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Ancient Origins Tour IRAQ

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Pirate Port facing the sea. Source: Xilon/Adobe Stock

Pirate Havens: 8 of the Most Notorious Pirate Strongholds

Pirates have captured our imagination for centuries with their tales of adventure, daring raids, and hidden treasure. From the Caribbean to the South China Sea, pirates have prowled the high seas,...
Goods with Celtic influence found in Przeworsk burial at Velyka Dibrova, Lviv region, Ukraine. Source: V. Sydorovych / Lviv Regional Council

Grave Robbers Return Przeworsk Culture Burial Goods in the Ukraine

An extraordinary incident has helped archaeologists in Ukraine gain fresh insights into how Celtic culture influenced development in the lands of their country more than 2,000 years ago. The event in...
Authorities seized stolen artifacts, including three magic incantation bowls. Source: Yoli Schwartz / Israel Antiquities Authority

1500-Year-Old Magic Bowls Inscribed with Spells Seized in Jerusalem Raid

During a raid on a private home in Jerusalem’s ultra-Orthodox Ramat Shlomo neighborhood, the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) seized a large cache of stolen or illegally excavated archaeological...
Handful of gold rings, beads and gold coins retrieved by fisherman in the River Musi and believed to be artifacts left behind by the Srivijaya Empire’s long-lost Island of Gold. Source: Wreckwatch Magazine

Has Indonesia’s Legendary Lost Island of Gold Been Discovered?

Over the last 5 years, fishermen have recovered ancient treasures worth tens of millions of dollars from the Musi River, around Palembang, on the Indonesian island of Sumatra. The big question being...
A Miraculous Recovery for the Nearly-Looted Amarguilla Treasure

A Miraculous Recovery for the Nearly-Looted Amarguilla Treasure

The Archaeological and Ethnological Museum of Córdoba has opened an entrancing new exhibit that is turning heads. For the first time ever, members of the public and press are getting a close-up look...
Lockdown Looting: Massive Hoard of Stolen Serbian Artifacts Seized

Lockdown Looting: Massive Hoard of Stolen Serbian Artifacts Seized

Described as a discovery of “great historical and archaeological value,” Serbian customs officials have seized a hoard of over 2,000 ancient artifacts. According to Archaeology News Network , on the...
Mummified feet. Credit: Andrea Izzotti / Adobe Stock

Mummified Body Parts Among Artifacts Now Banned on Facebook

Following a 2019 BBC News exposé and an academic campaign, the social media giant Facebook has now banned all sales of ancient artifacts on the social network, fearing stolen and looted treasures...
A cuneiform tablets (representative image) Source: dimamoroz / Adobe Stock

Controversial Cuneiform Tablets Tell Tales of Security Dogs and a Lost City

An archaeologist has admitted that around 1,400 cuneiform tablets might have been stolen from Irisagrig, a 4,000-year-old lost Sumerian city in modern day Iraq. While the robbers obviously know the...
Bone hunters inside a man-made permafrost cave of the Yunyugen mammoth graveyard site. Source: Sergey Leshchinsky / Siberian Times

Ivory Hunters Decimate 50,000 Year Old Mammoth Graveyard

By Svetlana Skarbo / The Siberian Times A 50,000 year old mammoth graveyard in Yunyugen, north of Yakutia, Siberia is a paleontological world treasure site with multiple remains of mammoths, woolly...
The ancient bible recovered from smugglers in Turkey. Credit: Diyarbakir Governor's Office

Stolen 1200-Year-Old Bible with Gold-Encrusted Motifs Recovered in Anti-Smuggling Raid in Turkey

A rare 1200-year old bible has been seized from a group of antiquities smugglers in Turkey. In recent years there have been a sharp spike in the numbers of historic artifacts smuggled into the...
Pillar dollar, 8 reals and minted in Mexico. At the top there is a small hole, probably used to sew the coin into clothing.

Black Market Bounty: Experts Find Coins Sewn into Clothes at Shipwreck

Maritime archaeologists have made an astonishing discovery off the Kent coast in England. While investigating an almost three-hundred-year-old shipwreck they found some coins that had been sewn into...
Representational image – does not depict artifacts recovered in Operation Demetra. Coins stolen by the Nazis, Jewish Museum of Greece (Athens)

Illegal Artifact Smuggling and Forgery Ring Smashed in Europe-Wide Police Swoop

After a hunt lasting several decades, a team of almost 250 top European criminal investigators and highly-trained police officers have busted a 24-man strong, ring of international illegal artifact...
Some of the artefacts found after disappearing from the National Museum of Iraq. Ceerwan Aziz

Fifteen Years After Looting, Thousands of Artifacts are still Missing from Iraq’s National Museum

Craig Barker / The Conversation On April 10 2003, the first looters broke into the National Museum of Iraq. Staff had vacated two days earlier, ahead of the advance of US forces on Baghdad. The...
Palmyrean triad: Baalshamin, master of the skies, the Moon-god Aglibol and the Sun-god Malakbel (Yarhibol). Cultual relief, limestone, first half of the 1st century AD, found in one of the routes to Palmyra. The stele bears religious inscriptions carved by passers-by.

Scholar Made the Ultimate Sacrifice to Save Ancient Palmyra Treasures from the Hands of ISIS

Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, whose real name was Ibrahim al-Badri, was once a lecturer of Islamic studies and an Imam at mosques in Baghdad and Falluja. He also served as an officer in the army of Saddam...