Motya – Sicily’s first Phoenician settlement. Around the 8th century BC the Phoenicians, masters of maritime commerce, committed to founding a settlement on the western tip of Sicily. It was highly likely that the Phoenicians had known and traded with the inhabitants of Sicily for some time. After all they had been founding trading posts […]
Motya and a star filled pool? Read More »
Phoenician whale finds. The island of San Pantaleo sits a kilometre or so off the western tip of Sicily. Protected by a small chain of islands to the west it rests in a natural lagoon and in antiquity it was home to a Phoenician trading settlement called Motya. For the Phoenicians, a people who excelled
The whale and the ancient Mediterranean. Read More »
Don’t worry, this isn’t about aliens. Well not really, you see I recently came across a fantastic site which allows you to see what types of spaceships (and other vehicles) would look like when overlayed on a map. The site is called www.parkmyspaceship.com so make sure you check it out. Anyway, here’s a few examples
A spaceship and ancient sites. Read More »
As you may know each year I carve a pumpkin with designs from antiquity (see here for a recent article I did which includes a how-to guide). It gets difficult each year to find something which is both within my capabilities and will work. A curious Etruscan plate. The design this year was taken from
Etruscan pumpkin for Halloween 2023. Read More »
Another Halloween and another Night of the Livy Dead episode. I’ve been working on these for several years and as mentioned you can find previous episodes on any podcasting platform which you use to listen to my podcast. Keeping with the Halloween vibe here’s a recent bit on the ancient history themed pumpkins I have
Night of the Livy Dead VII – episode notes. Read More »
Over the past several years I have carved pumpkins using a design from a Greek vase (though there is also a Roman mosaic in there as well). I’m still deciding what design to use but in the meantime here are some previous ones and a bit about them. If you want to have a go
Greek Vase pumpkin 2023. Read More »
The Brygos painter is a celebrated name attached to a number of Athenian pieces dating to the early 5th century BC. On occasion artists might sign their pieces, but this was something potters might do as well. As such Brygos could be the name of the potter, and to complicate things further it could even
The Brygos skyphos- what’s he hiding? Read More »
Sometimes an object give us an insight into the past which isn’t initially obvious and here is one such example. The helmet below is a bronze Etruscan one, it dates to circa 500 BC and is doubtless a fascinating object purely on this basis alone. However, as you can see there’s an inscription on the
An Etruscan helmet with a message. Read More »
Owning armour means you are always trying to maintain it and it’s an ongoing fight with rust. Lorica segmentata was one type of armour which the armies of ancient Rome wore – we have some surviving pieces of it from the Corbridge hoard. This was an incredible find and I will have to visit the
Cleaning the lorica segmentata. Read More »
I hope you enjoyed the episode and here is the extra content. I mentioned an episode all about Mad Honey at the end of it and here’s a link to it. https://ancientblogger.libsyn.com/mad-honey Images. Below is a diagram of the earliest depiction of apiculture in Egypt. Here’s a good site with a bit more about
Bees BC – episode notes Read More »
