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The latest discovery in the ongoing excavations in the Ancient City of Stratonikeia, known as the city of eternal loves and gladiators, was a "Dancing Muses" statue, an iconic figure from ancient mythology.According to the statement made by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, the statue found in the works carried out in the ancient city is this unearthed statue is the sole original Hellenistic period piece attributed to a work famously replicated during the Roman period.Today the ancient city is located in Eskihisar village of the Yatagan district of Mugla Province. It is one of the cities of the...

Archaeologists unearthed two 2,500-year-old marble statues and an inscription during excavations at the Temple of Zeus Lepsynos, one of the best-preserved Roman temples of Asia Minor, in Turkey's western Muğla province.Built in the second century B.C., the temple is located in the ancient city of Euromos.Abuzer Kızıl, head of the excavation committee and faculty member at Muğla Sıtkı Kocman University's department of archeology, told Anadolu Agency (AA) Sunday that the artifacts were found unexpectedly during the restoration efforts, and came as a surprise to the world of archaeology."We have unearthed two very important links of the missing archaic sculpture of...

Elizabeth Armstrong Moore September 27, 2016 In 1950, a collection of 29 tablets was discovered in the ruins of Ugarit, an ancient city in the northern region of present-day Syria, but only one had survived the intervening centuries well enough to be deciphered. Known as H6, the 3,500-year-old clay tablet revealed a simple hymn specifying the use of nine lyre strings and the intervals between them, much like an "ancient guitar tab," reports ClassicFM, which has recently picked up the story. The resulting melody, it says, isn't just the oldest discovered in the world, but "utterly enchanting." Musician and composer...

German Scientists: Europe's Oldest Script Found in Bulgaria Lifestyle: 18 May 2005, Wednesday. Ancient tablets found in South Bulgaria are written in the oldest European script found ever, German scientists say. The tablets, unearthed near the Southern town of Kardzhali, are over 35-centuries old, and bear the ancient script of the Cretan (Minoan) civilization, according to scientists from the University of Heidelberg, who examined the foundings. This is the Cretan writing, also known as Linear A script, which dates back to XV-XIV century B.C. The discovery proves the theory of the Bulgarian archaeologists that the script on the foundings is...

The stela is an extraordinary finding that offers a treasure trove of data to historians and philologists. Excavations around the Hecatomnus Mausoleum in the western province of Mugla’s Milas district have unearthed a written stela that dates back over two millennia. The stela is an extraordinary finding that offers very important data to historians and philologists, according to academics. The stela, which is estimated to have been written for the ruler of its era, is in the poetry format and the longest among other similar classical-era findings. According to information provided by the Milas Uzunyuva Project Epigraph Professor Christian Marek,...

How the life Herodotus lived affected his history writing is a subject of dispute among many experts The question of how social conditions affecting Herodotus’s personal life affected his writing history may raise many disputes among historians. “The state where Herodotus was born in was under Persian Empire at that time; it was governed by Lygdamis, who put to death the poet Panyasis, a relative of Herodotus, for opposition and riots against Persia. Following this event, Herodotus had to leave his native city and went to Samos Island in Athena, and ever since he inhabited in Greek lands. But since...

Who Were the Hurrians? Volume 61 Number 4, July/August 2008 New discoveries in Syria suggest a little-known people fueled the rise of civilization Excavations at the 3rd millennium city of Urkesh in Syria are revealing new information about the mysterious people who lived there, known as the Hurrians. This view of the city's royal palace shows the service area (left) and living quarters (right). (Ken Garrett) With its vast plaza and impressive stone stairway leading up to a temple complex, Urkesh was designed to last. And for well over a millennium, this city on the dusty plains of what is...

East Bulgaria Reveals Minoan Pertainence 18 January 2005, Tuesday. The Eastern Rhodopes revealed an old-times funeral site obviously pertaining to an ancient Crete-Micenae cult dating 3,500 years ago. The demographic researcher Mincho Gumarov of Kardzhali has donated the local museum with unique finds of ceramics, bronze and silver. The artifacts from the late bronze epoch were found in the nearby Samara cave. The find's pertainence to the epoch of legendary Micenae derives from the found labris (short two-face ritual axe, characteristic of that civilisation) and a silver amulet of the cult to Mother Earth, as well as pieces of surgery...

The remains of a Minoan-style wall painting, recognizable by a blue background, the first of its kind to be found in Israel, was discovered in the course of the recent excavation season at Tel Kabri. This fresco joins others of Aegean style that have been uncovered during earlier seasons at the Canaanite palace in Kabri. "It was, without doubt, a conscious decision made by the city's rulers who wished to associate with Mediterranean culture and not adopt Syrian and Mesopotamian styles of art like other cities in Canaan did. The Canaanites were living in the Levant and wanted to feel...

Musical scholar Ziad Ajjan composed eight poetry and musical pieces from the musical archaeological cuneiform tablet known as "Hymn of Supplication" H6 discovered in Ugarit in the early 20th century. Ajjan composed three musical pieces based on the musical notes in the tablet which dates back to 1400 BC, naming the pieces "Sunrise," "Sunset" and "Holiday in Ugarit." This marks the recording of the oldest music notation in the history of the world. Ajjan said he is still working on the tablet based on information he reached after extensive study and previous experiment, making use of previous research by fellow...

