Our cover feature reads like detective fiction: archaeologists come across a pharaoh’s sarcophagus stolen in antiquity that leads them to the discovery of the tomb of an unknown king of a long-forgotten Egyptian dynasty. Dr Josef Wegner and his team from Penn Museum have found the archaeological evidence to substantiate a recent theory that there once was a third kingdom of Egypt at Abydos between Memphis and Thebes, and in so doing they have re-written Egyptian history.
In Romania, rescue excavations have revealed the country’s largest Bronze Age necropolis and archaeological evidence for the ceremonies described so vividly in Homer’s epic poem The Iliad.
Andrew Robinson takes another look at the enduring riddle of the Indus Valley script. Its enigmatic symbols continue to intrigue scholars of this long-lost language. Will the code ever be cracked?
A short walk from Rome’s city centre lies an unusual hill: it is made up of broken pieces of pottery inscribed with the minutiae of business transactions that recount 300 years of trade across the Mediterranean at the beginning of the 1st millennium AD.
Across the other side of the world, we discover the archaeological remains that bear witness to the trials and tribulations of the first Christian missionaries to venture onto the remote shores of Tanna, a tiny island that forms part of the archipelago of Vanuatu.
How did people live in Pompeii? And how did they – rich and poor – live in the Egyptian city of Amarna? It is rarely possible to get down close to the lives of people in the past, but at Pompeii and Amarna, Andrew Selkirk provides a close-up view of how they really lived.