Cycling Around Malqata
Karl Harris sets off on two wheels to visit the site of Amenhotep III’s palace on the West Bank of the Nile at Luxor.
palaces
Military rest stop in northern Sinai
The remains of a royal fortified military rest area have been discovered at Tell Habwa (northern Sinai) by a mission from the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities. The team found the remains of a mud-brick building near the beginning…
Science Notes: Plant DNA successfully extracted from 2,900-year-old brick
It seems that every few months ‘Science Notes’ is covering another breaking story on advances in a DNA research, a testament to how quickly the field is evolving. After our reporting of the successful, non-invasive extraction of human DNA from…
World news in brief: American wood and Egyptian gold
A round-up of some of the latest archaeological discoveries from around the globe.
Broken links and smashed glass
Far into the Middle Ages, glass-workers produced beads using techniques eerily similar to those employed 2,000 years earlier in Amarna.
This week: Royal residences
They are sometimes said to be the nation’s real crown jewels: the various palaces, castles and other grand houses which for centuries have formed the backdrop to royal life in the United Kingdom – from Sandringham and Windsor in England…
Royal Residences Quiz
Which king was the last to live at the Palace of Westminster?
Persepolis, 1935
Persepolis paintings perfectly glorious’ was the verdict Prentice Duell cabled from Egypt to James Henry Breasted, founder of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago (OI). He had just seen the work American artist Joseph Lindon Smith (1863-1950) created…
The Griffin Warrior: treasures from the princely tomb of a Mycenaean kingdom
The surprise discovery of the mysterious Griffin Warrior at Pylos promises to reveal fresh insights into that crucial point in European history when the Minoan customs of island Crete gave way to the emergent culture on mainland Greece. Jack Davis and Sharon Stocker reveal this treasure-laden tomb from the dawn of Mycenaean civilisation.
Pasargadae: seeking the origins of a garden palace
On the plain of Pasargadae, Cyrus the Great founded a spectacular garden palace. Nothing like it had ever been seen in the region before, raising questions about where the idea came from, how the garden was maintained, and even where the inhabitants lived. Recently, an Iranian-French team under Rémy Boucharlat went in search of the answers, as Andrew Selkirk reveals.
Leading a life of luxury
Dominic Green reports on what the discovery of fragments of Aegean-style frescoes and an extensive wine cellar can tell us about life in the Bronze Age palace being excavated at the Tel Kabri site in the Galilee region of Israel
The Land between the Oceans: ships, metals and warriors (Part Two)
In the second part of our mini-series based on Barry Cunliffe’s new book Europe between the Oceans, our focus is the period c.2800-140 BC. We see the rise and fall of great civilisations, and a looming clash between a Mediterranean-based superpower and the Celtic peoples of Iron Age Europe. Once again, it is the movement of people, goods, and ideas that is central to Cunliffe’s vision of Europe’s distinctive history.