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A religious cemetery building with carvings dating back to the 6th and 5th centuries BC was unearthed in the Phoenician city of Amrit in Tartous, say Syrian Archaeologists. Director of Archaeological Excavations and Studies Michel Maqdisi said the building consists of a facade that has two entrances engraved on a 2 meter high huge stone surface. The facade to the eastern side is skillfully carved with symbolic decorations similar to what we find on the Phoenician tombstones or those dated to 1000 BC, he added. "The symbolically carved decorations and the nature of architectural formation of the building, as well...

Archaeologists in Cyprus have discovered what could be the remains of a garrison used by Phoenician soldiers in an ancient city founded by a hero of the Trojan war. Buildings overlooking a previously discovered Phoenician complex more than 2,000 years old were found at the ancient city of Idalion, the island's Antiquities department said on Friday. The complex, linked by a tower, were found to discover metal weapons, inscriptions and pieces of a bronze shield. "The complex may have been used by the soldiers who guarded the tower," the department said in a news release. Idalion was founded by Chalcanor,...

From the Col du Mont Cenis in the north to the Col Agnel 35 miles (60km) almost due south of it three approach routes have been argued for. In the most recent study, Dr William Mahaney, a geomorphologist, and his colleagues have looked at the evidence from Classical sources. "As documented by Polybius and Livy in the ancient literature, Hannibal's army was blocked by a two-tier rockfall on the lee side of the Alps, a rubble sheet of considerable volume," they note in the journal Archaeometry. "The only such two-tier landform lies below the Col de la Traversette, 2,600...

Buried beneath shells, rocks and sand, for 2,600 years, ...a treasure of incalculable value has lain just off La Manga...The find appears to be the cargo of a commercial ship carrying ivory from African elephants, amber and lots of ceramic objects. The find has been kept secret for the past three years by the team of divers led by the Spaniard Juan Pinedo Reyes and the American Mark Edward Polzer. The recovery project is being financed by National Geographic, who have reached an agreement with the Spanish Minister of Culture, the Institute of Nautical Archaeology and the University A&M of...

Drainage work in the construction of the second runway has been moved as a resultThe oldest Phoenician remains yet to be found in Málaga have been unearthed at the airport as land was moved as part of the construction of the second runway.

Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's private conversations with an escort, which have riveted Italians all week, may wind up getting him into trouble with Italy's archaeological authorities... In one of the transcripts of his purported conversations with Patrizia D'Addario posted on an Italian website, Berlusconi boasts to her about his sprawling villa in Sardinia -- complete with an ice cream parlour and artificial lakes. "Here we found 30 Phoenician tombs from (around) 300 BC," the voice is heard to say.

The Phoenicians were not the first ancient people to sponsor long-distance seaborne trade, but they and their Carthaginian children were the first to perfect it. They are the real pioneers of what we will call maritime capitalism. How did they do it? By taking advantage of a unique window of opportunity. During the Middle Bronze Age (traditionally dated to the first half of the second millennium BCE), first Babylon and then Egypt dominated the Middle East. As their power faded, no single power dominated. In this climate of peace and stability, trade took the place of war. Babylonia tried to...

More than 10,000 graves containing ancient amphorae, "baby bottles," and the bodies of soldiers who fought the Carthaginians were found near the ancient Greek colony of Himera, in Italy, archaeologists announced recently... "Each [mass grave] contains from 15 to 25 skeletons. They were all young healthy men and they all died a violent death. Some of the skeletons have broken skulls and in some cases we found the tips of the arrows that killed them," Vassallo said. He thinks the human remains are from soldiers who died fighting the Carthaginians in a famous 480 B.C. battle described by Greek historian...

Lebanese and Spanish archaeologists have discovered 2,900-year-old earthenware pottery that ancient Phoenicians used to store the bones of their dead after burning the corpses. They said more than 100 jars were discovered at a Phoenician site in the southern coastal city of Tire. Phoenicians are known to have thrived from 1500 B.C. to 300 B.C and they were also headquartered in the coastal area of present-day Syria. "The big jars are like individual tombs. The smaller jars are left empty, but symbolically represent that a soul is stored in them," Ali Badawi, the archaeologist in charge in Tire, told Reuters...

A French excavations team from the Universite de Lyon has wrapped up phase I of works in the southern port city of Tyre, the head of the Directorate General of Antiquities (DGA) in the South told The Daily Star on Friday. "Excavations are centered in two main sites inside Tyre's Al-Mina ancient ruins area," Ali Badawi said. He added that archaeologists were working on uncovering the tomb of Frederic Archbishop of Tyre, which is said to be buried under an ancient cathedral dating back to the times of the Crusaders in the coastal city. "A German excavating team came to...

