Cleopatra VII now joins such luminaries as Nelson Mandela, Winston Churchill, and Henry VIII, as the latest historical celebrity to have her own volume in Bloomsbury’s ‘Significant Figures in World History’ series. Rather than a conventional biography, the aim of…
The ruins of ancient Phaselis occupy a striking setting on the Mediterranean shore. Matthew Symonds visited to find out more.
Your opportunity to comment on articles in the magazine or on any Egyptological subject that interests you. Email the Editor peter@ancientegyptmagazine.com with your thoughts.
On 1 August 1960, I visited Mycenae for the first time. In my diary I described it as a terribly moving experience, seeing the shaft graves and the famed treasuries of Atreus and Clytemnestra. Looking back, what I recall most clearly was the romance of it all.
Another recent find connected to Berenice II has been announced by the Israel Antiquities Authority. A rare gold coin depicting the Ptolemaic queen without her consort (and a cornucopia on the reverse) has been discovered during the excavation of a…
REVIEW BY SARAH GRIFFITHS In the third and final instalment of his Ptolemaic series, Grainger presents what he describes as a ‘deeply unpleasant and murderous succession of barely competent kings and queens’, following the dynasty’s decline into ‘confusion and chaos’,…
A surge in development associated with Black Sea tourism has provided numerous opportunities for excavations in the ancient Greek city of Apollonia Pontica. Matthew Symonds talked to Margarit Damyanov about how the results are revolutionising our knowledge of this major site.
This theatre is part of the archaeological site of Aptera, near present-day Chania, in western Crete. The ancient coastal city-state was once one of Crete’s most important commercial centres, at its peak in the Hellenistic period (late 4th-3rd centuries BC).…
REVIEW BY MARC DESANTIS Alexander of Macedonia is known as the Western world’s greatest conqueror. Not for nothing has he been given, since antiquity, the appellation ‘the Great’. In just 11 years, he drove his army of superb cavalry and…
REVIEW BY JOHN BINTLIFF This is a rather frustrating volume, although we need to know more about ancient Thessaly, a land of fertile plains in north-central Greece. The book focuses on 22 ancient cities in western Thessaly, typical for the…
The remains of temples to Amun and the Greek goddess Aphrodite have been discovered at Thonis Heracleion, the sunken city in Abu Qir Bay, near Alexandria. The team, from the Supreme Council of Archaeology and the European Institute for Underwater…
Archaeologists have discovered the remains of a ship that sank in the Mediterranean Sea, approximately 650 metres off the coast of el-Alamein. Dating to the 3rd century BC, the ship was carrying a cargo of wine amphorae imported from Rhodes.…
A new exhibition at the British Museum delves into drinking and decadence in the ancient Persian and Greek worlds. Henry Bishop-Wright tells Lucia Marchini how elements of luxury could be adopted and adapted to express power across cultures.
Review by Sarah Griffiths The city of Alexandria, founded by Alexander the Great (c.331 BC), was strategically situated on the Mediterranean coast at the junction of three continents, protected by reefs, headlands, and the Pharos Island to the north, and…
REVIEW by MARC DeSANTIS The death of Alexander the Great in Babylon in 323 BC left the empire he had conquered without blood heirs ready to take up the heavy burden of governance. Thus, in the days following his passing,…
Review by David J Breeze John William Burgon’s description of Petra as ‘the rose-red city, half as old as time’ dates to 1845, well within the timeframe covered in this book. It remains an apt statement, underlined by the choice…
It bears the Greek inscription ‘Victory of Heracles and Hauronas’, signifying the bullet’s use as both a physical and psychological weapon
He is one of the most famous figures in human history, the subject of countless legends, and a commander regularly claimed as the greatest of all time. But who was Alexander the Great really? We know that he was born…
Which Persian king did Alexander defeat at the Battle of Gaugamela?
Alexander the Great’s ambitions of conquest took him far from his Macedonian home and into Asia and Babylon, where he died. Ursula Sims-Williams investigates the mythical legacy of Alexander in the East, where different traditions cast him variously as an accursed figure, a philosopher-king, and even a prophet.
Sculptures of kings and princes and murals of delegations of ambassadors paint a detailed picture of the wealth, influences, and connections of Uzbekistan’s oasis cities. Lucia Marchini speaks to Yannick Lintz and Rocco Rante to find out more.
The map was created by Hipparchus between c. 170 and 120 BC
A new exhibition at the British Library explores the 2,000-year history of storytelling and myth-making surrounding Alexander the Great.
Alexander the Great: the making of a myth is at the British Library in London until 19 February 2023.
One archaeological milestone this year is the centenary of the founding of the Délégation archéologique française en Afghanistan (DAFA) in 1922. Their century of research has included investigations at Aï Khanoum, a Hellenistic city on the banks of the Oxus…
Researchers discovered that many of the bones had been modified – shaved down, polished, perforated, or filled with lead – in order to improve the roll of the dice.
A significant discovery comes in the form of the marble head of a bearded man, which researchers believe belongs to the headless Herakles in Athens' National Archaeological Museum .
Excavations revealed temples lining the basin, along with altars, votive offerings, and stelae.
The gravity-defying sculptures are the works of Venice-born artist Gianfranco Meggiato
During 2020, 'squeezes' – copies – made in the 1930s of Butrint’s exceptional inscriptions from the Sanctuary of Asclepius were rediscovered by chance. Enrico Giorgi shares the story of these texts and their facsimiles.
The most exciting discovery was that of an intricately sculpted and well-preserved alabaster bust of Alexander the Great.
One of the exciting things about archaeology is that, just occasionally, something truly extraordinary comes along which radically changes the way we think about the past. One such moment came in 1900, when sponge divers working around the Greek island of Antikythera happened upon a shipwreck containing the single most important object of high technology ever recovered from the ancient world.
A seemingly unassuming lump of corroded bronze has confounded investigators for more than a century, ever since it proved to contain precision gearwheels that simply should not have existed in the ancient Greek world. A new study, using cutting-edge techniques, has now revealed what this machine could do, and how it did it, as Tony Freeth explains.
Recently, researchers from the University of Groningen in the Netherlands have used the latest in AI technology to study the Great Isaiah Scroll (known as 1QIsaa), an ancient manuscript dating to the 2nd century BC that is considered one of the Dead Sea Scrolls.
Oliver Gilkes contemplates an ancient masterpiece plucked from the sea.
How did Alexander the Great tame rebellious provinces? According to the ancient sources, he established a chain of fortresses to keep the peace after insurrection in Uzbekistan. In 2003, one of these posts was finally found, allowing Leonid M Sverchkov and Nikolaus G O Boroffka to follow in the footsteps of the celebrated Macedonian king.