For many years, archaeologists believed that the ancient Egyptians must have used some sort of watercourse to transport the heavy stone blocks to build the pyramids. But until now, no one was sure of the location, shape, size or proximity of such a waterway. Last week, an international research team announced a discovery that sheds light on this mystery...
In Hadrianopolis, today's Turkish city of Edirne, a set of almost 1,400-year-old coins was discovered in a ceramic jar. It is probably not a classic coin hoard - a depot, but rather a period "piggy bank", or a domestic treasure box.
During excavations of the ancient Hittite capital of Hattusa (Chattoush) in today's central Çorum province of Turkey, a rare sawmill from the 3rd century was discovered. century BC. It is one of the few known ancient iron saws and the first ever from this period in Anatolia.
Archaeologists from the "Oriental" department of the German Archaeological Institute (DAI) and the Institute of Archaeology at Jordán University have been investigating the foundations of a house on the site of a late Copper Age settlement at Tell Hujayrat al-Ghuzlan in Jordan. In the process, they found an unusual jar containing thousands of beads made of clay, bone and shell...
In the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, in 2020 the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities, in collaboration with the American Research Center in Kahira and Harvard University, to create and offer virtual tours of major historical sites, archaeological sites and museums.
In what is now the Nefud Desert in Saudi Arabia, a site with hundreds of nomadic herders' hearths dating back to the early Stone Age has been discovered. A surprise for the archaeologists was the abundance of broken grinding stones found in the hearths, the microscopic analysis of which yielded a wealth of information.
Near the Tigris River at the ancient city of Kalhu (now Nimrudu), a brickmaker once prepared clay bricks for the construction of a new palace for King Ashurnasirpal II. Little did he know that 2,900 years later it would serve as a unique time capsule revealing details of the flora of that specific area and time through the examination of DNA preserved in the brick over thousands of years. Nothing like this had ever been done before.
Archaeological excavations of a cemetery and temple at the site of a sacrificial site in Carthage, Tunisia, have unearthed 2,300-year-old gold sacrificial coins and burial urns containing the remains of infants and animals, some even together in one vessel.
After this year's massive earthquakes in southern Turkey, archaeologists discovered a 3,800-year-old clay tablet with a Bronze Age cuneiform script during rescue work at Tell Atchana. The unique tablet, inscribed in Akkadian, represents a contract for the purchase of the ancient city of Alalakh by the ruler of the time.
An artfully crafted necklace made of thousands of beads from a child's grave in the Neolithic village of Ba'ja in southern Jordan has been reassembled into its original shape five years after its discovery. It is the most elaborate ornament ever found at a Neolithic site and contains the oldest known amber beads ever found.