The Phoenicians, enigmatic people from the eastern shores of the Mediterranean, stamped their mark on maritime history, and now research has revealed that they also left a lasting genetic imprint. Scientists reported Thursday that as many as 1 in 17 men living today on the coasts of North Africa and southern Europe may have a Phoenician direct male-line ancestor. These men were found to retain identifiable genetic signatures from the nearly 1,000 years the Phoenicians were a dominant seafaring commercial power in the Mediterranean basin, until their conquest by Rome in the 2nd century B.C... The scientists who conducted the...

Archaeologists in Sardinia said Thursday they have found the port of the Phoenician city of Tharros, held by some to be the ancient people's most important colony in the Mediterranean after Carthage. Researchers from the University of Cagliari and Sassari found the submerged port in the Mistras Lagoon, several kilometres from the city ruins. Excavations have long been going on at the site of the city itself, on a peninsula overlooking the Bay of Oristano in western Sardinia, but this is the first time its waterfront has been located despite almost two centuries of hunting. As well as an impressive...

Rubbish threatens Tuvixeddu necropolisRichard Owen in RomeMay 24,2008 An ancient Mediterranean necropolis described as one of the world's greatest historical sites is being submerged beneath cement, high rise housing and rubbish dumps, according to Italian conservationists. Tuvixeddu - which means “hills with small cavities” in the Sardinian dialect - contains thousands of Phoenician and Punic burial chambers from the 6th century BC. It has long been robbed of funerary objects but some of its tombs have retained their original paintings, including “Ureo's Tomb”, named after a sacred serpent, and “The Warrior's Tomb”, in which a decoration depicts a warrior throwing...

On the ancient Syrian island of Arwad, which was settled by the Phoenicians in about 2000 BCE, men are hard at work hammering wooden pegs into the hull of a ship. But this vessel will not be taking fishermen on their daily trip up and down the coast. It is destined for a greater adventure – one that could solve a mystery which has baffled archaeologists for centuries. The adventure begins not in Arwad but in Dorset, where an Englishman has taken it upon himself to try to prove that the Phoenicians circumnavigated Africa thousands of years before any Europeans...

A Punic necropolis dating back to the 4th-5th century BC has been recently discovered at the museum of Sousse during extension and refurbishing works that started last May and are due to be completed by the end of the current year... This discovery comes following last year's discovery of a roman burial vault located near the roman catacombs in the district of Bouhsina in Sousse. The vault which is being restored by the INP, contains 2 tombs with the remains of some 13 members of the same family buried together along with sacred ceramic vessels.

Lebanese geneticist Pierre Zalloua takes a saliva sample form a Lebanese man to test his DNA in a university laboratory near Byblos ancient city in north Lebanon, in this August 17, 2007 file photo. Zalloua following the genetic footprint of the ancient Phoenicians says he has traced their modern-day descendants, but stumbled into an old controversy about identity in his country. (Jamal Saidi/Files/Reuters) A Lebanese scientist following the genetic footprint of the ancient Phoenicians says he has traced their modern-day descendants, but stumbled into an old controversy about identity in his country. Geneticist Pierre Zalloua has charted the spread...

SYDNEY, Australia - A 16th-century maritime map shows that Portuguese adventurers, not the British or the Dutch, were the first Europeans to find Australia, according to a new book that details the story of the secret discovery. The book "Beyond Capricorn" says the map, which accurately marks geographical sites along Australia's east coast in Portuguese, proves that Portuguese seafarer Christopher de Mendonca led a fleet of four ships into Botany Bay in 1522, almost 250 years before Britain's Captain James Cook.

Captain Cook is scuppered by book By Nick Squires in Sydney Last Updated: 9:02am GMT 20/03/2007 The image of Captain Cook stepping onto the shores of Botany Bay has been a staple of British history books for generations but now it seems the explorer may have been beaten to Australia by the Portuguese, who arrived 250 years earlier. A new appraisal of 16th century maps offers evidence that a small Portuguese fleet charted much of Australia's coast as early as 1522. It has long been known that Cook was preceded by Dutch navigators, whose ships were wrecked on the coast...

The excavations have uncovered the remains of a block of houses, covering an area of 40 x 12 metres, although the whole city is said to have covered more than six hectares. Kitchen utensils and dishes have also been discovered intact. The site is what remains of the Phoenician city of Las Chorreras, founded in the 8th century BC, and abandoned a hundred years later.

When the Phoenicians arrived on the Iberian peninsula, probably at the end of the ninth century B.C., they came into contact with an indigenous people called the Tartessians... The structure at Cancho Roano... was not a palace at all; it was simply a Tartessian sanctuary, which over time became influenced by Phoenician culture. Scholars have only recently begun to separate Tartessian history from myth. When the Greeks reached the Iberian peninsula a few centuries after the Phoenicians, they called the land Tartessos... According to the fifth-century B.C. historian Herodotus, Tartessian civilization was discovered accidentally by a Greek named Kolaios, who...