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Experts in New Haven Working with Ancient Texts See Modern Connections

 

By Ed Stannard, New Haven Register
 
POSTED: 10/25/14, 4:21 PM EDT | UPDATED: 5 DAYS AGO

 

NEW HAVEN >> "Tasha Dobbin-Bennett picks up her tiny brush, moistens a minuscule fiber on a scrap of papyrus at least 1,800 years old and, using tweezers, bends it into its original position. A part of a letter in the ancient Greek document, which may have been a contract or a letter, becomes clear.
 
Each time Dobbin-Bennett does this, she makes it that much easier for scholars to fit a new piece into the puzzle of ancient history and literature.
 
“A scholar has expressed interest in publishing it. … It’s a very good text, it’s still in very good condition for readability,” she says of the papyrus. “The handwriting in this is not too bad” even though it’s written in a “quick running hand.”
 
Adding to the complexity is the fact that the text Dobbin-Bennett is teasing back together is written over an even older text. And the reverse of the layered papyrus also has been written on."
 
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Ancient Stone Circles in Mideast Baffle Archaeologists

 

by Owen Jarus, Live Science Contributor   |   October 30, 2014 07:49am ET


 

"Huge stone circles in the Middle East have been imaged from above, revealing details of structures that have been shrouded in mystery for decades.

 

Archaeologists in Jordan have taken high-resolution aerial images of 11 ancient "Big Circles," all but one of which are around 400 meters (1,312 feet) in diameter. Why they are so similar is unknown but the similarity seems “too close to be a coincidence" said researcher David Kennedy.

 

The Big Circles (as archaeologists call them) were built with low stone walls that are no more than a few feet high. The circles originally contained no openings, and people would have had to hop over the walls in order to get inside."

 


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Mega Wave Hit Oman's Coast 4,500 Years Ago

 

BY SARAH MACDONALD    |    NOVEMBER 03, 2014 , 7 : 37 AM GST    

 


Muscat: "Geologists from GUtech, in cooperation with archeologists from the Ministry of Heritage and Culture, have dug up evidence of a tsunami or severe storm that hit Ras Al Hadd about 4,500 years ago.

 

Speaking to the Times of Oman about the new research, Dr Goesta Hoffman, Associate Professor from the Applied Geosciences Department at GUtech, said there is evidence of major flooding at an archeological site in Ras Al Hadd, a village on the coast of Oman about 240km southeast of Muscat."

 


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James Evans and Christián Carman Find Clues to an Ancient Greek Riddle

 

November 25, 2014

 

Discovery about the Antikythera Mechanism reveals surprising advances in early Greek science

 

"An ancient Greek astronomical puzzle now has another piece in place.

 

The New York Times reported the new evidence today in a story about research by James Evans, professor of physics at University of Puget Sound, and Christián Carman, history of science professor at University of Quilmes, Argentina."

 


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The Online Battle for Papyrus Texts
 
Papyrus scrolls are also now increasingly desirable items in the distinctly 21st Century world of the online auction trade, writes Philip Sherwell

By Philip Sherwell, New York
 
7:00AM GMT 28 Dec 2014
 
"They are tattered yellowing fragments of bygone civilisations, ancient manuscripts that open a remarkable window on previous millennia, including the earliest days of Christianity.
 
But papyrus scrolls are also now increasingly hot items in the distinctly 21st Century world of the online auction trade.
 
A rectangular scrap measuring about 4.5 inches by 1.5 inches and featuring 15 partial lines of Homer’s epic poem The Iliad in the elegant hand of a 4th Century Egyptian scribe was just [DEC] picked up by an unidentified European buyer for £16,000 after a feverish Internet auction battle.
 
That price was way above the posted estimated but is typical of the sums that collectors will now spend to lay their hands on these fingerprints from the past.
 
Indeed, it is not just modern art that has been setting jaw-dropping records at auction recently - so have ancient scrolls."

