rings, archaeologists are rewriting the timeline of the Bronze and Iron Ages. The research dates certain artifacts of the ancient eastern Mediterranean decades earlier than previously thought. And it places an early appearance of the alphabet outside Phoenicia at around 740 B.C. Writing in two articles in the forthcoming issue of the journal Science (Dec. 21), archaeologists from Cornell University ...

...The newly discovered monumental room is believed to be an extension of the underground Temple of Sidon, which dates back to the Bronze Age. This finding comes as workers prepare the foundations of a new national museum, which will be established beside the archaeological site. Construction of the museum led to urgent excavations at the site last month. Ten years ago, the delegation discovered an underground "holy of holies" room, dating back to 1300 B.C., where ancient residents are believed to have worshipped their gods. The newly discovered room was found adjacent to it, and is thought to be an...

In describing a volcanic eruption from a high mountain towering over the sea Hanno mentions such details as sulphuric fumes and streams of lava. The only volcanic area in West Africa is represented by Mount Cameroon, which is still active today. It is located at the deepest point of the Gulf of Guinea, where it rises suddenly from the seashore, reaching a height of over 4000 meters... Those who have seen it from the sea consider it one of the most impressive sights in the world. The natives call it Mongana-Loba, "Mountain of the Gods," which well agrees with the...

The site of Zita contains remains of a Roman forum and a Punic child sacrifice precinct. During the summer of 2015, a team of archaeologists and other specialists and students will be exploring a large mound that contains the remains of an ancient city that once commanded the highest point on a peninsula that juts out from the southern coast of Tunisia into the Mediterranean. Visible from the island of Djerba, which was anciently known as Calypso of the Lotus Eaters in Homer's The Odyssey, the mound features the remains from a Roman bathhouse, ceramic kilns, evidence of metallurgy, and...