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The Cleveland Museum of Art (CMA) filed a lawsuit against the Manhattan District Attorney‘s office on Thurday over the earlier seizure of a headless bronze statue, estimated to be worth $20 million. The museum stated in its lawsuit that it “does not question that the New York district attorney sometimes gets it right and returns true stolen items to foreign nations. Based on the evidence adduced thus far and the opinions of experts available to the museum, this is not one of those times.” The court filing says the CMA lawfully purchased the “Draped Male Figure” for $1.85 million from...

Late last week, a bulldozer toppled a minaret that has watched over the city of Basra, Iraq, for nearly three centuries, leaving local residents dismayed.Minarets like this one serve as the beacons from which Muslims are called to prayer five times each day. At roughly 36 feet tall, this particular minaret has stood since 1727. Cultural officials say that the initial plan had been to preserve and relocate the Siraji Mosque's minaret, which was reportedly contributing to traffic jams, according to Reuters.Officials from the Sunni Endowment Office, which oversees Sunni religious sites, say they had no knowledge of the impending...

Scientists believe they have made a fascinating discovery which reveals some hidden detail about the diet of Neanderthals around 70,000 years ago. They have unearthed remains of what is believed to be the world's oldest flatbread made by Neanderthals in the foothills of Iraq. The charred remnants were recovered from the Shanidar Cave site - a Neanderthal dwelling around 500 miles north of Baghdad. The archaeologists said the findings, published in the journal Antiquity, show for the first time that bread was part of the diet among these hominid species....

Rare and decorated bone and ivory items from the biblical period and ancient bowls dating back some 1,500 years, bearing spells and incantations in Hebrew, were uncovered in the home of a resident of the Ramat Shlomo neighborhood of Jerusalem, suspected of illegal trade in antiquities. ..... The incantation bowls, known as the “swearing bowls” were used as a kind of amulet in ancient times, and date back to the 8th-4th centuries CE. It was common practice to bury them under the house floor for protection. Inside the bowls, magical inscriptions were written in the Babylonian-Aramaic language. The inscription in...

The ancient burial caves on the outskirts of Jericho date back to the Second Temple era, and are apparently part of the extensive burial grounds of the Hasmonean palace uncovered at the site. The cave was recently exposed in the course of landscaping work carried out by local Arab farmers, who bulldozed the site to prepare the ground for agricultural work. Professor Rachel Hachlili of Haifa University's Zinman Institute of Archaeology, who studied this region, identified these caves as the largest Second Temple-era burial ground in Israel. Hikers visiting the site over the weekend were appalled by what they found:...

Two weeks ago, archaeologists in Egypt found a massive black granite sarcophagus in Alexandria, untouched for 2,000 years - and fleet-footed rumour quickly got to work. Could it contain the remains of ancient Greek leader Alexander the Great, or (less appealingly) a deadly curse? According to experts who have now unsealed it, it's a no to both. Instead, it revealed three skeletons and red-brown sewage water, which gave off an unbearable stench.Egypt's Ministry of Antiquities had appointed a committee of archaeologists to open the relic, which was unearthed at a construction site. According to Egyptian news outlet El-Watan, they initially...

[Martha's Vineyard] The Sheriff’s Meadow Foundation this week issued a public apology and launched an overhaul of its land management practices following the revelation that large numbers of trees and other plants had been dug up from two of its preserves and used to landscape an exclusive private property on the North Shore. *** The two foundation properties, the Caroline Tuthill Preserve in Edgartown and the Priscilla Hancock Meadow in Chilmark, were left damaged by heavy earth moving equipment brought in by contractors hired to landscape the 30-acre property of Dirk Ziff near Lambert’s Cove in West Tisbury.

Forget small nomadic tribes and pristine jungle: the southern Amazon was likely covered in a network of large villages and ceremonial centers before Columbus. Geoglyphs in the southern Amazon are evidence of a once-thriving population. Photograph courtesy of University of Exeter ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Before Spanish invaders conquered South America, sparse groups of nomadic people clustered around the Amazon River, leaving the surrounding rain forest pristine and untouched. Or did they? New research suggests a very different story—an Amazonian region peppered with rain forest villages, ceremonial earthworks, and a much larger population than previously thought. The research, funded in part by the...

Assistant Manhattan district attorney Matthew Bogdanos has recovered antiquities from looters, museums, auction houses and the homes of wealthyThe ancient marble sculpture had made its way from Lebanon to New York, via a well-trodden path of dealers and collectors. And there it might have remained if it were not for a tenacious Manhattan prosecutor who spotted it in an old copy of House & Garden magazine dating from 1998 which featured homes built to show off art collections. The caption described how the master bathroom was decorated with a “breathtakingly beautiful” marble torso. A search warrant issued last month describes...

The chilly December wind whipped rain across the strewn wreckage of a city that, nearly 3,000 years ago, ruled almost the entire Middle East. Rivulets of water ran through the dirt, washing away chunks of ancient stone. The city of Nimrud in northern Iraq is in pieces, victim of the Islamic State group's fervor to erase history. The remains of its palaces and temples, once lined in brilliant reliefs of gods and kings, have been blown up. The statues of winged bulls that once guarded the site are hacked to bits. Its towering ziggurat, or step pyramid, has been bulldozed.