 

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Biblical Archaeology’s Top Ten Discoveries of 2014

 

A glimpse at the important work that goes on at excavations every year.

 

Gordon Govier/ DECEMBER 30, 2014

 

"A flurry of year-end announcements provided some late-breaking additions to the list of archaeological discoveries made public in 2014. Below are the top ten findings of the broad variety of institutional and salvage excavations taking place in the lands of the Bible."

 


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Top 10 Biblical Archaeology Discoveries in 2014

 

Check out the archaeological finds that thrilled us this past year

 

Robin Ngo  •  12/29/2014

 

"From the translation of a Babylonian “Ark Tablet” to the resurfacing of a skeleton from Ur in a museum basement, 2014 was a year full of exciting Biblical archaeology discoveries and new interpretations. As we ring in the New Year, let’s take a look back at the top 10 finds that thrilled us in 2014."

 


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Mummy Mask May Reveal Oldest Known Gospel

 

by Owen Jarus, Live Science Contributor   |   January 18, 2015 04:21am ET

 


"A text that may be the oldest copy of a gospel known to exist — a fragment of the Gospel of Mark that was written during the first century, before the year 90 — is set to be published.

 

At present, the oldest surviving copies of the gospel texts date to the second century (the years 101 to 200).

 

This first-century gospel fragment was written on a sheet of papyrus that was later reused to create a mask that was worn by a mummy. Although the mummies of Egyptian pharaohs wore masks made of gold, ordinary people had to settle for masks made out of papyrus (or linen), paint and glue. Given how expensive papyrus was, people often had to reuse sheets that already had writing on them."

 


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Recording Endangered Archaeology of the Middle East and North Africa
 
Posted by Past Horizons, on February 20, 2015
 
"A project has been launched to record the archaeological heritage of the Middle East and North Africa, arguably the most significant region in the world for its archaeological remains. It is under increasing threat from massive and sustained population explosion, agricultural development, urban expansion, warfare, and looting.
 
The new project, entitled Endangered Archaeology, has been launched at Oxford and Leicester Universities, funded by the Arcadia Fund."

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By Questioning Conventional Wisdom, Archaeology’s Peter Magee Unearths the Arabian Peninsula’s Past

 

Posted February 27th, 2015 at 11:26 am.

 


"When most archaeologists look at a map of the Middle East, they’re drawn to hot excavation spots such as Mesopotamia and Egypt.

 

Not Bryn Mawr’s Peter Magee. The 47-year-old professor of Near Eastern archaeology prefers the Arabian Peninsula, an area that many scholars have ignored. Arabia, the argument has long gone, was nothing more than miles of “dreary desert,” as one academic put it in 1889. In other words, the region’s past seemed to offer little for scholarly exploration. It certainly didn’t have the complex social states of Mesopotamia or the hieroglyphs of Egypt.

 

When Magee, however, studies that same map, he sees something entirely different. “I kept looking at the map,” he says of his undergraduate days at the University of Sydney, “and thinking, ‘It’s very unlikely that there’s nothing there.'”

 

As an expert on the ancient Near East, Magee argues that the conventional dismissive view of the region is ‘simultaneously ethnocentric and stereotypical.’"

 


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Could Our Ancestors See blue? Ancient People Didn't Perceive the Colour Because They Didn't Have a Word for it, Say Scientists
 
  • Studies say language shapes what we see by making us focus on objects
  • Blue doesn't appear at all in Greek stories and other ancient written texts
  • As a result, scientists believe ancient civilisations didn't notice the colour 
  • Egyptians - who were the only culture that could produce blue dyes - were the first civilisation to have a word for the colour blue in 2500 BC 
  • The Himba people in Namibia do not have a word for blue and tests have shown they have difficulty distinguishing between green and blue 
 
By ELLIE ZOLFAGHARIFARD FOR DAILYMAIL.COM
 
PUBLISHED: 10:00 EST, 3 March 2015 | UPDATED: 13:01 EST, 3 March 2015
 
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Europe's Languages Were Carried From the East, DNA Shows
 
The new settlers, revealed by a genetic analysis, may solve a mystery swirling around the origins of Indo-European languages.
 
