Egypt has given us many groundbreaking discoveries. But the recent discovery of a city that had been buried for three thousand years in the dunes of Egypt is one of the most important archaeological finds since Tutankhamun's tomb. Where was the city found? What does it reveal? Let’s find out!
The magnificently preserved ruins date back 3,400 years to the time when Amenhotep III built the royal capital and his rebel son Akhenaten abandoned it.
More than 2,000 years ago, the Greek philosopher Plato recounted the legend of the Ring of Gyges in “Republic.” The story of the ring surfaces as the philosopher, Socrates, and his student discuss why people act justly: is it because it’s what’s right? Or because it’s a convention that’s enforced through punishment and reward? Alex Gendler shares the allegory of the ill-gotten, magical ring.
The history of Alexander the Great is a vast and complex narrative that intertwines the themes of military conquest, political strategy, and cultural exchange. Born in 356 BC in Pella, the ancient capital of Macedonia, Alexander was the son of King Philip II and Queen Olympias. One of the greatest philosophers of the time, Aristotle, provided him with an education that exposed him to a variety of subjects in his early years, including philosophy, science, medicine, and literature.
Alexander's father nurtured the early indications of his military prowess. He famously tamed the wild horse Bucephalus, which became his companion in numerous battles. When he was just 16, Philip II left him in charge of Macedonia while he campaigned in Byzantium, and during this time Alexander quelled a rebellion in Thrace, showcasing his skills in leadership and military tactics.
In 336 BC, Philip II was assassinated, and Alexander ascended to the throne at the age of 20. He quickly dealt with potential rivals and dissenters, securing his position as king.
Alexander’s most significant and ambitious project was his conquest of the Persian Empire. In 334 BC, he crossed the Hellespont into Asia Minor (modern-day Turkey), marking the beginning of his campaign against the Persian ruler, Darius III.
Key battles and achievements
1. The Battle of Granicus (334 BC): Alexander's first significant victory against the Persian satraps.
2. Siege of Tyre (332 BC): A seven-month siege that demonstrated Alexander's strategic brilliance and determination.
3. Battle of Gaugamela (331 BC): A decisive battle where Alexander’s forces outnumbered, defeated the Persian army, and led to the downfall of Darius III.
4. Conquest of Egypt (332–331 BC): Welcomed as a liberator in Egypt, Alexander founded the city of Alexandria, which became a major center of Hellenistic culture and learning.
After the defeat of Darius III, Alexander continued eastward, extending his dominion into Central Asia and India. In 326 BC, he reached the Indus Valley, where he won a difficult battle at the Hydaspes River against King Porus.
Alexander's approach to running his vast empire was characterized by a fusion of Macedonian and regional customs. He encouraged marriages between his soldiers and local women and adopted some local customs, a policy that helped in the administration of his diverse empire.
He also promoted the spread of Greek culture throughout his empire, a process known as Hellenization. This included the founding of cities, the establishment of centers of learning, and the spread of Greek art and theater.
There were challenges on Alexander's westward return journey. He faced a series of revolts and military setbacks. In 323 BC, while planning a campaign to conquer Arabia, Alexander fell ill in Babylon and died at the age of 32. The exact cause of his death remains a subject of debate among historians, with theories ranging from malaria to poisoning.
Alexander's death led to the fragmentation of his empire as his generals, known as the Diadochi, fought for control. Despite the division, his legacy profoundly influenced the subsequent Hellenistic world. Culturally, the spread of Hellenism impacted art, science, and philosophy. Politically, his conquests reshaped the map of the ancient world, laying the foundation for the Roman Empire and significantly influencing the course of Mediterranean history.
In sum, Alexander the Great remains a pivotal figure in history, not only for his military conquests but also for his role in the cultural and political transformation of the ancient world. His legacy continues to be studied and admired for its impact on the course of history.
Have you ever wondered how it’s like eating with the world’s most isolated tribe? Watch the video to find out and enjoy!
Sloths, they are cute, cuddly, and are not exactly the epitome of ferocity, but this hasn’t always been the case. Just a few thousand years ago, give or take, they were giants, like, elephant sized giants. And the largest of these prehistoric sloths was the Megatherium, which roamed South America with confidence thanks to its gargantuan body. However, its size wasn’t the only thing it had going, as it possessed other tools, which allowed it to become a highly competitive animal in an ecosystem filled with other megafauna, and not to mention deadly smilodons.
In the following video we will be forging a Katana out of rusted iron cable. Enjoy!
This is the true story of the first recorded Viking raid on English soil, at the priory of Lindisfarne in Northumbria in June 793. The devastating Viking attack on the church of St Cuthbert sent a shockwave through Christian Europe, and it marked the beginning of what is now called the Viking Age.
In this video we will be exploring scary places from the Ancient World. Enjoy!
The year 2022 saw many amazing finds from archaeologists, but which ones were the most exciting? In this countdown, Dr. Miano ranks the 20 greatest discoveries of the year. Which ones are you the most thrilled about?
In this video, we talk about the mystical tradition called "Hesychasm" in the Eastern Orthodox Church. Enjoy!
