Ancient History Lab

The man carved on this black granite sarcophagus was a professional dancer, and he made sure we would know it. His inscription names him as Djeho, son of Petekhons, and records what he did. He danced at Memphis on the day the Apis bull was laid in the ground, and at Heliopolis at the festival of the Mnevis bull. He was buried around 346 BC with his profession written into the stone beside him. Then there is the figure on the lid. It stands 120 cm, cut in profile, unclothed, and a clinical assessment published in 2023 reads its proportions as consistent with achondroplasia. That is the part worth pausing on. Egyptian funerary art idealises almost without exception, smoothing every owner into the same correct body. This sarcophagus does the opposite. It gives Djeho the body he actually had, at the height he actually was, in the hardest stone available.

Northern Spain emptied its hillforts in one generation around 400 BC. New radiocarbon work shows where it started. Why it happened is still open. Short documentary on the castros of Asturias and Galicia, out now for subscribers.

Five clay dogs, each smaller than your palm, guarded a doorway in Ashurbanipal’s palace at Nineveh around 645 BC. Each one was painted a different colour, and each had its orders pressed into its side. Loud is his bark. Catcher of the enemy. Expeller of evil. Biter of his foe. And the white one, Don’t think, bite! The full story of the guard dogs of Nineveh is below for subscribers.

Post-Amarna Egypt gave its gods the face of the reigning king. The granite Khonsu from Karnak carries exactly that face, which is why Egyptologists place it in the reign of Tutankhamun or of Horemheb and have never settled which. The god himself was named for movement. Khonsu means the traveller, after the moon crossing the sky each night, and the Egyptians also trusted him to heal. The Bentresh stela tells of his image being carried abroad to drive an affliction out of a foreign princess.

13th-Century BC Bronze Sword Discovered in Italian Volcanic Lake Still Retains Sharp Edge Underwater archaeologists excavating Lake Mezzano, a volcanic crater lake in Lazio, Italy, have recovered an exceptionally preserved 13th-century BC bronze sword with a intact cutting edge. Dating to the Late Bronze Age (contemporary with the reign of Ramesses II in Egypt), the artifact was retrieved from the lake's unexplored southern shore alongside an array of bronze weapons, pins, and an intact razor. The find represents the third Bronze Age sword recovered from the submerged site, which houses a prehistoric pile-dwelling (palafitte) settlement continuously inhabited between 1700 and 1150 BC. The close association of the sword with a bronze razor parallels elite warrior burials across Bronze Age Europe, suggesting the deposit may represent a high-status ritual offering to the waters. However, burnt traces on nearby structures indicate it could also stem from a catastrophic fire or lake-level shift. Video: SABAP provincia Viterbo ed Etruria Meridionale

Just published for subscribers: Enoch walked with God for 365 years before disappearing. A century of scholarship traces his story back to Babylon, where a king was seated on a golden throne by the sun god before the Great Flood. Subscribe for just $3/month to unlock the full article and gain access to exclusive Ancient Content research.

Every culture remembers a flood. We tested the oldest of those stories against the evidence and found where a real memory of the Ice Age survives 👇

Every account of Pompeii states the eruption happened on 24 August, 79 AD. That date comes from one letter, written 25 years after the event, and the surviving copies of that letter disagree by up to three months. In 2018 a wall inscription dated 17 October turned up, days before the eruption. It briefly rewrote the history books. Then the evidence got more complicated again, and the debate is still open. One of the most famous dates in ancient history rests on a single letter that nobody has ever agreed on how to read.