The Egyptian government is hailing the discovery of more than 20 wooden coffins as “one of the largest and most important” archaeological finds in the past few years. The coffins were found in Assasif, a necropolis on the west bank of the Nile River. Egyptian officials have not given the time frame from which the coffins date, but the site where they were found was once part of the ancient city of Thebes.

Thebes was the royal capital of the ancient Egypt. Early monuments can be traced as far
back as the 11th dynasty, which occurred between 2081 and 1939 BCE. Authorities said more details about the coffins would be divulged in a news conference Saturday.

Egypt is on a roll with its digging into the past. Last week, the Antiquities Ministry announced that archaeologists had found 30 workshops for the manufacturing and processing of funeral furniture for the tombs of kings in the Valley of the Kings, which served as the primary burial site for pharaohs from the 18th to the 20th dynasty.

Archaeologists have found the skeletons of six babies in a medieval “house of the dead” near Poland’s border with Ukraine. In 2017, famers started noticing bones appearing in their fields in the village Gródek nad
Bugiem, so they swiftly informed the nearby Hrubieszów Museum about the grisly findings. Rightfully so as the bones led to astonishing discoveries – burials from 11th century, the times of Bolesław I the Brave and his famous battle with Yaroslav the Wise, Grand Prince of Rus, which took place somewhere nearby.
Excavation work on the site was led by Dr Tomasz Dzieńkowski from the Maria Curie-
Skłodowska University’s Institute of Archaeology and has covered a site about 300
meters from a medieval stronghold. Scientists uncovered fragments of fabric with golden thread near a skeleton, and this year’s works were yielding similar finds until they came across a large pit with a three-metre diameter. Inside were the numerous remains of incinerated people, as well as a dog’s skull, the bones of an adult’s hand and a broken clay pot. On its edge, archaeologists, to their surprise, came across well-preserved baby skeletons.
Bartłomiej Bartecki from the Hrubieszów Museum told PAP: “It could have been a so-
called ‘house of the dead’ or a monumental family tomb, with a similar form to the
homes of that time. Half-dugout, which were partly burrowed in the ground, and were
usually covered by a gable roof.” The unusual discovery dates back to 11th century.
Read more:
https://www.thefirstnews.com/article/skeletons-of-six-babies-found-during-
archaeological-dig-8067

A recently discovered archaeological site in Ireland is “hugely significant” and likely “unique to Ireland.”
Twenty-five years ago, John McCullen was working the land at his farm in Beamore, County Meath, when a window fell from one of the ruins that dotted his property. He
climbed up the ruin to put it back and noticed a few unusual things: one of the building materials was red sandstone, which isn’t available locally, and there were pigeon boxes, which had been used by people in the 16th and 17th centuries.
As a recent Irish Times profile details, he’d long heard stories about a Georgian landlord, a linen mill, and a monastery dating back centuries earlier. But what was the real history
of his family’s land?
With the help of archaeologists Matthew and Geraldine Stout, he secured a €50,000 grant
from the FBD Farm Trush, to be distributed over the course of three years – provided the
first month of excavation proved that the site was of significant interest.  McCullen can now rest assured that his land is of archaeological and historical
importance.

NAPLES, ITALY- The Independent Recording a  fresco that graphically depicts the impending combat victory of one gladiator over another has been uncovered in Pompeii’s Regio v. The victor, identified as a murmillo-type gladiator by his weapons and armor, stands over a cowering foe equipped in the Thracian manner. The latter has sustained deep gashes to the wrist, legs, and chest, and is holding up a finger to beg for mercy. The fresco, which measures roughly four feet by five feet, was found in what appears to have been a basement tavern or store. The floor above may have housed the proprietors or been used as a brothel. Massimo Osanna, superintendent for Pompeii, says it is very likely the establishment was frequented by gladiators, whose barracks were not far from the site.

