![]() ![]() But its scribe chiseled the message into the black slab three times in a row in different scripts: Ancient Greek, Ancient Egypt’s formal hieroglyphs and its more casual, cursive demotic script. ![]() Honestly, the Rosetta Stone is a boring read, a priestly decree issued in 196 B.C., affirming the divine cult of King Ptolemy V on the first anniversary of his coronation. Then: 2,200 years ago, ancient Egyptian city of Rosetta Read more: The Origins of King Tut’s 3,300-Year-Old Funerary Mask Over the ages, modern and ancient looters emptied most Egyptian royal tombs, so Tut’s burial chamber was the first to reveal the phenomenal wealth pharaohs took the grave. The mask reemerged to the modern world in 1922, when British archaeologist Howard Carter discovered King Tut’s nearly intact tomb in the Valley of the Kings, a royal burial ground along the Nile River. The chin sprouts a tube-like beard, and the forehead displays a vulture and cobra, deities who together symbolized unification of Lower and Upper Egypt. The solid gold base glints with lapis lazuli, turquoise and other semiprecious stones. at the age of 19, after ruling just 10 years. The 24-pound facial replica capped the wrapped mummy of the Egyptian king, who died in 1323 B.C. Say pharaoh and most people will imagine the funerary mask of King Tutankhamun. (Credit: Mark Fischer/Flickr)įrom: 3,300 years ago, Egypt's New Kingdom Read more: The 3,400-Year-Old Olmec Colossal Heads Origins And, several heads seem to have been broken and buried long ago, leading some archaeologists to think ancient people deliberately destroyed old statues as new rulers seized power. ![]() Though surely laborious, it remains unclear how the Olmec transported these massive boulders, eventually carved and displayed in central plazas. But archaeologists later uncovered most of the heads nearly 60 miles from the basalt source, at the ancient capitals of San Lorenzo and La Venta. The first accidental discovery occurred at Tres Zapotes in the foothills of the Tuxtlas Mountains, which provided the basalt stone used to make them. But each head wears a unique visage, expression and headdress, supporting the idea that the carved boulders depict particular leaders. They portray surly men with almond-shaped eyes, flat noses and plump lips. The imposing statues stand between 5 and 10 feet tall, each weighing more than a full-grown elephant. It was the first of 17 similar heads yet to be recovered, thought to be portraits of Olmec rulers. 1862, a farmer digging the same land struck a colossal stone head. Sometimes called the mother culture of Mesoamerica, the Olmec civilization rose from the swampy forests of the Mexican Gulf Coast between about 400 and 1,400 B.C. Now: Several Mexican museums, including Mexico City's National Museum of Anthropology Read more: The Origin of the 30,000-Year-Old Venus of Willendorfįrom: Starting about 3,400 years ago, Gulf Coast, Central America In any case, the supposed sex appeal didn’t last: On a 5 point scale from unattractive to extremely attractive, Venus of Willendorf received an average rating of 0.14 in a 2011 survey of 161 undergraduates. It’s unclear why Ice Age people carved these figurines, with researchers proposing they served as fertility symbols, self-portraits or pornographic items. Although modern scholars call these artifacts Venuses, after the Roman goddess of love and fertility, the actual sculptors lived at least 20 millennia before Classical Rome. Throughout the 1900s and 2000s, several other digs occurred there, with ever-improving methods, which unearthed two less-famous Venus figurines and hundreds of stone tools.Īcross Europe, nearly 200 similar statuettes have surfaced from sites between 23,000 and 40,000 years old. Braids, or perhaps a knit cap, cover her head, and specks of pigment suggest the tan limestone artifact was once painted red.Īrchaeologists found the figurine in 1908, about a week into excavations at Willendorf II, an Austrian site along the Danube River, roughly 50 miles from Vienna. The four-inch-tall figurine bears pronounced breasts, buttocks, belly and vaginal lips, but lacks feet or facial features. Short, fat and nearly 30,000 years old, Venus of Willendorf is the female icon of the Ice Age. Now: Natural History Museum Vienna in Austria (Credit: Bjørn Christian Tørrissen/Wikimedia Commons) ![]()
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