In the course of early human development, there appeared the distinct need to write. To protect thoughts and ideas and tasks from the passing of time, to remember and keep for posterity. Oral...
Archaeologists excavating the Aççana Mound, also known as Eski Alalah, have made an amazing discovery: a cuneiform tablet detailing a shopping list of purchases from almost 3,500 years ago. The...
During extensive excavations in Büklükale, a historically significant site believed to have served as a crucial military base for the Hittites, archaeologists unearthed a remarkable seal belonging to...
More than 2 millennia before the French Revolution introduced the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizens , an ancient Near Eastern monarch issued a charter that is considered to be the...
During the second half of the third millennium BC the land of Sumer and in fact the entire Mesopotamian region came under the control of the Akkadians, a Semitic people who had lived for centuries...
The history of cartography traces humanity's relentless quest to understand and depict the world around us. From ancient civilizations sketching rudimentary maps to modern digital cartography, this...
A 3,300-year-old clay tablet unearthed in central Turkey has painted a tale of a devastating foreign invasion of the Hittite Empire during a period of internal strife and civil war. As the civil war...
New artificial intelligence software is now able to decipher difficult-to-read texts on cuneiform tablets, almost in an instant. Instead of photos, the AI system uses 3D models of the tablets,...
During excavations at Hattusa, capital of the Hittite kingdom during the late Bronze Age, archaeologists discovered a one-of-a-kind object crafted from Hattusa ivory, estimated to be around 2,800...
In the midst of artificial intelligence and cutting-edge language models, a significant archaeological discovery has unfolded in Boğazköy-Hattusha ( Hattusa ), the old Hittite capital in Turkey...
Ancient Mesopotamia, called by many the “cradle of civilization”, is in many ways enigmatic and mysterious. There is plenty about it that we are still to uncover, as it reaches so far back in time...
Imagine if all of the world’s ancient cultures and civilizations had had well-developed writing systems. Then envision the marvels we would know about today, the hidden secrets and remarkable tales...
Sumer is regarded by many scholars as the cradle of human civilization. Its history - although veiled in enigma - is so intriguing and offers a wealth of new discoveries. From the first writing...
The ancient civilization of Sumer never ceases to captivate and intrigue. Scholars and historians are constantly busy uncovering new details and aspects of this civilization, even centuries after the...
Artificial intelligence has now officially seeped into ancient history. Linguists at the Institute for Assyriology at Ludwig Maximilian University in Germany have created an artificial intelligence (...
A woman named Tapputi carried the distinction of being the first female chemist in Mesopotamia and the first female perfume maker anywhere in the world, approximately 3,200 years ago. Working with a...
The Akkadian Empire, founded by Sargon the Great, was the very first empire the world had seen, established in ancient Mesopotamia in about 2370 BC. This empire was remembered as having been...
Extreme drought and heat in Iraq has caused the historical Tigris River’s water levels to rapidly drop, revealing a 3400-year-old Mittani empire-era city. Water being diverted. Climate change,...
The ‘Star of Bethlehem’ described in the Gospel of Matthew remains one of astronomy’s greatest mysteries. Matthew 2:1-12 explains how magi or astrologer-priests observed the rising of a certain star...
When Irish academic, Dr. Martin Worthington, embarked on learning how to speak the now-extinct Babylonian language of ancient Mesopotamia, little did he know that his knowledge would be used in a...
What is believed to be the world’s oldest depiction of a ghost has recently been found on a Babylonian tablet, neglected in the vaults of the British Museum in London since its acquisition in the...
Archaeologists just got infinitely smarter. AI is now successfully predicting lost passages of ancient texts, meaning 4,500-year-old cuneiform tablets, with missing sections, can now read. A deep-...
The Code of Ur-Nammu is the oldest surviving law code. This text was written on clay tablets in the Sumerian language and is reckoned to have been produced towards the end of the 3rd millennium BC...
The United States Department of Justice has ordered the forfeiture of a rare cuneiform tablet, seized from Hobby Lobby’s controversial Museum of the Bible back in 2019. The 3,000-year-old...