Djoser (c.2667-2648 BC), the second ruler of the Third Dynasty, was the pharaoh whose chief minister Imhotep is credited with the idea of creating the first pyramid by layering a series of steps on top of an original mastaba. He…
Geoffrey Lenox-Smith visits an isolated temple in the desert north of the Fayum.
An unusually lifelike piece of sculpture, supposedly depicting an important Old Kingdom official, is analysed by Campbell Price.
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).…
Dr Campbell Price describes an unusual statue bust from the Brooklyn Museum of Art.
For this issue, Dr Campbell Price examines a sculpture in the Brooklyn Museum whose original purpose is unclear.
A rare example of Upper Palaeolithic portable art has been found at an open-air site in south-eastern France. Bellegarde, located between Nîmes and Arles, was discovered in 2015 by Inrap archaeologists. Excavations across c.2,000m2 of the multi-phase site have produced…
From the worship of local Syrian protector gods to Christianity, many different religions flourished in the cosmopolitan crossroads city of Dura-Europos. Jen Baird brings us face to face with the diverse divine through the art of this ancient site.
A Dutch-Italian team has discovered a new tomb at Saqqara, belonging to a man named Panehsy who was associated with the Temple of Amun in the early part of the Ramesside Period. The tomb is in the form of a…
Neil went on to propose using what R G Collingwood called ‘the historical imagination’ by blending data and interpretation to ‘tell the story’. He was convinced that this ‘must be done if archaeology is to be interesting and worthwhile’.
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.
A study of stone tools from the Roman site of Volubilis in central Morocco has revealed that the material used to make them was specifically selected to improve the function of each object.
The base was probably made in the late 1st or early to mid 2nd century AD by a Continental craftsman
From myths of the Minotaur to Cycladic sculpture, the influence of the ancient world on Picasso is well known. But a less familiar part of the artist’s relationship with the distant past is his fruitful engagement with the art of ancient Iberia, as Cécile Godefroy and Hélène Le Meaux explain.
Excavation just outside Corby has shed vivid light on the construction of a Roman villa, the reuse of an enigmatic religious building, and a bustling array of industrial activity, as Paddy Lambert explains.
The hills around Bath look solid enough but below the surface they are riddled with tunnels and stone quarries. When some of these began to collapse, putting the village of Combe Down at risk, Oxford Archaeology was called in to record this vast labyrinth before it was filled with concrete. Chris Catling reports on the record they made of an industry that helped create the beautiful buildings of Georgian Bath’s ‘Golden Age’.