Brit-Am Historical Reports (21 January, 2013. 10 Shevet, 5773)
Contents:
1. Ancient City of Kush Searched for in the Sudan
2. 1,900 year old Torah Scroll found in Syria!
3. Minoans of Crete were Warrior Prototypes for Myceneans
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1. Ancient City of Kush Searched for in the Sudan
Searching for the lost royal city of Nubia in northern Sudan
Extracts:
ANN ARBOR. Geoff Emberling is doing what few archaeologists do anymore in a world that has been worked over pretty well by picks, trowels and shovels. He's searching for a lost royal city.
The ancient capital was ruled by the kings of Nubia, which now lies in northern Sudan, just south of Egypt. Little is known about the kings who suddenly appeared on the historical stage about 800 B.C. and conquered all of Egypt before eventually fading back into the desert.
"We have no idea where these kings came from," said Emberling, a research scientist at the Kelsey Museum of Archaeology at the University of Michigan. "They basically appeared out of nowhere."
Nubia, also known as Kush, was one of Africa's earliest centers of political authority, wealth and military power. But because of the lack of information about Nubia, it hasn't been part of the bigger discussion about the rise and fall of civilizations in the way that Egypt and Mesopotamia have.
Much of the archaeological research has focused on tombs and temples in the Nubian capital of El Kurru, Emberling said.
Emberling set off for El Kurru in the last week of December and plans to stay for six weeks, working near a stretch of the Nile River that flows through the Sahara Desert.
Emberling has a general idea about where to dig, based on the notebooks of George Reisner, an American archaeologist who excavated Nubian pyramids in 1918-19. Reisner's notes mentioned a long city wall with a gate facing the Nile. He also said there was a well that could have been big enough to be part of a palace. But the site wasn't excavated and disappeared under the sand.
Emberling is working with archaeologists from Denmark and Sudan using a variety of techniques: satellite imagery, topographic surveys, magnetometry and geological coring�driving a tube into the ground and pulling up a column of soil.
In recent years, Sudan has been better known as a place of civil war and genocide as well as a base for Al Qaeda. But Emberling said throughout all the unrest and violence, archaeologists have worked without interruption in the northern part of the country.
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2. 1,900 year old Torah Scroll found in Syria!
Leather Torah captured after thrilling police operation
Extracts:
Police carefully planned and carried out a special operation Dec. 25 to capture a 1,900-year-old Torah from alleged smugglers before it was sold in the Mediterranean province of Adana.
Police apprehended four people in Adana who were attempting to sell an incredibly old leather Torah. Four suspects were released by a local court pending trial and the leather Torah was sent to Ankara for analysis following the operation.
After receiving information regarding the entrance of an artifact to Adana through illegal means from Syria amid the nation�s civil war, police discovered through additional research that an attempt would be made to sell a 2-millennia-old leather Torah for $30 million.
The historical Torah is believed to have been taken first to Palestine and then later to Syria.
There are suggestions that the Torah may have been taken to Turkey by Syrian refugees.
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3. Minoans of Crete were Warrior Prototypes for Myceneans
War was central to Europe's first civilization, contrary to popular belief
Extracts:
War was central to Europe's first civilization, contrary to popular beliefJanuary 15, 2013 Research from the University of Sheffield has discovered that the ancient civilisation of Crete, known as Minoan, had strong martial traditions, contradicting the commonly held view of Minoans as a peace-loving people.
The research, carried out by Dr Barry Molloy of the University of Sheffield's Department of Archaeology, investigated the Bronze Age people of Crete, known by many as the Minoans, who created the very first complex urban civilisation in Europe. ...Molloy's research reveals that war was in fact a defining characteristic of the Minoan society, and that warrior identity was one of the dominant expressions of male identity. Molloy continued: "The study shows that the activities of warriors included such diverse things as public displays of bull-leaping, boxing contests, wrestling, hunting, sparring and duelling. Ideologies of war are shown to have permeated religion, art, industry, politics and trade, and the social practices surrounding martial traditions were demonstrably a structural part of how this society evolved and how they saw themselves." Even the famous Mycenaeans, heroes of the Greek Trojan War, took up the Minoan way of war, adopting its weaponry, practices and ideologies. "In fact," said Molloy, "it is to Crete we must look for the origin of those weapons that were to dominate Europe until the Middle Ages, namely swords, metal battle-axes, shields, spears and probably armour also."