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The 3,700-Year-Old Phaistos Disc Has Remained Unread for 118 Years
The Phaistos Disc, discovered on the Greek island of Crete more than a century ago, continues to resist every attempt to decipher its mysterious symbols. Italian archaeologist Luigi Pernier found the Phaistos Disc on July 3, 1908, inside the Minoan palace of Phaistos. Generally dated to around 1700–1650 BC, the object is now approximately 3,700…
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4,000-Year-Old Tablets Reveal How Magic Shaped Power in Ancient Mesopotamia
A vast archive of 4,000-year-old cuneiform tablets is offering a rare, layered view into how ancient Mesopotamian societies understood power. The newly analyzed collection shows that governance was never purely administrative. It was ritual, belief, and control of the unseen—woven together into a single system. Researchers from University of Copenhagen and National Museum of Denmark…
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A 2,000-Year-Old Roman Inkwell from Conimbriga Reveals a Groundbreaking Mixed-Ink Formula
It began with a small bronze cylinder nobody expected to matter. But the inkwell recently re-examined in Conimbriga—one of the best-preserved Roman cities in Portugal—has turned out to be one of the most disruptive finds in the study of ancient writing. Inside the vessel, sealed for nearly two millennia, researchers identified the chemical traces of…