The paving over of a 3,000-year-old tumulus, a mound of earth and stones raised over a grave, in the eastern city of Van has prompted an outcry from the Provincial Culture and Tourism Directorate. Stating that the road was unnecessarily built, officials said: "We have halted the work on the road. The road and asphalt will be removed and the tumulus will be rehabilitated." Before the road was built by the municipality, the directorate had planned to start archaeological work in the historical tumulus, which dates from the Urartu period, along with work in the historical Van Castle. "A road...

The Tourism and Culture Ministry started a research investigation into an illegal excavation which took place in the Zeus Karios area in Milas, Bodrum. The illegal excavation revealed the large tomb stone of King Hekataios. The tomb stone was made in 390 B.C. and it is said that the discovery is one of the most important archeological discovery in modern times. Speaking after the research, Undersecretariat of Culture and Tourism Ministry Özgür Özarslan said: "The discovery revealed that the tomb stone belongs to Hekataios's father Mausolos. Mausolos was the satrap of Karia." The tomb stone is thought to have been...

Massive ancient stone anchors were found by divers participating in an archaeological expedition near the southern Bulgarian Black Sea town of Sozopol. The expedition, led by deputy director of Bulgaria's National Historical Museum Dr Ivan Hristov, found the precious artifacts west of the Sts. Cyricus and Julitta island. The 200-kg beautifully ornamented anchors have two holes in them -- one for the anchor rope and another one for a wooden stick. They were used for 150-200-ton ships that transported mainly wheat, but also dried and salted fish, skins, timber and metals from what now is Bulgaria's coast. The anchors' shape...

Traces of the Hurrian civilization discovered in excavations in the ancient city of Bathonea in Istanbul's Küçükçekmece river basin are being hailed as the year's most important discovery as they provide the first ever proof that the Hittites came to Europe and civilisations' long history... The traces from the Hurrian civilization -- the early Hittite era -- were found in the Küçükçekmece river basin in the western parts of the city. The discoveries -- iron god and goddess statues that were found in two different places -- have created great excitement among researchers... Two Hurrian statues, bitumen, tin and...

Wild boars look more or less the same in Israel as they do anywhere else: stalky and hairy with big heads, long snouts, and beady eyes. So scientists had no reason to suspect Israeli wild boars were any different than their brothers and sisters roaming the Middle East, from Egypt to Iran... unlike the Near Eastern wild boars in surrounding countries, Israel's wild boars originated in Europe. After a genetic and archaeological analysis, the researchers suggest the wild boars living in Israel are descendants of domesticated pigs brought to Israel starting almost 3,000 years ago by the Philistines and other...

On 8/9 November 1997 the Swiss newspaper Neue Zurcher Zeitung reported that German and Turks archaeologists, who conducted excavations at the ancient site of Kaunos on Asia Minor coast just across the Greek island of Rhodes, unearthed an inscription in two scripts. The top part is inscribed in the Carian language and the same text is repeated in the lower part in classical Greek. The inscription is a resolution of the city of Kaunos to honor two Athenians, one of whom is Nikokles of Lycekleous a fairly know person and contemporary of Demosthenes. Thus, the stone was safely dated to...

The first character is the sampi, as it was used (briefly) in the Ionic alphabet as a sibilant. The first question to answer is whether it should be separated from the numerical sampi at all... The second question is what the phonetic value of sampi was... Jeffery (1990:39)... also suspects that sampi was originally borrowed from Carian, and used to express the Carian sibilant in loanwords... In the pre-Hellenic language of Lemnos (possibly related to Etruscan), it is used, but Jeffery has no idea what it sounded like. In the older inscriptions of the non-Hellenic language of Phrygia (related...

50 ancient tombs uncovered From correspondents in Athens July 18, 2004 ARCHEOLOGISTS have discovered 50 tombs dating back to the late Minoan period, around 1400 BC, and containing a number of artifacts on the Greek island of Crete, ANA news agency reported today. The tombs were part of the once powerful ancient city of Kydonia, which was destroyed at the time but later rebuilt. The oldest among them contained bronze weapons, jewellery and vases and are similar to the tombs of fallen soldiers of the Mycenaean type from mainland Greece, said the head of the excavations, Maria Vlazaki. The more...

Capital city of ancient superpower discovered By David Keys Archaeology Correspondent 26 October 2002 British archaeologists have discovered a capital city of one of the ancient world's most mysterious superpowers. The metropolis, covering more than a square mile, was the main western administrative centre of the ancient Median Empire, a vast Middle Eastern imperial state which flourished in the first half of the 6th century BC between the fall of the Assyrian empire and the rise of Persia. The discovery reveals the sheer scale of the threat which would soon be posed to Europe by the ancient Middle East. For...

The Periplus Maris Erythraei (or "Voyage around the Erythraean Sea") is an anonymous work from around the middle of the first century CE written by a Greek speaking Egyptian merchant.  The first part of the work (sections 1-18) describes the maritime trade-routes following the north-south axis from Egypt down the coast of East Africa as far as modern day Tanzania.  The remainder describes the routes of the East-West axis running from Egypt, around the Arabian Peninsula and past the Persian Gulf on to the west coast of India.  From the vivid descriptions of the places mentioned it is generally...