‘Egypt is the gift of the Nile’, wrote the Greek historian Herodotus. The Nile’s gift is a layer of fertile soil, replenished annually at the time of the inundation. The Blue Nile conveys the rich silt from the huge catchment area of Ethiopia; an enormous amphitheatre defined by 4,000 metre high mountain peaks. The turbid water churns through canyons and gorges, collecting tributes from the Rihad and Dinder Rivers. Urged northwards by heavy rains and melting snow it cascades over the cataracts of eastern Sudan. On reaching Khartoum the Blue …

An Austrian archaeological mission discovered the remains of a seal made of burnt clay with inscriptions in cuneiform, said Culture Minister Farouq Hosni.
The remains of the seal, found by the mission of the Austrian Archaeological Institute in Cairo and the Egyptology Institute of the University of Vienna, were unearthed during excavation works in the archaeological area of Tal El-Daba’a in al-Sharqiya governorate, 120 kilometres northeast Cairo
Zahi Hawas, the Secretary-General of the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA), said the seal, dating back to the Babylonian era, namely the ruling time of …

Dutch researcher Eva Kaptijn succeeded in discovering – based on 100,000 finds – that the Zerqa Valley in Jordan had been successively inhabited and irrigated for more than 13,000 years. But it was not just communities that built irrigation systems: the irrigation systems also built communities.
Eva Kaptijn has given up digging in favour of gathering. With her colleagues, she has been applying an intensive field exploration technique: 15 metres apart, the researchers would walk forward for 50 metres. On the outward leg, they’d pick up all the earthenware and, on …

Recently I was involved in a discussion about ‘icons’. Originally the word referred to a wooden carving or a painting of a religious scene. Nowadays the concept of an ‘icon’ has been usurped by modern usage to mean a recognisable image or symbol representing a product or attribute. Computer screens are full of these little graphic representations. Strangely I have also heard people referred …

Israel displayed for the first time Wednesday a collection of rare coins charred and burned from the Roman destruction of the Jewish Temple nearly 2,000 years ago.
About 70 coins were found in an excavation at the foot of a key Jerusalem holy site. They give a rare glimpse into the period of the Jewish revolt that eventually led to the destruction of the Second Jewish Temple in A.D. 70, said Hava Katz, curator of the exhibition.
The Jews rebelled against the Roman Empire and took over Jerusalem in A.D. 66. After …

They have renamed it the city recovered from the Euphrates and it is found in the Syrian enclave of Tall Qabr on the banks of the river that, with the Tigris, was the centre of the birth of civilisation in Mesopotamia. It is a circularly planned city, dating back to 2,600 years before Christ.
Galician archaeologists from an expedition from the University of Coruna made the discovery, led by Jean Luis Montero, who identified two layers dating back to from the IV to first millennium before Christ.
Since 2008 the multidisciplinary expedition, …

The remains of a mighty Persian army said to have drowned in the sands of the western Egyptian desert 2,500 years ago might have been finally located, solving one of archaeology’s biggest outstanding mysteries, according to Italian researchers.
Bronze weapons, a silver bracelet, an earring and hundreds of human bones found in the vast desolate wilderness of the Sahara desert have raised hopes of finally finding the lost army of Persian King Cambyses II. The 50,000 warriors were said to be buried by a cataclysmic sandstorm in 525 B.C.
“We have found …

An archaeological excavation held on an islet off the coast of Umm Al Quwain, close to the earlier fishing village of Akab, recently revealed that ancient fishing rites were conducted by tribesmen.

The bones of dugongs, a large marine mammal resembling a sea cow, were found symbolically arranged on a mound which experts believe was used for ceremonial purposes.
It is the oldest bone sanctuary of its type in Arabia according to Dr Sophie Méry of the French Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) and director of the French archaeological mission in the …

The Egyptian mud-brick house of British archaeologist Howard Carter has been reopened as a museum.
Carter was living in the house 87 years ago when he made his most famous discovery, the tomb of the pharaoh Tutankhamun.
He had been employed by collector Lord Carnarvon to search for the tomb of the then relatively unknown pharaoh.
The museum displays tools he used in excavations and a collection of photographs of him at work.
It was in November 1922 that the archaeologist made his extraordinary find.
It proved to be the most intact and best preserved …

The volcanic explosion that obliterated much of the island that might have inspired the legend of Atlantis apparently triggered a tsunami that traveled hundreds of miles to reach as far as present-day Israel, scientists now suggest.
The new findings about this past tsunami could shed light on the destructive potential of future disasters, researchers added.
The islands that make up the small circular archipelago of Santorini, roughly 120 miles southeast of Greece, are what remain of what once was a single island, before one of the largest volcanic eruptions in human antiquity …