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“An ongoing underwater archaeological project [near Antikythera Island in Greece] most recently recovered a large marble head of a bearded male figure believed to be part of a statue of Hercules.”

Archaeologists discovered granite blocks from the time of Khufu at the temple of the Sun in Heliopolis, along with many other remains.

A study of cattle teeth discovered at Ur sheds light on the economy, health, and diet of ancient Mesopotamia.

Isabella Segalovich gives a brief history of women’s eyebrows in art.

Robyn Ramsden gives workshops on how to create your own Nag Hammadi codex.

“Italy has been so successful in recovering ancient artworks and artifacts that were illegally exported from the country it has created a museum for them.”

“The funerary portraiture from the city of Palmyra, in the eastern Roman Empire, is a rich and heterogenous display of identity dating to the first three centuries CE.”

“A new exhibit at the Israel Museum uses VR technology to bring back to life the rich heritage of the destroyed Great Synagogue of Aleppo.”

New release: The Archaeology of Iran from the Palaeolithic to the Achaemenid Empire, by Roger Matthews and Hassan Fazeli Nashli. Also available as a free download.

New release: A Guide to Scenes of Daily Life on Athenian Vases, by John Howard Oakley (University of Wisconsin Press, 2020). Summarized and reviewed here.

Carl Rasmussen shares photos of the only completely preserved chapel for emperor worship in the Roman world.

Joel Kramer’s latest video is about his visit to Babylon and how the prophecies against the city were fulfilled.

HT: Agade, Joseph Lauer, Arne Halbakken, Paleojudaica

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“Egypt has unveiled a major new archaeological find of 250 sarcophagi, 150 small bronze statues of gods and goddesses and other antiquities at the Saqqara necropolis.”

One of the more remarkable finds from the excavations of Satala in Turkey is an ornate bronze belt from an Urartian warrior.

Turkish authorities raided sites in 38 provinces in culmination of a yearlong investigation of an antiquities theft ring.

“The lost [Mittanian] city of ‘Zakhiku’ has resurfaced after spending decades underwater in the Mosul reservoir on the River Tigris in Iraq.”

Joel Kramer has found lots of sulfur balls at Numeira, a possible location of biblical Gomorrah.

Elon Heymans looks at the factors that led the use of silver and other precious metals as a form of currency at the beginning of the Iron Age in the ANE.

Greek Reporter: “Antioch on the Orontes, an ancient Greek city on the eastern side of the Orontes River, was one of the most glorious of all the Greek cities in the world.”

The Unsilencing the Archives Lectures from Badè Museum “explore the often-overlooked contributions made by Middle Easterners to archaeological excavations during the period of the British Mandate in Palestine.” The full series of 11 lectures is now online.

A 21-year-old punk broke into the Dallas Museum of Art and caused $5 million in damage, including the destruction of three ancient Greek vessels.

“Like us, the Romans were adept at scrolling — except they used actual, unwieldy scrolls. They would have loved OmnesViae, a handy online route planner, just for Roman roads.”

The Babylon Bee: “Archaeologists Have Just Discovered CONCLUSIVE PROOF Of The Bible.”

New release: Biblical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies in Honor of P. Kyle McCarter Jr., edited by Christopher Rollston, Susanna Garfein, and Neal H. Walls (SBL Press, $99). Free pdf download here (via AWOL).

BibleTelling’s Christian Storytelling Conference is being held in Jacksonville, Illinois, on June 23-25. The Story Concert will be broadcast live on Friday evening.

HT: Agade, Joseph Lauer, Ted Weis, Arne Halbakken, Deborah Hurn

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An ancient shipwreck near the northern Greek island of Alonissos will be the first in Greece to be made accessible to the public. It dates to the 5th century BC and was carrying 4,000 amphoras.

Three archaeological expeditions are working at Nineveh, and authorities plan to open the city to tourists next year.

“Scientists have fully sequenced the DNA of a Pompeii man killed during the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in A.D. 79.”

Judith Sudilovsky went on a tour of Turkey, and she reports on what she saw at Harran, the city where Abraham lived, at Urfa/Edessa, and at the Haleplibahçe Mozaik Museum.

“The United Kingdom and Greece have agreed to formal talks regarding the return of the Parthenon marbles.”

A former president of the Louvre has been charged with crimes related to the trafficking of Egyptian artifacts.

Amanda Claridge, archaeologist and author of Rome: An Oxford Archaeological Guide, died earlier this month.

HT: Agade, Joseph Lauer, Arne Halbakken, Keith Keyser, Explorator

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A rare Phoenician sarcophagus dating to 600 BC was discovered on the outskirts of Rabat, Malta.

