The Great Royal Wife of Ramesses II, Nefertari, was buried in one of the most spectacular tombs of Egypt’s Valley of the Queens. Well-educated and well-travelled, Nefertari played a crucial part in the political life of the pharaoh, and her importance was reflected through her magnificently decorated tomb. Minerva's Lucia Marchini speaks to Jennifer Casler Price to find out more.
Boissonnas headed to Athens and worked to photograph the monuments of the Acropolis, a subject he returned to several times.
In a small city on Italy’s Adriatic coast, faces of all-powerful emperors, empresses, and bishops gaze out from glittering mosaics. But why are these magnificent decorations here? Judith Herrin explores the history of Ravenna, a well-connected city and one-time capital of the Western Roman Empire.
Lindsay Fulcher enters the transgressive realm of Tantra. This rebellious Indian cult, which has overturned religious, social, sexual, and political norms from AD 500 to the present day, is currently being celebrated in an exhibition curated by Imma Ramos at the British Museum.
As well as the coffins, archaeologists also unearthed 28 statues of Ptah Sokar, the main god of the Saqqara necropolis...
Researchers had moved the best textiles, including the ‘Eagle Silk’ and a pillow with birds, deemed more fitting for a king, over to Cnut’s shrine, where they are displayed with his remains under a glass lid.
The large and ambitious opening exhibition, entitled Mayflower 400: legend and legacy, tells the story of the voyage and assesses the impact of the settlers’ arrival on the indigenous population.
Joining the gallery’s collections is an 1819 oil-on-paper painting by Achille Etna Michallon (1796-1822) of The Forum at Pompeii.
Managing the Musée Champollion and The Pitt Rivers Museum.
‘We had expected to find some kind of Anglo-Saxon burial, but what we found exceeded all our expectations and provides new insights into this stretch of the Thames in the decades after the collapse of the Roman administration in Britain.’
In the mid 4th century BC, Greece experienced a seismic convulsion whose shockwaves would be felt as far away as India, when an energetic young commander took the throne of Macedon, led his army to a string of victories, and…
From a small spindle whorl to an expanse of moorland, there are many objects, individual sites, and entire landscapes in Britain that offer a portal to the past. In her engaging new book, Mary-Ann Ochota is our guide to the…
What do we imagine the city of Rome to have been like in the 8th century AD? With the supremacy of Constantinople as the political and administrative centre of the empire, the Rome of this period – its buildings falling…
Viollet-le-Duc needed connections: he had elected not to study architecture, preferring to learn on the job.
Buried beneath Mexico City lie the remains of the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan and its sacred centre. Lucia Marchini reports on an exhibition investigating wealth, worship, and empire in pre-Hispanic Mexico.
Sparta is famous for its warrior tradition, Athens for its intellectual and artistic achievement. But what of Thebes? As ancient historian Paul Cartledge explains, Thebes too had a most distinctive image.
Chinese rulers held the disciplines of astronomy and cosmology in high regard for millennia. Dalu Jones
previews an exhibition of exquisite objects exploring the connections between Heaven and Earth.
Three Victorian artists – Lawrence Alma-Tadema, Edward Poynter, and Edwin Long – helped to shape our image of the distant past. Stephanie Moser describes how their passion for archaeology and love of domestic objects produced a wealth of detailed, descriptive paintings.
Nero’s spectacular palace in Rome, the Domus Aurea or ‘Golden House’, was rediscovered in the Renaissance. Dalu Jones describes how the opulent designs of its ancient halls inspired some of the most celebrated artists of the 15th and 16th centuries.
Measuring 105cm high, this is the first granite Ka statue to be discovered.
For more than 50 years, the world’s greatest private collection of Classical art has been inaccessible to the public, locked away while a bitter dispute raged between the Italian state and one of Rome’s illustrious princes. Now the famous Torlonia Collection is to go on display at last. Dalu Jones tells its story – and offers a private view of a major new exhibition.
Fortuny’s designs were hugely successful among the fashionable elite of the early 20th century, and admired by intellectuals and femmes du monde alike.
Lucy Shackleton lifts the lid on bee-keeping in the ancient world and sees how Virgil’s presentation of bees symbolises the role of the collective over the individual in Augustan Rome
The text contains features that indicate it may have been written in France for Jewish emigrés who had been expelled from England in 1290.
Continuing his occasional series on legendary last stands, American military historian Fred Chiaventone recounts the Spartan defence of the Hot Gates in 480 BC.
Picasso never visited Greece, let alone Crete. He didn’t need to do so. He re-created it on paper. The drawings and prints in our show reveal how Picasso evoked the ancient world and peopled it with gorgeous girls who resembled his mistresses.
Dr Hannah Higham traces the shifting influences of the ancient world on the work of Henry Moore – from Sumerian art to Greek Classicism
In his second article, Paul Rahe analyses Sparta’s response to the mortal challenge posed by the Persian invasions of the early 5th century BC.
Paul Cartledge, who has written the biography of the revolutionary idea of democracy, explains how it was practised in ancient Athens where it originated.
Sensational discoveries of metal masks in a subterranean temple have led to calls for Javanese history to be rewritten. Fiorella Rispoli investigates.