Archaeology

Archaeologists have unearthed a colossal statue of powerful pharaoh Amenhotep III at his 3,400-year-old mortuary temple in southern Egyptian city of Luxor. It is one of the largest of its kind to be discovered by the country's antiquities authority. The 13 metre tall statue of Amenhotep III, consisting of seven large quartzite blocks, was one of a pair that flanked the northern entrance to the grand funerary temple on the west bank of the Nile that is currently the focus of a major excavation...

Archaeologists never make predictions. But the world's best known Egyptologist says the tomb of King Tutankhamun’s wife, the Great Pyramid’s secret doors, and the final resting place of Cleopatra and Mark Anthony may well be discovered in 2011. Dr Zahi Hawass, Secretary-General of the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA) has told Discovery News that these potential discoveries could well be on the cards this year As of now, the emphasis of Dr Hawass and his team is on the Valley of Kings. In all...

Six missing pieces from the colossal double statue of the 18th Dynasty King Amenhotep III and his wife Queen Tiye have been discovered at the king’s mortuary temple on Luxor’s west bank. The fragments were recently discovered during excavation work by a team of Egyptian archaeologists working under the direction of Dr Zahi Hawass, Secretary-General of the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA). According to an announcement made by Dr Hawass on his blog, the pieces from Amenhotep III's statue that...

Human remains said to be over 400,000 years old have been discovered in Israel. The discovery challenges conventional theory that the Homo sapiens species originated in Africa. Avi Gopher, of Tel Aviv University's Institute of Archaeology, told news agency Agence France-Presse (AFP) that testing of stalagmites, stalactites and other material found in a cave east of Tel Aviv indicated that eight teeth uncovered there could be the earliest traces so far of our species. Though the first teeth were...

Two more walls collapsed on Wednesday inside Pompeii's 2,000-year-old archaeological site, the second such incident in as many days. The two walls collapsed early Wednesday morning, in all likelihood because of heavy rains over the past several days, the office of Pompeii's archaeological superintendent said in a statement. The collapse involved an area 2m high and 3m wide of the wall along one of the site's main streets, the Via Stabiana. Another small chunk of a side room in the "House of the...

In 2008, workers came across buried objects during excavation work for building a new luxury hotel on the grounds of Syon Park in west London. Archaeologists have now confirmed that these are Roman artefacts dating from the 1st century AD. Around 11,500 fragments of pottery, 100 coins and jewellery were unearthed by the experts from the Museum of London Archaeology (MOLA), along with burial sites containing human remains and a Roman road, a museum statement revealed. The artefacts were found...

Egyptologists have unearthed twelve ancient sphinx statues at Luxor. The sculptures were found at a newly discovered part of the Avenue of Sphinxes, an ancient road that leads from the temple at Karnak to the temple of the goddess Mut at Luxor. The discovery was made as part of excavation and restoration works at the site by the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA), according to Egypt's Minister of Culture, Farouk Hosni. The statues of the mythical creatures, inscribed with the name of Pharaoh...

It is one thing to talk about heritage. It is quite another to do something about it. There, of course, can be many yardsticks to measure this; one of them being how a generation treats its monuments. As many as 249 centrally protected monuments in India are currently under encroachment. That, of course, is the latest official figure that was revealed to the Lok Sabha by Union Minister of State for Planning and Parliamentary Affairs, V Narayanasamy on Wednesday. The minister has attributed...

Egyptologists have discovered 19 objects not known earlier to belong to Pharoah Tutankhamun in New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art. These would now be duly sent back to Egypt. British archaeologist and Egyptologist Howard Carter, the man who is credited with having discovered Tutankhamun's tomb in 1922, had retained a few artefacts which were bequeathed to the museum after his death in 1939. These artefacts were quite small and at the time it was not known that they were from the tomb itself...

Archaeologists have found a piece of a stone axe 35,500 years old on sacred Aboriginal land in Australia, the oldest object of its type ever found. The shard of stone was found in Australia's lush and remote far northern reaches in May, and has marks that prove it comes from a ground-edge stone axe. The discovery was made by a Monash University researcher and a team of international experts. The previous oldest ground-edge axes were 20,000 to 30,000 years old, and the conventional belief was...