The original, left, and the fake golden brooch in the shape of a winged seahorse

Since being illegally excavated in the 1960s, King Croesus’s golden brooch has been stolen, replaced by a fake, sold to pay off gambling debts and has allegedly brought down a curse on its plunderers.

As part of a repair job 3,300 years in the making, Harvard’s Semitic Museum is seeking to undo some of the destruction wrought when Assyrians smashed the ancient city of Nuzi in modern-day Iraq, looting the temple and destroying artifacts. They’re using 3-D modeling to restore a smashed lion statue. Continue reading →

Archaeologists working in northern Iraq have discovered a new Assyrian site in the vicinity of the historic Arbil city center, the head of the antiquities office in the Kurdish Province of Arbil, Haydar Hassan, was quoted as saying in an Iraqi newspaper.

The Egyptian city of Alexandria, home to one of the seven wonders of the ancient world, may have been built to align with the rising sun on the day of Alexander the Great’s birth, a new study finds. Continue reading →

Madain Saleh, Saudi Arabia (AFP/File, Hassan Ammar)

Dating back to the second century BC, the Nabataean archaeological site, also known as Madain Saleh, has long been hidden from foreign visitors in this ultra-conservative kingdom that rarely opens up to tourists. But now the largest and best preserved site of the Nabataean civilisation south of Petra in Jordan is the first Saudi archaeological site to be inscribed on UNESCO’s World Heritage List and increasingly seeing tourists.

Around 2,100 years ago, at a time when Egypt was ruled by a dynasty of Greek kings, a young wealthy man from Thebes was nearing the end of his life. Rather than age, he  may have succumbed to a sinus infection caused by a mouthful of cavities and other tooth ailments. Continue reading →

  Fire swept through the old central souk, or marketplace, of Aleppo, Syria, damaging a vast and well-preserved labyrinth of medieval storehouses, shops, schools and ornate courtyards as fierce clashes between security forces and insurgents vowing to carry out a “decisive battle” for the city continued.

An Austrian museum says skeletal remains found in an ancient, Bronze Age grave are that of a woman metal worker — the first indication that women did such work thousands of years ago.

The results of scientific tests using replicas of two ancient Egyptian artificial toes, including one that was found on the foot of a mummy, suggest that they’re likely to be the world’s first prosthetic body parts. Continue reading →

The damaged outer gate of Aleppo’s Citadel (Nelofer Pazira)

The ongoing civil war in Syria, a land brimming with history, has led to a dangerous, tragic surge in the looting and smuggling of Syrian antiquities, and the trade of antiquities for guns.

A Harvard professor has identified what appears to be a scrap of fourth century Egyptian papyrus that contains the first known explicit reference to Jesus as married, a discovery that could fuel the millennia-old debate about priestly celibacy in the Catholic church. But the papyrus has no context and many scholars are already arguing it is fake. Continue reading →

 Israeli archaeologists digging on the route of a planned highway have found new ruins from a 1,500-year-old Jewish town, the Israel Antiquities Authority said.

A Byzantine period baptistery structure has been unearthed at one of the most important ancient sites in Kosovo by Turkish archaeologists. It is the first international excavation to be carried out by Turkish archaeologists in Europe. Continue reading →

AFP PHOTO/EGYPTIAN MINISTRY OF ANTIQUITIES

French archaeological mission has discovered a funeral boat of First Dynasty King Den, dating to about 3000 BC, northeast of the Giza Plateau, indicating earlier presence at the Archaic period cemetery.

In November 2011, when Chris Birks Archaeology excavated a trial trench in Great Ellingham, Norfolk, on the site of a future housing development, little did they know that they were about to uncover one of the biggest Romano-British burial sites in the region.

Illegal digs threaten Pakistan’s Buddhist past, threats have emerged to centuries-old sites from illegal excavations by amateur archaeologists and criminal gangs who compete to unearth relics worth millions of dollars abroad.

The University of Innsbruck said that archeologists found four  600 year old linen bras in an Austrian castle. Fashion experts describe the find as surprising because the bra had commonly been thought to be only little more than 100 years old as women abandoned the tight corset.

Continue reading →