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Ancient Origins Tour IRAQ

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The Powerful Assyrians, Rulers of Empires

The Powerful Assyrians, Rulers of Empires

Much of Assyria's history is closely tied to its southern neighbor, Babylonia. The two Mesopotamian empires spoke similar languages and worshipped most of the same gods. They were often rivals on the...
A Dream Destination for Egyptologists: The Amazing Amarna Necropolis

A Dream Destination for Egyptologists: The Amazing Amarna Necropolis

Amarna is a dream destination for many Egyptologists. The temples, tombs, and houses left by the people who lived in the area thousands of years ago make up one of the most impressive discoveries in...
The Nile – Its Fertile Past and Its Imperiled Future

The Nile – Its Fertile Past and Its Imperiled Future

History means looking back. But man must also learn from it or his tenuous grasp on the Earth risks a bleak future – a future that may become dire history only all too soon. This rings especially...
William Flinders Petrie: A Forgotten Father of Scientific Archaeology

William Flinders Petrie: A Forgotten Father of Scientific Archaeology

He was an archaeological genius whose sixth sense allowed him to accomplish an impressive number of excavations. Moreover, he created a chronological system for artifacts. The list of his...
The Goddess Nut is the sky, arching over her brother, the God Geb, who is the earth.

Ancient Egyptian Creation Myths: Lords of the Earth and Sky, Scarab God Khepera, and Lady of Slaughter

Egypt, land of the Pharaohs. There is no single creation myth for Ancient Egypt as each region of the country owed allegiance to a different god, so for simplicity’s sake we shall just look at the...
The Valley of the Kings and the Hopi: Constellations Send Ancient Messages

The Valley of the Kings and the Hopi: Constellations Send Ancient Messages

The thread of the constellations was very important to the builders of the pyramid complex. They went to great lengths to create them; carve them into solid stone and place them in the roof of the...
The Women Who Created a Legendary Pharaoh: The Hidden Advisers of Ramesses II

The Women Who Created a Legendary Pharaoh: The Hidden Advisers of Ramesses II

Ramesses II is considered one of the greatest pharaohs of Egypt. Regardless if this is an exaggerated statement or not, his reign had very distinct stages. With the disappearance of two of the most...
The Magnificent Tomb and Treasures of Forgotten Couple Yuya and Tuya

The Magnificent Tomb and Treasures of Forgotten Couple Yuya and Tuya

The couple known as Yuya and Tuya (also known as Thuya or Tjuyu) gave Egyptian royalty at least one, but perhaps even two, famous officials. Their daughter Tiye was a wife of Amenhotep III, mother of...
The Magic of Heka: Ancient Egyptian Rituals That Have Crossed Cultures and Time

The Magic of Heka: Ancient Egyptian Rituals That Have Crossed Cultures and Time

Magic has always been a mysterious way to achieve goals and was often thought to make dreams come true. In the case of the ancient Egyptian civilization, it was seen as a way to communicate with the...
Curse of the Buried Pearl: Ancient Magick and the Many Hazards of Treasure Hunting – Part II

Curse of the Buried Pearl: Ancient Magick and the Many Hazards of Treasure Hunting – Part II

No English translation exists of The Buried Pearl , although it is a rather strange fact that in 1901, the French archaeological mission in Cairo made a regular French edition. Strange, because its...
The Oxyrhynchus Papyri: The Largest Cache of Early Christian Manuscripts Discovered to Date

The Oxyrhynchus Papyri: The Largest Cache of Early Christian Manuscripts Discovered to Date

The Oxyrhynchus Papyri are a group of texts that were discovered at Oxyrhynchus (known today as el-Bahnasa), a site located in Upper Egypt. This group of documents is seen as one of the most...
The Elusive Egyptian Hall of Records and Hopi Lessons of Death and Rebirth

The Elusive Egyptian Hall of Records and Hopi Lessons of Death and Rebirth

The constellation of Orion is not wearing a belt. Instead, I think the middle star represents his navel. Medical scientists are just now finding out all the powers of the navel, the umbilical cord,...
Great Pyramid of Giza in the rays of the sun.

