CATEGORIES

A Capital Architect

Dr Frances Sands tells us about Robert Adam, the fashionable 18th-century architect whose exquisite plans and designs, inspired by Classical ruins he saw on his Grand Tour and made for London clients, are currently on show at Sir John Soane’s Museum.

Memories of Antiquity

Dominic Green gives us a preview of an exhibition about to open at the Getty Center in Los Angeles that shows us how the ancient world was viewed through medieval eyes.

Unbelievable Treasures

Is Damien Hirst’s trove of ‘antiquities’ brought up from the sea-bed just a shipload of crock, or is it an historically accurate, if anarchistic, tribute to marine archaeology?

Signs and Omens

Although astrology, fortune-telling, the use of amulets and other superstitious practices are frowned upon by Islam, they have been used throughout history for a variety of purposes, as Theresa Thompson discovers in a new exhibition at the Ashmolean Museum.

The Sun Queen

Joyce Tyldesley traces the life of Nefertiti, consort of the heretic pharaoh Akhenaten, who is Ancient Egypt’s most iconic and, some would say, most beautiful female ruler

Hero Of The Hieroglyphs

Andrew Robinson traces the life of the French archaeologist Jean-François Champollion, who deciphered the tantalising inscriptions of Ancient Egypt

The View Over​​​​​​​ Atlantis

The myth of this fabled civilisation comes down to us from the Greek philosopher Plato but is there any truth in it – then or now? Steve Kershaw investigates

Meet A New Hero

Christian Cameron, the Canadian fiction writer and historical re-enactor of ‘experimental archaeology’ tells Roger Williams what inspired him to write books set in the ancient world after a career as an intelligence officer in the US Navy

Hearts Of Oak

Caroline Spearing traces the history of a tree rooted in English national identity, which saved the monarchy, and that the ancient Greeks held sacred to Zeus, the father of the gods, especially at his oracle in Dodona

Genius In Genes

Those Deans are everywhere.

Divine Boy Causes No Offence In Oxford

Antinous went from country boy to the firm favourite of the Emperor Hadrian (AD 11738) to cult figure in just a few years and, since his death in AD 130 (he drowned in the River Nile), he has been commemorated in busts and statues and on coins and medals. Now, he is celebrated at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford.

A Tale Of Four Cities

It is far too dangerous to visit four of the ancient worlds most splendid cities (Palmyra, Aleppo, Mosul and Leptis Magna) but Nicole Benazeth travels through time and space to see them in a state-of-the-art virtual exhibition at LInstitut du monde arabe in Paris.

Found In Translation

Professor Emily Wilson tells Lucia Marchini how she dealt with the intricacies of translating Homers great epic poem the Odyssey.

On Site At Sardis

Ismail Mardin reports back after spending time with Professor Nicholas Cahill and his team who are using both traditional and cutting-edge scientific methods to explore and analyse the site of the Lydian capital in Turkey and the many diverse finds unearthed there.

Last Supper In Pompeii

The Romans’ passion for fine dining is well known – now a mouth-watering new exhibition at the Ashmolean Museum shows how the production, distribution and consumption for food and wine coloured every aspect of Roman life, as its curator Paul Roberts explains

In The Lap Of Luxury

As the Getty Villa in Malibu displays original artefacts from the Villa dei Papiri in Herculaneum for the first time, Geraldine Fabrikant explains how the ancient villa was built for a rich Roman in the 1st century BC, buried in AD 79 by the Vesuvian eruption, rediscovered in 1750 and recreated by J Paul Getty during the 1970s