Model of Palmyra’s Arch of Triumph, an 1,800-year-old Roman arch blown up by the extremist group last year, was made using 3D printing technology The arch historically served as the entrance to the 2,000 Temple of Baal, which was then converted to a Christian church and finally, a mosque. First put on display in Trafalgar Square in London last April, it will stay at City Hall park for one week, before moving to its next destination, Dubai. The 11-tonne arch was placed in the small park directly outside of New York’s city hall, in the heart of the financial district....

ISIS barbarians have destroyed a 2,000-year-old gate close to their Iraqi stronghold of Mosul. The breathtaking structure is known as the Gate of God, and used to guard the ancient Assyrian city Nineveh. The destruction of the ancient structure, also called the Mashki Gate, has been confirmed by the British Institute for the Study of Iraq, and the Antiquities Department in Baghdad has not denied the demolition. The terrorists demolished the ancient gate using military equipment, according to activists in Mosul. ISIS thugs have destroyed many of Iraqi historic sites and monuments, including the Assyrian city of Nimrud, the Winged...

In a season filled with far too much tragedy there was at least a small bit of good news this week. Syrian forces claim to have retaken the ancient city of Palmyra from ISIS. Given the historical significance of the site, this a welcome development indeed, but there are now new questions to be answered about how much destruction the terrorists inflicted on the region and what the intentions are of those who now control it. (NPR) State media are reporting that Syrian government forces are now in full control of the historic city of Palmyra, which has been...

I have heard something about two tablets that were supposedly written by Enoch or Seth. Have you heard about this? They were supposed to have been written before the flood. I read about this some years ago and have forgotten the details.

'Rhodesgate': Campaign To Remove Rhodes statue 'Is Like Isil's Destruction of Antiques', Says Oxford Don The campaign to remove a Cecil Rhodes statue from Oriel College is like Isil’s destruction of antiquities because it is showing no respect for history, a prominent Oxford emeritus fellow has said By Javier Espinoza, 22 Dec 2015 The campaign to remove a Cecil Rhodes statue from Oriel College is like Isil’s destruction of antiquities, a prominent Rhodes scholar has said. “I am comparing what the [Rhodes Must Fall] movement are doing with what Al Qaeda and Isis are doing in places like Mali when...

Kidnappings, antiquities trafficking, and private donations. Those are three, though certainly not the only three, of the ways that the Islamic State, or “ISIS,” the terrorist organization responsible for the attacks in Paris, funds its violent operation. While much of its funding comes from oil sales, the group has also resorted to capturing individuals in an attempt to extract payment for their safe return. The group has kidnapped Americans and others, and in cases when payment was not made, gruesomely murdered them and released the videos on the Internet. ISIS has kidnapped “multihundreds, if not thousands of victims,” John Cassara,...

Large 1,500-year-old winepress unearthed in area once known for wine production. A large, well-preserved 1,500-year-old winery has been exposed during a violent storm in the Sharon Plain region, located between the Mediterranean Sea and Samarian Hills, the Antiquities Authority announced Monday. According to IAA archeologist Alla Nagorski, the discovery was made off the Eyal Interchange several weeks ago when flooding and hail disrupted an excavation at the site, where natural gas lines are scheduled to be embedded. The northern part of the Sharon Plain is considered the most historical wine region in Israel, and is where the first roots of...

One of America’s most famously Christian businesses is amassing a vast collection of Biblical antiquities. The problem is some of them may have been looted from the Middle East. In 2011, a shipment of somewhere between 200 to 300 small clay tablets on their way to Oklahoma City from Israel was seized by U.S. Customs agents in Memphis. The tablets were inscribed in cuneiform—the script of ancient Assyria and Babylonia, present-day Iraq—and were thousands of years old. Their destination was the compound of the Hobby Lobby corporation, which became famous last year for winning a landmark Supreme Court case on...

ISIS beheads Palmyra antiquities expert in the ancient city where he had worked for 50 years - then hangs his body from a column Islamic State militants have beheaded an antiquities scholar in an ancient Syrian city and hung his body on a column in a main square. The family of Khaled Asaad are said to have been told that the 82-year-old scholar who worked for more than 50 years as head of antiquities in Palmyra was executed by ISIS yesterday. Mr Asaad had been detained and interrogated for over a month by the ultra-radical Sunni Muslim militants, according to...

Governor of Homs province, where city is located, says army has sent reinforcements and is bombing fighters from air.Fighters belonging to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) have advanced on Syria's ancient city of Palmyra, one of the Middle East's most famous UNESCO heritage sites, with fierce clashes taking place close to the city's historic citadel. Photos circulating on social media sites on Saturday appeared to show intense clashes near the 13th century citadel of Fakhr-al-Din al-Ma'ani as ISIL fighters engaged the Syrian military. Talal Barazi, the governor of central Homs province, where the city is located,...