Archaeologists have discovered a large tavern or public eating space dating to around 2700 BC at the ancient city site of Lagash in southern Iraq. Equipped with benches, a clay oven, storage jars...
4,000-year-old Hittite texts speak of the lost cultic centre of Zippalanda, somewhere in modern Turkey. Now, new discoveries at the Uşaklı Höyüy site further suggest this was the ancient holy city...
Using remote sensing data technologies at the site of one of the oldest urban centers in world history, scientists have identified a vast Mesopotamian settlement called Lagash. Once upon a time,...
Since the dawn of humanity, countless civilizations have engaged in ritual sacrifice. Often, these sacrifices involved other humans, and were so common they were considered a normal aspect of life...
The Nimrud lens is a 3,000-year-old piece of rock crystal unearthed by Sir John Layard in 1850 at the Assyrian palace of Nimrud, in modern-day Iraq. Since its discovery over a century ago, scientists...
Kutahya in Western Anatolia is home to one of the world’s oldest settlements, which began 8,100 years ago. At this very site, during the excavations of Tavşanlı Höyük or the Tavşanlı Mound, a 3,300-...
Ancient Neo-Assyrian artwork showing a procession of deities has been found in an Iron Age tunnel complex carved into the bedrock in Turkey. The unfinished, yet exceptional ancient artwork was...
Archaeologists in Turkey have discovered a massive underground city, which they believe may be the largest in the world. They have only excavated 3% of it so far but are unearthing multitudes of...
4,000 years ago, a boat sank onto the bed of a channel of the Euphrates River, near the ancient city of Uruk. Now, archaeologists working in modern-day southern Iraq have been forced to conduct an...
The use of Mesopotamian material in the motifs and stories found in Genesis 1–11 (also called the Primeval History) has been of great interest to biblical scholars for many years. Although the...
Something of a hidden gem, Caracol is one of the largest Maya sites of Central America, and certainly the largest in Belize, yet it receives far less footfall than other ruins in the region. The...
It is a commonly accepted view in mainstream archaeology that civilization started in ancient Mesopotamia with the great civilization of Sumer in what is now modern-day Iraq. However, at the...
What is the origin of the legend of the Christed Son who was born of a virgin on December 25th? I am sure you are familiar with his legend which states that he was born in a manger surrounded by...
The world of the ancient past is undoubtedly filled with many mysteries. The knowledge of the ancients escapes us today: we are not fully aware of the extent of their wisdom and their ability to...
In this top story overview, we highlight our most read articles this week, including a look at the little-known subject of Arabian Chivalry and exploring Lagash, a lost city from Mesopotamia. Among...
A super-powerful animal known as the ‘kunga’ was the first-known human-engineered hybrid of two animal species, reports a new study published in Science Advances . The researchers conducted a genome-...
The historic region of Mesopotamia has been long regarded as one of the original cradles of civilization. Defined by the bountiful Tigris and Euphrates rivers, Mesopotamia gave birth to some truly...
The Iraqi city of Erbil is truly magnificent - and in many ways. With the settlement origins dating back at least 8,000 years, it is one of the world’s oldest continuously inhabited cities in the...
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...
In the academic study of the ancient world, chronology or timeline is of the utmost importance. This is especially true for the ancient Middle East. When events in Egypt are to be correlated with...
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-...
A 4,000-year-old urban settlement has been discovered on the road to Ur in modern Iraq. Researchers suspect the discovery represents a lost Mesopotamian city capital that was founded on the ashes of...
The Bronze Age in the eastern Mediterranean, which included such civilizations as Anatolia, Mesopotamia, and Egypt, has been viewed as the “first international age,” and it has been assumed there...
Dating to around 2300 BC archaeologists have discovered what they suspect is the “oldest known war memorial ever discovered” at the ' White Monument’ at Tell Banat in Syria. And while for decades...