Unraveling the Mystery of the Great Pyramid Air-Shafts – Part II

[Read Part I] The Design There are two air shafts each going out towards the North and the South direction in both King’s and Queen’s chamber. While, the King’s Chamber shafts go all the way to the...
Unraveling the Mystery of the Great Pyramid Air-Shafts

Unraveling the Mystery of the Great Pyramid Air-Shafts

The Great Pyramid of Khufu at Giza near Cairo in Egypt is the last of the surviving Seven Wonders of the World. For more than forty centuries until the 19th century, it was the tallest and the most...
Translation of 3,000-Year-Old Egyptian Will Reveals Family Disputes Similar to Today

Translation of 3,000-Year-Old Egyptian Will Reveals Family Disputes Similar to Today

Unlike ancient Latin and Greek texts, Egyptian hieroglyphs have been mostly inaccessible for the average ancient history enthusiast. But this is beginning to change with a collection of texts that...
Mythical Benben Stone: The Landing Site of Egyptian God Atum

Mythical Benben Stone: The Landing Site of Egyptian God Atum

The Benben stone is an object that is found in the mythology of ancient Egypt. This mythical stone is said to have once been housed in a shrine within the compounds of the temple dedicated to the...
The reconstructed face of the young Egyptian woman.

The Face of a Beautiful Egyptian Woman Brought to Life from 2,000-Year-Old Mummy

The face of a young Egyptian woman who lived at least 2,000-years-ago has been reconstructed from a 3D print out of her skull. The forensic techniques employed revealed surprising facts about the...
A stone statue of Hatshepsut and Egyptian soldiers from Hatshepsut's expedition to the Land of Punt as depicted from her temple at Deir el-Bahri.

Out for War or A Shopping Trip? Why Hatshepsut Traveled to the Kingdom of Punt

The walls of the great temple in Karnak depicted the story of an expedition of impressive ships to the mysterious land known as Punt. The fleet of Queen Hatshepsut traveled there for unknown reasons...
: Relief on the Apadana Staircase on the eastern wall [of the Apadana Palace] from the ruins at Persepolis, “the Persian City”, ceremonial capital of the Achaemenid Empire. Deriv

Did Darius Hijack the Persian Throne? Destroying Rebellion and Securing the Future – Part II

With the death of King Cambyses II, the Persian Empire was in a state of war and confusion over who was the rightful heir. Even though the populace agreed that Gaumata was the rightful heir to the...
Deriv; Inside Temple Edfu and stars

Sky Religion in Ancient Egypt: Temples and Magick - Part I

“In the beginning Egypt was not” The Sky Religion in Egypt: Its Antiquity and Effects by G A Wainwright; published in 1938, is one of the classic enabling texts of Egyptology, and I am going to use...
The village of Deir el-Medina in the West Bank of Luxor, Egypt.

Paid Sick Days and Physicians at Work: Ancient Egyptians had State-Supported Health Care

We might think of state supported health care as an innovation of the 20th century, but it’s a much older tradition than that. In fact, texts from a village dating back to Egypt’s New Kingdom period...
Deriv; Relief of Darius in Persepolis and roaring lion frieze found in the Apadana (Darius the Great's palace) in Susa.

Did Darius Hijack the Persian Throne? Ancient Coup and the Rise of Darius the Great – Part I

Cambyses II began his rule around 530 BCE, maybe 529 BCE, and his reign ended in 522 BCE. Not much is known about Cambyses since he left no inscriptions of his own. Only Herodotus and the Egyptians...
Giza, The Time Keeper of the Ages: Alignments, Measurements, and Moon Cycles

Giza, The Time Keeper of the Ages: Alignments, Measurements, and Moon Cycles

How did ancient Egyptians tell the exact day and night of the summer and the winter solstices, or the equinoxes of spring and autumn? How could they tell the days when the flooding of the River Nile...
A child carrying an artifact at the cemetery.

Silent Victims of Grave Robbers: Children and Mummies Suffer from Extensive Looting in Egypt

The ancient Egyptian civilization lasted for a few millennia. The people who created the unforgettable culture are now buried in the sands of the desert. The number of cemeteries they left behind is...

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