Dice tower was discovered near the modern villages of Vettweiss and Froitzheim. During the Roman era this location was in the province of Germania Inferior on the Imperial frontier with Germania. The major military centre of Cologne was located nearby. The Vettweiss-Froitzheim Dice Tower was intended to produce a trustworthy throw of one or more dice.
The tower dates to the fourth century AD and was apparently presented as a gift. It bears two Latin texts. The longer text commemorates a military defeat of the Picts. The shorter text wishes good luck to the unnamed recipients of the item
It is an upright, hollow cuboid of copper-alloy plate designed to sit level on a flat surface. The top of the dice tower is open, allowing for the introduction of dice, and it contains three levels of projecting baffles which would produce random motion in the dice as they fell through the tower. The dice would then emerge at the base of the tower via a miniature flight of steps. The dice, while emerging, would ring three bells which formerly hung above the exit. One of these bells survives intact.
The tower is decorated on all faces with pierced patterns and two short Latin texts are displayed prominently.
The front face of the tower bears the words,
PICTOS VICTOS
HOSTIS DELETA
LVDITE SECVRI
Which may be translated as,
The Picts are defeated.
The enemy is destroyed.
Play in safety!
Around the top of the three remaining faces is the phrase,
On a rocky triangular promontory 300m high of Azat river are the ruins of the impregnable fortress of Garni, one of the most ancient monuments of Armenian architecture.
In the first century A.D. King Terdat I built a magnificent pagan temple in the fortress dedicated to the god of sun Mithras. For 17 centuries the temple fascinated people by its beauty and perfection of its forms. In 1679 a terrible earthquake left it in ruins. Only 300 years after the excavations this masterpiece of world architecture, remnants of the royal palace, the barracks, a Roman bath and a Christian church were discovered.
The restoration of the temple began in 1966 thoroughly observing all that had remained of the monument and ended in 1975.
The temple of Garni itself was dedicated to the sun goddess Mythra. Armenians shared Zoroastrian entities with Persia (and by the time of Garni Temple, with the Eastern Roman empire, which had adopted Mythra as a patron goddess), and worshipped fire as an ultimate gift from the gods, an entity in itself.
Garni was designed according to the sacred geometry of the day: It perfectly follows the Pythagorean and Platonic theories of sacred geometry in its design, a design for civilization carved form the wilderness.
Garni temple is the only remaining intact model of Hellenistic architecture in Armenia. The Armenians believed, that everything had to be built according to the laws of nature. They considered geometry contact with gods. Armenians considered three, six and nine sacred numbers, and throughout the temple you will find these measures, or their combinations, illustrating this system of design.
Almost anyone who comes to Armenia visits Garni, and they think it is the 76 AD temple and Roman style baths. Many learn when they visit that the cyclopic stone walls that surround the royal summer residence and temple are were in fact first laid in the 3rd millennium BC by ancestral Armenians who developed the region into one of the greatest metallurgical and trading powers in Mesopotamia and Asia Minor.
Vanished beneath the waters of the Mediterranean, the lost cities of Thonis-Heracleion and Canopus lay at the mouth of the Nile. Named after the Greek hero Heracles, Thonis-Heracleion was one of Egypt’s most important commercial centres for trade with the Mediterranean world and, with Canopus, was a major centre for the worship of the Egyptian gods. Their amazing discovery is transforming our understanding of the deep connections between the great ancient civilisations of Egypt and Greece. Preserved and buried under the sea for over a thousand years, the stunning objects in the exhibition range from magnificent colossal statues to intricate gold jewellery. Sacred offerings and ritual objects reveal the cult of Osiris – the god of the underworld who held the promise of eternal life. They tell stories of political power and popular belief, myth and migration, gods and kings. Journey through centuries of encounters between two celebrated cultures, meeting iconic historical figures such as Alexander the Great, Cleopatra, Hadrian and Antinous on the way.
Unlike Babylon, Pompeii or mystical Atlantis, few people today have heard of Thonis-Heracleion. Indeed, until the remarkable finds of recent years, there was a danger that the waves of the Mediterranean would consign to history not only the city’s physical remnants, but even its memory as well.
And yet if you were a European merchant in the fifth century BC – an importer of grain, perfume or papyrus perhaps, or an exporter of silver, copper, wine or oil – then Thonis-Heracleion loomed large on your horizon. The same was true if you were a Carian mercenary, an educated Greek, a professional sailor, or a member of the Pharaonic court. Scattered across a series of interlinked islands, sand and mudbanks, Thonis-Heracleion – part aquatic marshland, part urban sprawl – was ancient Egypt’s bustling, cosmopolitan gateway to the Mediterranean, and thus its nexus with the western world.
Founded around 2,700 years ago on the site of present-day Abu Qir bay, 15 miles north-east of Alexandria, Thonis-Heracleion predated its better-known neighbour as the main emporion (trading port) for the region by several centuries and was a hub for international commerce.