Pompeii is a site that never ceases to amaze. One of the most famous sites in the world still has riches to be uncovered, despite the fact that the devastating volcanic eruption occurred in 79 AD and the ruins of the Ancient Roman city were discovered as early as the 18th century. Now, archaeologists have uncovered a fascinating shrine in Pompeii that had been buried for centuries beneath volcanic ash. Excited to learn more about this remarkable finding? Then, stick around.
It’s September 2019, and a team of archeologists are using ground-penetrating radar technology to scan beneath the surface of a field in rural Norway. An anomaly then catches their attention. Hidden beneath the subsoil is a massive circular formation which is 60 feet in diameter. Ancient and mysterious, it resembles a giant, primordial eye.
It’s summer on the shores of the Sea of Galilee in Israel, and a team of archaeologists are slaving away under the boiling sun. In the ruins of an ancient city, the researchers have discovered the remains of a church that was constructed by Christians many years ago. And as they dig deeper, the team discover a mysterious mosaic. Could this ancient artwork shed new light on a miracle straight out of biblical times?
Join us in the video below, where we will be restoring a Caucasian dagger. The work takes a lot of time, but we hope you enjoy it!
Today we’ll be taking a look at Harbetsuvan Tepesi. This is one of the 12 Tas Tepeler sites but it is far smaller than Gobekli Tepe and Karahan Tepe but according to archaeologists, it could be the key to really understanding the Neolithic in the region.
Harbetsuvan Tepesi is located around 55km southeast of the modern city of Sanliurfa. It was only discovered in 2014 and excavations took place between 2017 and 2019. This year, in the summer of 2022, further excavations took place.
In this video, we are showcasing Kazuya Shimogama from the Chiba Institute of Technology, who has been working at Harbetsuvan Tepesi this year and is a leading authority on the site. He presents the latest information from this truly ancient site.
Reconstructions of the Great Pyramid often show it glistening and smooth with an enormous gilded capstone. But how realistic is this?
The history of how Egyptian pyramids lost their casing stones is a tale of physics and greed, with only the Bent Pyramid of Dahshur escaping the fate of being entirely plundered.
But were the tips of the pyramids really covered in gold? How big could the capstones (pyramidions) really have been?
We examine the history of these pyramidions and what the evidence suggests about how they might have looked on top of the 4th dynasty megaliths.
History of the World attempts to tell the story of humans from Prehistoric times, through the Ancient Period, Middle Ages, and Modern History in a concise movie. It's meant for people who want to have a basic understanding of the major events of human history.
Human history, or world history, is the narrative of humanity's past. It is understood through archaeology, anthropology, genetics, and linguistics, and since the advent of writing, from primary and secondary sources.
The failure of rainfall in the Middle East has caused the Fertile Crescent to dry up, resulting in horrific findings in the Euphrates. Do you know why the drying of the Euphrates river is causing problems in many countries? If not, then please continue watching this video till the end.
The Euphrates River has delivered unimaginable prosperity to the regions of Turkey, Syria, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia for the past six thousand years. Due to its status as the region's primary water supply, the area has experienced unprecedented levels of growth and fertile soil. But the river's conditions are shifting, and new questions have emerged. Follow us as we delve deeper into the horrifying details that experts have disclosed regarding the alterations in the Euphrates River and what they could imply for the future of humanity.
After making his way through the cold waters of Loch Arnish, Chris Murray finds exactly what he is looking for. On this lake on Lewis off the west coast of Scotland, the diver is examining a mysterious man-made island known as a crannog. And, incredibly, the secrets that Murray discovers deep below the water’s surface will change everything that experts know about these strange, prehistoric landmasses.
In 1935, Egypt was still the main draw for archaeologists digging for answers. It was hardly more than a decade since the British Egyptologist Howard Carter discovered the tomb of Tutankhamen on November 4, 1922, that had lain nearly undisturbed for over 3,000 years. Yet that is another amazing story still to be investigated. However, right now, our attention is focused on the latest attempt to hide the real ancient history of an unknown civilization that left us with great wonders both above and below the sands of the Giza Plateau.
Ancient Lost City Unearthed in Egypt
The first news of a ‘Secret City’ hit the World Press in the first week of March 1935. By July of that year, much more had been found and the Sunday Express ran an article by Edward Armytage who had just returned to England from Egypt where he had watched the excavation of an ancient Egyptian city that was then thought to date back 4000 years.
Media Silence
…….then came silence, as if every living Egyptologist had lost all interest in this wonderful underground metropolis. All their articles during the ensuing years were centered on tombs of queens and shafts that had sunk deep into the ground to burial tombs some time during the 24th Dynasty, which was as late as 732 BC to 716 BC. It is very odd that such an immense discovery of a whole underground city dating back at least 4,000 years was ignored completely in favor of a late period Dynasty that almost passed without notice.