The “perfectly preserved” Ses Fontanelles wreck, discovered recently off the coast of Mallorca, is now giving “priceless insights into the Mediterranean of the fourth century AD and the crew’s daily lives.”

Egyptian archaeologists have discovered five water wells from the 13th century BC believed to have been part of the Horus Military Road.

The Iraq Museum in Baghdad has officially re-opened.

Rulers of the great kingdoms of the ANE in the Late Bronze period rarely met each other, for a variety of reasons, explains Mohy-Eldin E. Abo-Eleaz.

Turkish Archaeological News has a roundup of stories from the month of February.

“Artificial intelligence could bring to life lost texts, from imperial decrees to the poems of Sappho, researchers have revealed, after developing a system that can fill in the gaps in ancient Greek inscriptions and pinpoint when and where they are from.”

ARIADNE is a research infrastructure for archaeology… to support research, learning and teaching by enabling access to digital resources and innovative new services…by maintaining a catalogue of digital datasets, by promoting best practices in the management and use of digital data in archaeology, by offering training and advice, and by supporting the development of innovative new services for archaeology.”

Martha Sharp Joukowsky, excavator of the Great Temple in Petra, died in January.

Ghazi Bisheh, excavator of many sites in Jordan, died in January.

Carl Rasmussen has written a third part and a final part to his series on where the treasures of the Jerusalem temple went after AD 70.

HT: Agade, Joseph Lauer, Arne Halbakken, Alexander Schick, Explorator

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Artifacts discovered in the harbor of Caesarea provide evidence of Late Bronze trade relations between Cyprus and Sardinia. The underlying journal article is here.

The Met Museum in NYC will spend $40 million to renovate its ancient Near East and Cypriote galleries.

The Grand Egyptian Museum is inching closer to being complete.

Writing for The New Yorker, Casey Cep explains why we find such a minor pharaoh as King Tut so fascinating.

An archaeologist is using deep learning to develop a search engine for precise searches of archaeological records.

Johannes Hackl attempts to explain when Akkadian ceased as a language used by native speakers and when cuneiform writing came to an end.

Cheryl Kolander, a professional natural dyer, writes briefly about her research on Tyrian purple dye.

A mass grave of Crusaders in Sidon is the topic of This Week in the Ancient Near East podcast.

Members of the Historical Faith Society can view several recent videos with Alexander Schick, including:

  • The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Birth of Modern Israel
  • The Dead Sea Scrolls: Affirming the Word of God
  • Do the Dead Sea Scrolls Prove There was Only One Isaiah?

There will also be a free, live event with Alexander Schick and Timothy Mahoney talking about the history of the Bible and the Dead Sea Scrolls on Sun., Feb 27, at 4:00 pm US Eastern.

Sketchfab has a variety of 3D models available for viewing, including:

The John Henry Iliffe Collection of nearly 800 photographs is now available online. Iliffe’s career included being the Keeper of the Palestine Archaeological Museum (now the Rockefeller) in Jerusalem. Iliffe was also the author of A Short Guide to the Exhibition Illustrating the Stone and Bronze Ages in Palestine, published the year before the museum opened, available here in pdf format.

HT: Agade, Joseph Lauer, Alexander Schick, Explorator, Keith Keyser

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Archaeologists working in the temple of Amenhotep III in Luxor have discovered remains of a pair of gigantic limestone colossi.

“A joint Egyptian-Italian Mission excavating near Aswan in Egypt has discovered a tomb from the Greco-Roman period containing twenty mummies.”

“Scientists found the first recorded example of a bandaged wound on a mummified body, which could offer more insight into ancient medical practices.”

“Scholars have concluded that King Tutankhamun was not murdered, after a lengthy investigation that seemed to refute popular theory.”

Joshua Berman says that marks of Egyptian culture in the Torah give evidence of the Israelites’ sojourn in Egypt.

Deb Hurn argues that the meteoric airburst theory for the destruction of Tall al-Hammam does not match various details in the biblical text for the destruction of Sodom.

The world’s largest mosaic is now open to the public underneath the newly built Antakya Museum Hotel (in biblical Antioch on the Orontes).

“A new study has revealed that some 4,500 years ago the ancient Mesopotamians were the first to create a hybrid animal, producing an entirely new beast by mating two different species.”

New technology is allowing scientists to better determine the sex of ancient skeletons.

Candida Moss writes about the relationship that ancient Romans had with their dogs.

A Hellenistic necropolis near Naples is opening to the public for the first time.

Nimes is my favorite Roman city in France, and National Geographic reviews some of the highlights.

Michael Shutterly has written a brief guide to the coins of the Persian kings.

Carl Rasmussen shares photos of what’s new at Laodicea—“a two hundred foot long, 25 foot high Frescoed Wall.”

HT: Agade, Joseph Lauer, Explorator, Arne Halbakken

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