[pullquote] A bidding war at Christie’s this week sent the price of a 3,000-year-old stone relief from $7 million to more than $28 million, setting a world record for ancient Assyrian artworks and raising fears among some archaeologists that soaring prices will fuel the market for looted antiquities as well …
Archaeologist Eckart Frahm didn’t have much time to determine where the 4,000-year-old clay tablets had come from. Homeland Security officials had given him just 2 1/2 days in a dimly lit New York warehouse to pore over the cuneiform inscriptions etched into the fragile, ancient pieces and report back. “They were not …
Governments are starting to return treasures to their neighbours THE basement of a petrol station is not an obvious place to display some 6,000 pre-Columbian ceramics. The shelves of the Cassinelli Museum are crammed with feline gods, copulating animals and vessels shaped like human faces. Many were made by the …
The United States handed back to Iraq on Wednesday antiquities it said it had seized in a raid on Islamic State fighters in Syria, saying the haul was proof the militants were funding their war by smuggling ancient treasures. The Iraqi relics were captured by U.S. special forces in an …
ARANDA DE MONCAYO, Spain — The roads leading to this tiny, hilltop village of 200 inhabitants are so narrow and untraveled that no one has ever bothered to paint a white line down the middle. But lately there has been a bit of international intrigue here. A man, who largely …
Abdul Salam Omar inherited a thriving antiquities business from his father in Luxor. The southern Egyptian city is famous around the world as a giant open-air museum, with thousands of years of history on display. For decades tourists used to flock to his shop in the old market, to buy …
HANOI, Vietnam, July 2 (UPI) — Thousands of antiquities have been recovered from a 700-year-old shipwreck discovered in Vietnam’s central province of Quang Ngai, local media reported. Four thousand artifacts believed to date back to the 13th century, including coins and ceramics, were recovered undamaged, China’s state-run Xinhua news agency …
Belize plans to raise the fines for destroying its archaeological sites, according to its tourism agency. The move comes in response to a construction company’s recent leveling of part of a Mayan pyramid, below, that dates back some 2,300 years. The ancient site, Noh Mul, which translates as “Big Hill,” …
How a young Chinese boy defaced an ancient Egyptian temple, and unwittingly joined a long tradition in the process. A picture of a graffiti that a Chinese boy wrote on one of Egypt’s grandest Pharaohnic temples went viral on Chinese social media over the weekend, stirring debate in that country …
DAMASCUS, Syria (AP) — A historic Jewish synagogue in Damascus has been damaged and looted as clashes have consumed the surrounding neighborhood, a Syrian official and an anti-government activist said Monday. Damage to the synagogue, believed to be hundreds of years old, is the latest example of Syria’s rich cultural …
LUXOR, Egypt, Jan. 14 (UPI) — Archaeologists say excavations near the southern Egyptian city of Luxor have unearthed 3,000-year-old tombs, likely the resting places of wealthy people. Italian researchers uncovered the tombs beneath the mortuary temple of the Pharaoh Amenhotep II, who reigned from 1427 B.C. to 1401 B.C., Egypt’s …
Greek police have recovered all the antiquities stolen in February from a museum in Olympia, the birthplace of the ancient Olympics. Three men were arrested in the western city of Patras when they tried to sell the most valuable artefact – a gold ring – to an undercover police officer. …