Denial of Previous Discoveries
That was some eighty years ago and today we have come up against a similar ‘rose granite block wall’, in the person of the former Minister of State for Antiquities Affairs, Zahi Hawass , who held that position until Egypt’s revolution in 2011 that toppled Hosni Mubarak—and also ended Hawass’ controversial reign as the supreme chief of all Egypt’s antiquities. However, he still has his ‘finger in the pie’ so to speak. Much has been written about the Egyptian ‘Indiana Jones’ who presents a big smile at one moment but red-raged faced the next when any unwelcome question is posed to him. This side of his character is well documented in Robert Bauval and Ahmed Osman’s book “Breaking the Mirror of Heaven”.
However, such a temperament doesn’t duly explain why Zahi Hawass has so publicly announced that there is nothing at all below the Sphinx, neither any tunnel nor a single chamber, when there have many photos of him entering descending shafts from the head of the Sphinx and another at the far rear of the Lion Body. Are we supposed to forget completely what we have seen several times in the past and accept such denials without question?
Statements Contradict Photographic Evidence
Apparently, he brushed off such enquiries of hidden tunnels under the Giza Plateau and chambers under the Sphinx by saying that it wasn’t possible to look deeper, as the chambers were either blocked or full of water. That may well be the case, though we can see from one of the photos showing a rear downward shaft from the side of the Sphinx that the floor far below is quite dry.
We do know that Hawass had climbed down ladders from the rear entrance of the Sphinx, into a deep chamber on a middle layer and then even further down to a bottom chamber which apparently contained a very large sarcophagus and that was filled with water, as these scenes are all in a documentary film made by Fox. It is hard to imagine how he could possibly think that he could later deny all that he had earlier accomplished.
A Hole in the Sphinx’s Head
Around 1798, Vivant Denon etched an image of the sphinx, although he hadn’t copied it that well. However, he no doubt knew that there was a hole on the top of its head as he had drawn an image of a man being pulled out.
A sketch can hardly be used as proof, but in the 1920’s an aerial photo of the sphinx taken from a hot air balloon showed that there is such an opening on the top of its head.
The Enigma of the Sphinx’s Head
It seems quite clear from the totally different construction materials and color of the Sphinx head, which we believe is not rock, but some type of man-made substance compared to its limestone and eroded body, that the head and face of the Sphinx must have been changed from its original shape long after the monument was first carved. There is hardly any erosion to the head compared to its body.
The sides of the headdress are quite smooth and we only need glance at the mythical creature to spot the lighter color of the body compared to the darkness of the head.
According to Tony Bushby in his “The Secret in The Bible” a badly fragmented Sumerian cylinder tells a tale that could easily be taken as having happened at Giza and involving a beast that had a lion head with a tunnel entrance hidden by sand. Everything now points to the Sphinx body having been sculpted out of natural stone when there was frequent heavy rainfall and that takes us back to about the same time that Robert Bauval and Robert Schoch have calculated for the construction of the Orion’s Belt Pyramids, i.e. circa 10,450 BC.
Two Sphinxes?
There have been sketches of the Giza (the word Gisa in Ancient Egyptian means ‘Hewn Stone’) complex from as far back as 1665 and some do show two heads peering out of the sands, one usually having female features.
It was an ancient Egyptian practice to inscribe two lions, which they called Akerw, next to their doorways for heavenly protection and that would lead us directly to a mound near the sphinx, which Gerry has identified and measured. Could this mound contain the buried body of a second sphinx?
One would have thought that this mysterious, large, covered shape so close to the sphinx would have been greeted with great enthusiasm by the Egyptian authorities, yet Hawass and Mark Lehner didn’t want to listen to his theory, according to a reliable source.
Gerry had contacted someone in a renowned institute in Cairo that had equipment that could detect objects under the sand. That person applied for a permit to the then Supreme Council of Antiquities to investigate the mound, but they didn’t respond. Apparently, no one else was granted a license to investigate the specific area of the mound where we believe a Second Sphinx could be unearthed. No doubt they had a reason for it!
Why the Denial?
Why would those two Egyptologists be so alarmed by the suggestion that there was something that had been missed for centuries? Is it possible that they don’t want to reveal something beneath that mound? It isn’t reasonable that anyone should have so much objection to any kind of probe or even a simple aerial photograph being taken, which might lead to the discovery of yet another amazing wonder of the world and a wonder that would draw many more thousands of tourists to Egypt. They won’t even admit to ever having examined the mystery mound themselves, and surely had this been done they would be the first to say so.
A few years ago, Zahi Hawass met the Foreign Press Association in Cairo to vent his frustration with a group of pseudo-scientists whose personal attack, through television and other media, had escalated to the point where it had become threatening. Apparently, he was worried that a NBC interview would support and publicize their ideas, which he suggests were purely for personal gain.
He apparently said in a statement:
"I want to talk about things that do not make any sense,”
His gesture expressed his increased frustration with what he commonly classified as "pyramidiots" - those with views greatly at variance with the established scientific community.
"They are saying secret excavations…are going on around the Sphinx and are not being revealed. This is definitely not so."
Zahi Hawass is not only a great showman and probably the most knowledgeable man in the world about ancient Egypt, he has also achieved a lot to promote tourism for his country. However, he appears to have an agenda, and that is to keep in place the conventional understanding of ancient Egyptian history, no matter how many new findings contradict what is currently believed to be true.