By Andrew Curry
for National Geographic
PUBLISHED MARCH 3, 2015
 
"New DNA evidence suggests that herders from the grasslands of today's Russia and Ukraine carried the roots of modern European languages across the continent some 4,500 years ago."

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Of interest (the early date collecting Christian relics)?

 

BULGARIAN ARCHAEOLOGISTS FIND LEAD RELIQUARY WITH ASHES FROM JOHN THE APOSTLE’S GRAVE DURING EXCAVATIONS OF ANCIENT FORTRESS BURGOS (POROS)

 

March 25, 2015 · by Ivan Dikov · in Ancient Rome, Byzantine Empire

 


"Ashes from the grave of John the Apostle, one of the Twelve Apostles of Jesus Christ, have been discovered in a lead tube reliquary by Bulgarian archaeologists during excavations of the ancient and medieval port of Burgos (also known as Poros) on Cape Foros in today’s Black Sea city of Burgas.

 

The discovery of the lead tube containing ashes from the grave of John the Apostle, who is known as St. John the Theologian in Bulgarian (Eastern) Orthodox Christianity, located in the ancient city of Ephesus in Anatolia, today’s Turkey, has been made during the 2014 excavations of the fortress of Burgos (or Poros) on Cape Foros in Burgas but was announced only on Wednesday, March 25, 2015, by Milen Nikolov, Director of the Burgas Regional Museum of History, at a special press conference."

 


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Ships on Ancient Coins
 

By Mike Markowitz April 20, 2015

 

“We keep you alive to serve this ship. So row well and live.” – Quintus Arrius, Ben Hur (1959)
 
"BY THE SIXTH CENTURY BCE, when coinage came into wide use in the Mediterranean world, ships had evolved to a high technical level. Most ships on ancient coins are rowing galleys: big, fragile racing shells designed for ramming. Rowers were free citizens, often highly trained athletes. Hollywood, as usual with history, gets it wrong; galley slaves were a medieval innovation rarely employed in the ancient world. Cargo ships, which relied more on sails, were not symbols of power and appear on coins less often."

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'Eternal Flames' of Ancient Times Could Spark Interest of Modern Geologists
 
Date: May 18, 2015
 
Source: Springer Science+Business Media
 
Summary: "Gas and oil seeps have been part of religious and cultural practices for thousands of years. Seeps from which gas and oil escape were formative to many ancient cultures and societies. They gave rise to legends surrounding the Delphi Oracle, Chimaera fires and "eternal flames" that were central to ancient religious practices - from Indonesia and Iran to Italy and Azerbaijan."
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New Technology Allows Archaeologists to Easily Map Excavation Sites in 3D

 

May 25, 2015 by Steinar Brandslet

 


"Mapping archaeological digs takes plenty of time and a lot of measuring, photographing, drawing and note taking. Now, most of this work can be done with a technique called photogrammetry.

 


Photogrammetry is a method that uses two dimensional images of an archaeological find to construct a 3D model.

 

You don't need and special glasses or advanced equipment to use make use of this new technique. Together with precise measurements of the excavation, photogrammetry can create a complete detailed map of an archaeological excavation site.

 

"This is still a very new technique," say archaeologists Raymond Sauvage and Fredrik Skoglund of NTNU University Museum."

 



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Spring 2015, Cover Stories, Daily News
 
Ancient Mummies Meet Modern Medicine with “The Anatomy of the Mummy”
 
Fri, May 22, 2015 
 
Co-edited by Penn Museum Curator Janet Monge, Publication Follows Earlier Penn Museum Symposium Exploring Range of Techniques to Study Mummies
 
"PHILADELPHIA, PA May 22, 2015—Mummies are fascinating to the general public. It turns out they are fascinating to scientists, too. Anthropologists, archaeologists and doctors and researchers in the medical community have been coming together for decades, now, engaging in interdisciplinary exploration of mummies from all over the world. What have they learned? What can modern medical techniques applied to long deceased humans tell us—and what techniques and practices hold the best promise for scholars eager to unwrap more about the human experience in the past?"

