Middle East

A sculpture of two bulls, originally carved in the second century A.D., looted from Afghanistan's Kabul Museum almost 30 years ago

After 30 Years, Looted Kushan Bull Sculpture Will Return to Afghanistan's Kabul Museum

The artifact is one of thousands left destroyed, damaged or missing after civil war broke out in the 1990s

A scholar spotted the long-overlooked image (its horns and face are at left, its legs on the right) while conducting research at a Berlin museum.

This Demon, Immortalized in 2,700-Year-Old Assyrian Tablet, Was Thought to Cause Epilepsy

The damaged drawing was hidden on the back of a clay cuneiform tablet

The rook in question certainly wasn't the first chess piece ever created, but it may be the oldest found to date.

Is This Chess Piece Unearthed in Jordan the World's Oldest?

The two-pronged rook, found in a seventh-century trading post, shows how quickly the game spread across the Islamic world

The ancient Silk Road trading post of Hasankeyf, which sits on the banks of Tigris River in southeast Turkey, will soon be flooded by the Ilisu Dam. Picture here, Construction crews destroy limestone cliffs around Hasankeyf that are dotted with neolithic caves in preparation for submerging later this summer

Turkey Is Moving Forward With Plans to Flood a 10,000-Year-Old City

Hasankeyf and nearly 200 other settlements will be inundated as part of a dam project

The nine sculpted heads were recovered at Heathrow Airport in 2002

Hundreds of Artifacts Looted From Iraq and Afghanistan to Be Repatriated

The trove, currently stored at the British Museum for safekeeping, includes 4th-century Buddhist sculpture fragments and 154 Mesopotamian cuneiform tablets

St. Peter’s Church rises above the ancient port of Jaffa, today a bustling neighborhood abutting Tel Aviv.

Two Tour Guides—One Israeli, One Palestinian—Offer a New Way to See the Holy Land

With conflict raging again in Israel, a fearless initiative reveals a complex reality that few visitors ever experience

View of the rebuilt walls of Babylon, a kingdom in ancient Mesopotamia, now located in the modern-day city of Hillah. The site of Babylon has been selected to be inscribed as a Unesco World Heritage Site.

Ancient City of Babylon Among New Unesco World Heritage Sites

Other additions include ancient metallurgy sites in Burkina Faso, Iceland’s Vatnajökull National Park and eight buildings designed by Frank LLoyd Wright

Excavation of the Philistine cemetery at Ashkelon.

Ancient DNA Sheds New Light on the Biblical Philistines

A team of scientists sequenced genomes from people who lived in a port city on the Mediterranean coast of Israel between the 12th and 8th centuries B.C.

Fear of Foreign Food May Have Led to the Death of This Crusader King

A new analysis shows France's Louis IX and much of his army suffered from advanced scurvy during the Eighth Crusade in Tunisia

From L to R: Kanlitas rock painting, enhanced version, isolated rendering of markings

Rock Art and Footprints Reveal How Ancient Humans Responded to Volcanic Eruption

New study dates the preserved footprints to 4,700 years ago, a full 245,000 years later than previously suggested

The team's findings support the theory that agriculture emerged in multiple places simultaneously

Ancient Urine Reveals Timeline of Turkey’s Agricultural Revolution

Researchers studied urine salt deposits to map out the history of animal domestication at Turkey's Aşıklı Höyük settlement

Palestinians gather to perform the Friday prayer at the Al-Aqsa Mosque Compound in Jerusalem

A Small Fire Broke Out at Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa Mosque as Flames Ravaged Notre-Dame

The blaze left the Islamic holy site largely untouched, damaging a single mobile guard booth

Desert kites, stone structures used for hunting, discovered in the U2 images.

U-2 Spy Plane Images Reveal Ancient Archaeological Sites in the Middle East

Two patient archaeologists organized and scanned the images to find structures destroyed or covered up over the last 60 years

These illustrations come from a miniature book of classical Persian poetry.

The Library of Congress Has Digitized 155 Persian Texts Dating Back to the 13th Century

Offerings include a book of poetry featuring the epic <em>Shahnameh</em> and a biography of Shah Jahan, the emperor who built the Taj Mahal

A newly rediscovered fragment of Ibn Sīnā's Canon of Medicine

A Medieval Arabic Medical Text Was Translated Into Irish, Discovery Shows

Ibn Sīnā's <i>Canon of Medicine</i> was once a core part of the European medical curriculum

Why Is the Genie in ‘Aladdin’ Blue?

There’s a simple answer and a colonialist legacy for why the genie looks the way it does

American adventurer and archaeologist Wendell Phillips may have provided inspiration for the character of Indiana Jones.

The Complex Legacy of America's Lawrence of Arabia

Archaeologist Wendell Phillips traveled throughout Yemen in the 1950s, where he found ancient treasures and controversy

The ancient scorched-earth warfare tactic of well poisoning is still in use today

The History of Poisoning the Well

From ancient Mesopotamia to modern-day Iraq, the threat to a region's water supply is the cruelest cut of all

Selection of gazelle bones from Space 3 at Shubayqa 6 displaying evidence for having been in the digestive tract of a carnivore.

Humans and Dogs May Have Hunted Together in Prehistoric Jordan

Bones at a settlement called Shubayqa 6 show clear signs of having been digested—but were much too large to have been eaten by humans

A rendering of the lobby of the Statue of Liberty Museum, featuring the statue's original torch

From Lady Liberty to Hollywood to the Middle East, These Are the Most Exciting Museums Opening in 2019

Visit new institutions devoted to mascots, spies, archaeological sites, American icons and much more this year

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