A team led by Oxford University professor Christopher Ramsey has established a more accurate chronology of Dynastic Egypt than has ever been possible. The study was based on a radiocarbon analysis of plant remains from ancient Egypt. Surprisingly, the results largely confirm the previously established chronology from ancient sources.
Amsterdam: The Hermitage Museum in Amsterdam is hosting the exhibition The Immortal Alexander the Great, which will be on view from 18 September 2010 until 18 March 2011 in the Hermitage Amsterdam, with over 350 masterpieces, including the famous Gonzaga cameo from the State Museum the Hermitage in St Petersburg.
The website Livius.org has been awarded the 2010 Oikos Prize for popularizing Ancient History by the Dutch national research school of classicists. In his acceptance spech titled “Ancient History, Poor Information, and the Internet” the site owner, Jona Lendering explains why the quality standards of information about ancient history have fallen over the years, and what needs to be done to improve the situation.
London: The British Museum is hosting an exhibition about the Ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead. The ‘Book’ was not a single text but a compilation of spells designed to guide the deceased through the dangers of the underworld, ultimately ensuring eternal life. The exhibition is on display from 04 November 2010 to 06 March 2011. Tickets are on sale now.
Ancient History Enyclopedia is looking for peer reviewers to verify and improve the quality of content on the site. We accept applications from a wide range of specialists, including but not limited to historians, archaeologists, researchers, PhD students, and authors / journalists that are focussing on ancient history. Students below the PhD level are invited to contribute definitions and articles and may become peer reviewers if they demonstrate an appropriate level of expertise in their field. This website is a non-profit source of ancient history information. The goal is to make quality ancient history information freely available on the internet, which is something that is clearly missing: Books are expensive, Wikipedia is comprehensive but unreliable, and many other sites are either amateurish, sometimes with a nationalist agenda, or their presentation is so bad that it nearly makes them useless. In order to reach our goal we therefore need a community of voluntary peer reviewers. A peer reviewer could do any of the following: … review new content before it is published on the site … …
Paris: The French National Library (Bibliothèque nationale de France) is hosting an exhibition on the Qumran Scrolls until 11 July 2010. Read below the fold for the French exhibition description.
United States: The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York is currently exhibiting jars, lids, bowls, floral collars, linen sheets, and bandages that were used at Tutankhamun’s mummification and the rites associated with his burial, as well as related objects such as a sculpted head of the youthful pharaoh and several facsimile paintings depicting funerary rituals. Archival photographs from the early twentieth century by Harry Burton, the Museum’s expedition photographer, provide an evocative background. The Tutankhamun exhibition runs until 06 September 2010.
France: In this first exhibition devoted exclusively to Meroë, capital of a great empire on the Nile, two hundred works of art highlight the majesty of an ancient civilization and its intermingling of African, Egyptian and Greco-Roman influences. The exhibition is in the Louvre Museum in Paris until 09 June 2010.
The First Punic War dramatically changed Rome by transforming her into an Empire swelling beyond the natural confines of the Italian peninsula, accordingly bringing her into greater interaction and conflict with other Mediterranean powers. We are forming an active working research group across multiple disciplines including but not limited to History, Archaeology, Ancient Warfare, portraiture of the “enemy,” and other contributions to the study of this period and the respective nations.
In his new Book Life in Year One Scott Korb examines what life was like when Jesus was born: What did people eat, how did they live, how did they dress, and what was flirting like? Using archaeological data, ancient texts, and modern historical research, he paints a clear picture Jewish life under Roman rule. National Public Radio has interviewed Korb about his new book.