Criss-crossed by a network of canals and dotted with harbours, wharves, temples and tower-houses – all joined together by a network of ferries, bridges, and pontoons – the city controlled most of the maritime traffic coming into Egypt from the Mediterranean. Goods would be inspected and taxed at the customs administration centre, and then carried on for distribution further inland, either at Naukratis – another trading port that lay almost 50 miles further up the Nile – or via the Western Lake, which was connected by a water channel to the nearby town of Canopus and offered access to many other parts of the country.
Although Thonis-Heracleion and Canopus are mentioned by many of the great chroniclers of antiquity, from Herodotus to Strabo and Diodorus, most detailed knowledge of their existence was feared to have been permanently lost.
By the second century BC, Thonis-Heracleion’s era of pomp and prestige was already fading. Further along the coast, the new metropolis of Alexandria was rapidly establishing itself as Egypt’s preeminent port, while the hybrid foundation of land and water upon which Thonis-Heracleion was built had begun to feel less secure. It wasn’t a single natural disaster – an earthquake, tsunami, rising sea levels, or subsidence – that doomed the city, but rather a combination of them all.
At the end of the century, probably after a severe flood, the central island – already sagging under the weight of the main temple buildings – succumbed to liquefaction. In what must have been a terrifying experience, the hard clay soil turned to liquid in moments and the buildings atop it collapsed swiftly into the water. The supply of pottery and coins into Thonis-Heracleion appears to have ended at this point; a few hardy residents clung on to their homes throughout the Roman period and even into the beginning of Arab rule, but the last vestiges of the city sunk below the sea at the end of the eighth century.
The Dark Queen, statue probably depicting the Ptolemaic queen Cleopatra III (ruled 142–101 BC).
Holes in the pages of medieval books are common. They were easily made (by the parchment maker’s knife), as in this wonderful case. Fixing it by stitching the hole together with strings of parchment is also common: parchment makers did it all the time, leaving behind “scars” on the page. What is totally unusual, however, is the repairs seen in this 14th-century book in Uppsala, Sweden. The damage is repaired, or at least masked, by good old broidery. It was done by the nuns who purchased the book in 1417. It is delightful to think that they took the effort to make a medieval hole disappear by replacing it with patterns like this, made up from pieces of silk in the most vivid of colors. Medieval manuscripts face many dangers. Holes can be caused by insects, fire damage, mold, or perhaps from damage done during the writing, illustration, or binding of a text. Holes were clearly viewed as part and parcel of the medieval bookmaking process. Many manuscripts—it seems particularly common in Continental manuscripts, like this Swiss manuscript from the monastery of St. Gallen—have holes and tears sewn up with colorful thread. Some of these holes were apparently caused by damage from the bookmaking process: these horizontal slits that have been sewn up appear to have been caused by a monk who was ruling the page with too heavy a hand. The stitching serves two purposes: to protect the book from further damage, and to add decoration to what might otherwise be seen as unsightly.
There are hundreds of shipwrecks buried under the sands of the Wadden Sea near the island of Texel off the coast of North Holland. A natural barrier between the North Sea and Wadden Sea, Texel was an important center of maritime trade. Ships anchored in the Texel roadstead, a sheltered area in the lee of the island, waiting for propitious winds, waiting out bad weather or taking on crew and cargo, only to be wrecked in sudden unexpected storms. Many wrecks are protected by the sand, but as currents shift they can be exposed to the more damaging elements of sea.
In August of 2014, divers discovered that artifacts from one known wreck, a well-armed merchant ship buried since it sank in the 17th century, had been exposed. They didn’t know what the objects were at first. It was just a bundle in the sand. It was only when the brought the bundle to the surface that they realized they’d recovered antique textiles. The find was not announced to protect the site from interlopers while conservators examined and stabilized the finds.
Conservators discovered that the bundle included a unique survival in exceptional condition: a silk damask gown of such high quality that it must have belonged to a noblewoman of very high rank, perhaps even royalty. Buried under the seabed for 400 years or so, the delicate silk was spared the ravages of both oxygen and animals. The dress has a bodice with loose-fitting sleeves and sleeve caps and a full pleated skirt open in the front. The neck has an upright collar. The style is of a type seen in paintings from the early 17th century.
The dress is just one element of an extensive wardrobe that includes a jacket, silk knee socks and silk bodices woven with gold and silver thread. All of these pieces are the same size, so archaeologists believe the clothes belonged to one full-figured woman. Only the gown shows signs of significant wear, which suggests it was intended for everyday use, as does the lack of rich silver and gold embroidery seen in the bodices.
Other artifacts were recovered from the wreck site. There’s Italian pottery, a silver gilt vessel, a red velvet pouch embroidered with silver thread that contained a two-sided lice comb made of cow horn, pomanders (openwork spheres that held sweet-smelling flowers or herbs for elegant people to sniff when the environment was particularly rank), and a number of leather book covers in different sizes, some with locks. One of them is stamped in gold with the coat of arms of King Charles I, which suggests at least part of the cargo was Stuart property. Perhaps the lady with the very fine wardrobe was a member of the Stuart family.