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Medicine’s Hidden Roots in an Ancient Manuscript

 

By MARK SCHROPE

 

JUNE 1, 2015

 


"The first time Grigory Kessel held the ancient manuscript, its animal-hide pages more than 1,000 years old, it seemed oddly familiar.

 

A Syriac scholar at Philipps University in Marburg, Germany, Dr. Kessel was sitting in the library of the manuscript’s owner, a wealthy collector of rare scientific material in Baltimore. At that moment, Dr. Kessel realized that just three weeks earlier, in a library at Harvard University, he had seen a single orphaned page that was too similar to these pages to be coincidence."

 


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Hidden Secrets of Yale’s 1491 World Map Revealed Via Multispectral Imaging
 
By Mike Cummings
 
June 11, 2015
 
"Henricus Martellus, a German cartographer working in Florence in the late 15th century, produced a highly detailed map of the known world. According to experts, there is strong evidence that Christopher Columbus studied this map and that it influenced his thinking before his fateful voyage.
 
Martellus’ map arrived at Yale in 1962, the gift of an anonymous donor. Scholars at the time hailed the map’s importance and argued that it could provide a missing link to the cartographic record at the dawn of the Age of Discovery. However, five centuries of fading and scuffing had rendered much of the map’s text and other details illegible or invisible, limiting its research value."

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ARCHAEOLOGIST FINDS TWO HUMAN SKELETONS, ONE RAM SKELETON IN EARLY CHRISTIAN TOMB ON ST. IVAN ISLAND IN BLACK SEA OFF BULGARIA’S SOZOPOL

 

August 1, 2015 · by Ivan Dikov · in Ancient Rome, Antiquity, Byzantine Empire, Christianity, Middle Ages

 

"Two human skeletons and a ram skeleton have been discovered by Bulgarian archaeologist Prof. Kazimir Popkonstantinov inside the Early Christian tomb on the St. Ivan Island off the coast of the town of Sozopol (the same island where relics of St. John the Baptist were found in the summer of 2010) which was found and opened in mid July 2015."

 


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Underwater 'Stonehenge' Monolith Found Off Coast of Sicily
 
AUG 6, 2015 04:50 PM ET // BY ROSSELLA LORENZI
 
"Archaeologists have discovered a mysterious Stonehenge-style monolith in the deep sea off the coast of Sicily, shedding new light on the earliest civilizations in the Mediterranean basin.
 
Broken in two parts, the 3.2-foot-long monolith has a rather regular shape and features three holes of similar diameter. One, which can be found at its end, crosses it completely from part to part, the others appear at two sides of the massive stone.
 
Such features leave no doubt that the monolith was man-made some 10,000 years ago."

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Bulgaria's Latest Archaeology News, Top Archaeologists & Museums Browse:

 

Home » 2015 » August » 04 »

 

Archaeologists Find Last Fragment of Early Christian Christogram in Bishop’s Basilica in Bulgaria’s Sandanski

 


"Archaeologists excavating the so called Bishop’s Basilica of the Ancient Roman and Early Byzantine city of Parthicopolis located in the town of Sandanski in Southwest Bulgaria have discovered the last fragment from a marble slab with a christogram, a Christian symbol consisting of a monogram of letters standing for the name of Jesus Christ.

 

The “monogram of Christ”, also known as the “seal of God” and Chi Rho after the respective Greek letters, which has now been put together by the archaeologists from the Sandanski Museum of Archaeology, has been discovered piece by piece over the last 25 years, reports the Bulgarian National Television."

 


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