According to a report in The Scotsman , a team of researchers under the direction of archaeologist Warren Bailie of GUARD Archaeology have returned to the site of the Wilkhouse, an eighteenth-century public house in the Scottish Highlands that served
farmers who were walking with their livestock to market. Coins uncovered at the site suggest the drove road that passed the pub had been in use since the late sixteenth century. Bailie said the pub’s double chimneys, slate roof, and lime-washed walls reflected the “modernity and affluence” that had been growing in the region in the mid-seventeenth century, since drovers’ inns were usually drystone structures with wooden shutters, low walls, central hearths, and thatched roofs. The excavation revealed the remains of meals of rabbit, birds, fish, and whelks, and shards of drinking glasses. An inverted cross found on a hearth stone may have been intended to keep witches from flying down the chimney, Bailie added. The pub fell out of use by 1819, however, due to the Highland Clearances, in which landowners evicted their tenants in order to enclose their fields for more profitable large-scale sheep herding

The lion and the bull have been fighting, locked in stone, for nearly 2,500 years—ever since an ancient sculptor carved them into a slab of black limestone and set them into a
monumental staircase at Persepolis, the royal center of the great Achaemenid Empire. The two animals were meant to reflect the prestige of this vast Persian empire, which fell in 330 B.C. when Alexander the Great sacked and burned Persepolis and its opulent palaces. The giant stone relief remained there among the ruins until 1931, when the University of Chicago’s Oriental Institute began a landmark excavation of the site—and gave the lion and bull a second life.
For the past 80 years, the 4,000-pound stone relief was on loan to the Boston Museum of
Fine Arts. But it has returned to the University of Chicago in honor of the OI’s 100th anniversary as one of the world’s foremost research centers on the civilizations of the
ancient Middle East. The rare artifact is available for public viewing at the Oriental
Institute Museum starting on September 28th, when the OI will host a public celebration—the first in a yearlong series of centennial events open to the University community and the general public.
Prof. Christopher Woods, director of the OI, discusses excavation work done in
Persepolis and the significance of the ancient relief.
Video by UChicago Creative
“We are thrilled to have this magnificent relief back in Chicago to help celebrate the OI’s
century of transformative research on the ancient Middle East,” said Christopher Woods,
director of the OI and the John A. Wilson Professor of Sumerology. “The beauty and
majesty of the relief just leaps out at you.”
The relief dates to about the fourth century B.C., when Persepolis stood as the ceremonial
center of the Achaemenid Empire, which spanned much of the ancient Middle East.
“Looking at this monumental imagery gives you insights into the imperial ideology—how the Achaemenid kings conceived of themselves and the identity they wanted to project,” said Woods, a leading scholar of Sumerian language and writing.
“The image of a lion and bull in combat has a long tradition in the ancient Middle East,
stretching back thousands of years,” said Jean M. Evans, chief curator and deputy
director of the OI Museum. “In the relief, these noble and powerful animals are
marshalled to reflect the power and prestige of the empire.” The 4,000-pound stone relief was recently returned to the OI for public viewing.
Photo by Jean Lachat

Rising to power in approximately 550 B.C., the Achaemenid Empire was the largest
empire the world had known; its extensive central administration set the model for later
empires and is an essential piece of understanding the journey of human civilization. But
after just two centuries, Persepolis—and the empire—fell when Alexander the Great’s
armies sacked the city in 330 B.C.
According to Roman historian Plutarch, it took 20,000 mules and 5,000 camels to carry
away the treasure Alexander’s army looted from Persepolis. Left behind, however, were
columns and halls, staircases and gates—all finely carved by the craftsmen of the
Achaemenid royal court.
Many of these were still standing two millennia later, when the OI began a pioneering
excavation that spanned eight years and required hundreds of workmen. Over the multi-
acre site, the excavation uncovered everything from the kings’ cups and bowls to the
treasures looted during the Achaemenid conquests of other kingdoms.
“The beauty and majesty of the relief just leaps out at you.”
—Prof. Christopher Woods, director of the OI
Hundreds of cuneiform tablets, preserved by their baking in the fires that consumed the
rest of the city, filled out the details of life in ancient Persepolis. From them, scholars
learned everything from land deals and taxes to how much haoma, the sacred intoxicating
drink, should be used during religious services.
While much of what was excavated remains on site at Persepolis, several large pieces,
such as the head of a colossal bull that once guarded the Hundred-Columned Hall, in
addition to smaller finds, were given to the OI by Iranian authorities in recognition of the
work that went into uncovering and preserving the ancient site and were shipped to
Chicago, where they have been on display at the OI Museum for nearly a century. The
relief of a lion and bull in combat, however, went on long-term loan to Boston Museum
of Fine Arts. In honor of the OI’s centennial, the Museum made plans to bring the stone relief back to Chicago.