When it is carefully examined, rock art in the Namib Desert may shine light on forgotten rituals and practices from thousands of years ago. One particularly interesting feature appears to show...
The Tayma oasis in Saudi Arabia is famous for its rock art and its historic legacy. It was a major trade route in antiquity and was once the dwelling place of a Babylonian king, Nabonidus. It is...
Hundreds of ancient tombs lay in the Jebel Qurma desert region of Jordan close to the border with Saudi Arabia. There are simple graves from the Early Bronze Age to more elaborate tower tombs and...
Before Shakespeare, there were the Greeks. The infamous "all the world's a stage" quote attributed to the Elizabethan writer in the 16th century far more accurately describes the world of ancient...
Dan Brown wrote The Da Vinci Code, inspired by Henry Lincoln and his two co-authors’ The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail . The Norwegian researcher Harald Boehlke was inspired by the same book. Lincoln...
The monuments Akhenaten constructed were no less impressive than those of his father, Amenhotep III. But all his buildings were dismantled and destroyed during the Amarna backlash—including the city...
Never before had a pharaoh ushered daring, almost bizarre and inconceivable transformations in religion and statecraft as Akhenaten did. Not only did he oust the pantheon of traditional gods and...
Thousands of stone blocks that were “hiding” for ages in storage near Luxor proved to be the remains of the temple of Thutmose I, which has been searched for by archaeologists for some time. A Polish...
Ancient Egypt is one on the oldest civilizations in the world and it was also home to many of the ancient world’s greatest achievements. Without their creativity and innovative approach to the world...
From the beginning of time, those among us we now call artists have tried to capture in two dimensions what they saw of the real, three-dimensional world in which they lived. Almost from the very...
Until documents of bygone ages are unearthed, located and recovered we are stuck with sacred texts, classical writings and myths of the past. Can these documents we know of now be considered as...
Born a year after the assassination of Julius Caesar, Ovid’s first works appeared in the early days of the Augustan principate. Ovid wrote various works throughout his long career, but none so...
Emily Poelina-Hunter / The Conversation Almost a quarter of Australian women now have tattoos - a trend some attribute to the influence of feminism. What I find interesting is that the mainstreaming...
To enter the famous European caves of Lascaux, Chauvet, Altamira, Pech Merle and many others is to enter another world. You are greeted by a whole menagerie of hauntingly beautiful representations of...
Centuries removed from the prehistoric Indus Valley Region, the Mauryan and Kushan dynasties are among the most significant cultural and artistic regimes in Indian history. The prominence of the...
Adam Brumm & Michelle Langley / The Conversation A cave dig in Indonesia has unearthed a unique collection of prehistoric ornaments and artworks that date back in some instances to at least 30,...
The ancient Egyptians built their first great monuments in stone beginning with the step pyramid of Djoser about 4,650 years ago. Well before that, around 6,000 years ago, a fine artist working in...
A society still silent and secreted beneath the earth of the Himalayas, the earliest civilization associated with Hindu/Indian art history is the Indus Valley Civilization (IVC). This society is...
If Alexander the Great was alive now, he would probably be the most often photographed leader in the world. However, in his time, photography didn't exist. During the 4th century BC, a remarkable...
Egyptologists at the University of Bonn, Germany have discovered rock art from the 4th millennium BC during an excavation at a necropolis near Aswan in Egypt. The images were carved into the rock in...
Experts from a wide array of organizations are examining an intricately carved skull discovered in an antique shop in Vienna in 2011. The skull, believed to be 300 years old, is completely covered...
A mystery that lasted for nearly five centuries was finally solved with the assistance of modern technology. The magnificent 16th century miniature boxwood carvings that had been puzzling viewers and...
It has been claimed that the Red Monastery, more specifically, its principal church, is one of three surviving examples of Byzantine architecture from the early period of that empire’s history, the...
Even though paper would eventually come to be more popular, parchment was the preferred material for book making, and eventually printing, throughout the middle ages. Parchment, used before the rise...
