Napoleon's soldiers still get blamed for the Great Sphinx's nose, and a drawing from 1737 already shows it missing. The face carries the marks of rods or chisels driven in deliberately, and the best documented attack comes from 1378, when a Sufi named Muhammad Sa'im al-Dahr found farmers leaving offerings at the monument.

Severe drops in the Danube's water level near the ruins of Ulpia Oescus have exposed previously hidden piers from Constantine the Great's massive 4th-century bridge. Archaeologists inspecting the newly visible foundations spotted bands of brick and stone masonry (opus mixtum) resting on large stone blocks and held together with iron clamps set in lead. Because Roman records on the opposite bank logged only solid stone construction, finding brickwork on the Bulgarian side suggests these piers were laid on open ground or inside temporary river diversions rather than poured directly underwater. The shifting shoreline also highlights how centuries of natural river erosion have pushed the Danube nearly 200 meters away from where its banks sat when the bridge opened in AD 328. Video: bntnews. bg

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.

Tomorrow I am publishing a long read on one of the strangest figures in Genesis. Enoch lives 365 years, walks with God, and then simply disappears. Where did that story come from? The trail runs from the Dead Sea Scrolls to a clay tablet in Nineveh, and to a Babylonian king who ruled the city of the sun god before the flood.

Archaeologists at Tripolis still cannot say whether these mosaics were laid by local masters or by travelling workshops moving between the cities of the Maeander valley. The only material clue arrived in 2015, a scatter of cut stone chips left from making tesserae, found along one of the main colonnaded streets. What evidence would settle a question like that for you?

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 👇

The Crocodile Museum at Kom Ombo displays mummified Nile crocodiles recovered from the cemetery beside the temple, the longest measuring 4.30 metres, along with crocodile foetuses, preserved eyes, and teeth of gold and ivory. The priests who prepared these burials served under the Ptolemies and the Roman emperors. They stand closer in time to us than to the builders of the pyramids.

Tomorrow I am publishing a long read on a question older than writing itself. Did anyone remember the end of the Ice Age? From the Sumerian King List and the Hawara labyrinth to Atlantis, Lemuria and Göbekli Tepe, I have checked each story against the sources and sorted what holds from what was invented. The strongest evidence comes from somewhere few people look. Subscribe so you don't miss it. nitter.cf/HistContent/creator-su…

For generations the people of Derinkuyu in Cappadocia drew water from wells whose shafts passed straight through an underground city they knew nothing about. A resident broke through his basement wall in 1963 and found it.

The serdab at Saqqara is tilted about 17 degrees, matching the slope of Djoser's Step Pyramid. The king's gaze through those two holes runs upward as well as outward, toward the circumpolar stars that never set. The face meeting visitors today belongs to a plaster copy. The original statue left its serdab in the 1920s and now sits in Cairo, the oldest life-size statue known from Egypt..

The granite bank at Santo Stefano near Oschiri in Sardinia carries 21 niches in two rows, 14 below and 7 above, triangular, square and semicircular, with dozens of cupmarks around them. The rock has never been systematically excavated, so its age still rests on comparison with other sites.

Human bone has been coming out of Göbeklitepe in scattered pieces since 1995, 928 fragments across three thousand square meters. The first two intact burials have now been excavated, and they suggest the scatter was made by landslides rather than ritual.

The valley around Su Tempiesu in Sardinia yields only schist and granite, so its builders brought trachyte and basalt in from elsewhere. Every dressed block at the spring, laid around 1300 BC, was carried to the site by deliberate choice. The roof carried something rarer still. Its terminal block once held twenty bronze swords, fixed into the stone with poured lead and standing above the water. What do you think a sword given to a spring was meant to accomplish?

The builders at Gümüşler in Niğde worked downward. They quarried a cube of rock about 15 metres wide and 11 metres deep out of the ground, then cut a church, a dining hall, a kitchen and living rooms into the walls of that open pit. Inside, the fresco known as the smiling Mary may owe her expression to a 1960s restoration, when soot was cleaned away and scratched areas were repainted. Other readings take the smile as original and simply rare. When a retouch is itself sixty years old, how should a site describe what visitors are seeing?

The Nuragic sacred well at Perfugas in Sardinia was built from limestone blocks laid completely dry, with T-shaped and dovetail stones locking the two wall faces together. Eight steps descend to a circular chamber, and it sits in the middle of the old town, facing the parish church..

The Circus Games mosaic in Lyon divides scholars. Its timber judges' box fits an inscription about Lugdunum rebuilding its circus after a fire, while the museum maintains that nothing proves the scene is Lyon's own track. The circus itself has never been excavated. Which reading convinces you?