The origin of man’s romance with wine apparently predates written records, hence no one is really sure as to when humans started getting drunk.
Archaeology may be unaware of the precise date of the time humans first started cultivating grapevines, but the hypothesis is that early humans may have climbed on the trees to pick berries and possibly loved the sugary flavor and decided to store them for longer lasting pleasure.
However, over time the fermentation would have set in at the bottom of the container, producing a liquid that was far more tasty and pleasurable than the berries they were eating.
This theory of the origin of alcohol suggests that the real revolution in the fermentation of alcohol came about around 10,000 to 8,000 BC, when humans effectively made a shift from nomadic to a more sedentary style of living, giving more preference to agriculture which lead to the production of wine.
According to the archaeological records, the earliest available record of wine production is found to be in various sites in Georgia where the production was rampant in 6,000 BC, in Iran around 7,000 BC, and in Greece and Armenia around 4,500BC and 4,100 BC respectively.
It is no secret that the respect given to a bottle of wine precisely depends on its age; therefore, the older the bottle, the better taste it would generate.
But of course, there is a limit to the ‘old age’ of the bottle and a bottle found in a Roman tomb near the Speyer region of Germany certainly breaks all known records of the oldest wine available on the planet; the bottle is appropriately named as The Speyer Wine Bottle.
The Speyer Wine Bottle was first discovered in a Roman tomb in Germany, and is likely to contain a fair amount of wine, and was found in 1867 from the Rhineland-Palatine region of Germany, which is the oldest settlement in the region.
The artifact has since attracted the attention of historians and researchers and has attained the status of the world’s oldest existing bottle of wine.
The wine bottle dates back to between 325 and 359 AD, and was discovered during an excavation at a 4th-century tomb of a Roman nobleman. It is the oldest known wine bottle which remains unopened.
The Speyer Wine Bottle is housed in the Historical Museum of the Palatinate in Speyer and is always displayed at the same location in the Tower Room.
The bottle itself is of 1.5-liter volume and is a glass vessel with amphora-like sturdy shoulders, which are yellowish green in color with handles shaped in the form of dolphins.
The nature of the wine in the bottle is also the subject of many speculations, and it has been suggested the most of the ethanol content of the wine has been lost, analyses have suggested that not all but at least some part of the liquid in the bottle has to be wine. According to the historians, the wine which was produced in the region around the time was diluted with a mixture of various herbs.
The wine bottles were adequately preserved using a thick mixture of olive oil, which was used along with a thick wax seal to close the bottle, effectively protecting it from outside influence.
Scientists have long tried to get permission to fully analyze the contents of the bottle by opening it, but as of 2011 the bottle remains unopened. Thus any detailed analysis isn’t possible at the moment.
This is partly due to the concerns that the interaction of the liquid with the outside environment could potentially damage the content, rendering it useless for anyone.
On 21 and August 22, 1972 near the Ionian coast of Marina di Riace, the police and the men of the Archaeological Superintendence of Reggio Calabria made a spectacular recovery of two large bronze statues, buried for centuries under the sand of the sea bottom: from then on they were known as the Riace bronzes. The statues had been sighted six days before by Stefano Mariottini, a Roman chemist doing underwater fishing.
It was the first great mass phenomenon related to underwater archeology: ancient beauty seems to have an almost immediate impact in our time. The need for beauty is still connected to Greek culture, Greek beauty is still the most understandable; it was founded on nature with a strong intellectual foundation, the artists were also men expert in geometry and theoretical calculation.
The soil inside the statues was analyzed and it became clear that the so-called Bronze A - the younger one with the "nasty" air, teeth coated in silver, a peremptory look, a position turning to his right - had been cast in the city of Argos,The other statue, Bronze B (the older one) would instead be Amphiaraus, a warrior prophet who foresaw his own death beneath the walls of Thebes. Both in fact participated in the legendary expedition of the city of Argos against Thebes, which had a disastrous ending.
The bronzes have considerable muscle elasticity being in a position defined as "chiasmus" (from the Greek letter "chi"). More specifically, bronze A (the Young man) appears more nervous and vital, while bronze B (the Old man) seems more relaxed. The statues convey a remarkable sense of power, mainly due to the arms being strongly distanced from the body. The bent arm was certainly holding a shield, the other hand a weapon. Bronze B's head is oddly shaped and appears small because it allowed the placement of a Corinthian helmet. The right arm and the left arm of the B underwent a second welding, probably for a restoration in antiquity.
The study of the materials and casting technique reveals a certain difference between the two statues, which might be attributed to different artists or, if made by the same artist, to distinct periods or different places.
The first civilization capable of realism had used exaggeration to go further, and it's that instinct which still dominates our world today. The ancient Greeks cared about physical perfection, and so did Michael Angelo: he too created unrealistic bodies that were more than human, what artists chose to exaggerate was to express more than realism could."
