/

CWA 73

2 mins read

CWA-73-Cover_smallThe spectacular discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb in 1922 brought the 18th Dynasty teenage pharaoh 20th-century celebrity status, and inspired generations of future Egyptologists. His stepmother, Queen Nefertiti, is equally famous: her limestone bust, found at Amarna and now at the Neues Museum in Berlin, is as recognisable the world over as Tutankhamun’s golden burial mask. But her tomb is yet to be found. Now the world of Egyptology is on tenterhooks following claims that 21st-century technology has revealed signs of two hidden doorways in the walls of the boy king’s funeral chamber – and that one of them may lead to the undisturbed sarcophagus of Nefertiti herself.

Nineteenth-century European travellers who stumbled across the remains at Great Zimbabwe believed the impressive architecture and sophisticated art must be the work of foreigners colonising African territory. Twentieth-century excavation proved them wrong. New investigations at the long-neglected site of Mapela Hill are revealing the earliest traces of this sophisticated society, which went on to flourish in the 11th-19th centuries.

A long-forgotten city, a massive stone harbour, and a rare example of a Roman lighthouse: such discoveries are the stuff of archaeologists’ dreams. Add to that the first evidence for Hittite contact with Europe, and you understand why the team at Bathonea in Turkey enjoy their day job!

Describing a desert as ‘crowded’ sounds like an oxymoron, but in Qatar, that is exactly what you will find. A closer look at the seemingly barren landscape reveals a terrain crammed with evidence of past societies, both nomadic and sedentary, stretching back millennia.

High cholesterol leading to strokes is seen as a modern medical phenomenon. But scientists in Sweden have discovered remarkable evidence for this hidden killer lurking in two medieval monasteries. Was health in the Middle Ages as much a matter of lifestyle choice as it is for us today?

IN THIS ISSUE

FEATURES

EGYPT: Chamber of secrets What lies behind the walls of Tutankhamun’s tomb?

ZIMBABWE: Mapela Hill The early birth of southern Africa’s first great civilisation

TURKEY: Bathonea Discovering a lost city where Europe meets Asia

QATAR: The crowded desert Finding solid remains of ephemeral societies

SWEDEN: Hidden killer A modern disease in a medieval monastery

NEWS

Home of Goliath

The great American debate

Chauvet cave regrets

Aztec skull rack

French Pompeii frescos 

The tooth of heidelbergensis

Earliest agriculture

NEWS FOCUS

The Qur’an’s oldest pages

CHARLES HIGHAM

A new insight on a great temple mausoleum

TRAVEL

ISTANBUL The Sun and Moon Mosques in Istanbul

ITALY Richard Hodges travels to the Maremma in Tuscany

FRANCE A luxurious Roman villa in rural France

CULTURE

MUSEUM

100 years of Egyptian archaeology at the Petrie Museum

REVIEWS

Andrew Robinson deciphers the origins of Hinduism in his review of Asko Parpola’s new book The Roots of Hinduism: The Early Aryans and the Indus Civilization

Andrew Selkirk explores Babylon: Legend, History and the Ancient City by Michael Seymour

plus reviews of:

The Complete Roman Legions by Nigel Pollard and Joanne Berry

The Gates of Asia: The Eurasian Steppe and the Limits of Europe by Warwick Ball

Carthage: Fact and Myth by Roald Docter, Ridha Boussoffara, and Pieter ter Kerus (eds)

Bosnia and the Destruction of Cultural Heritage by Helen Walasek

Cites and the Shaping of Memory in the Ancient Near East by Ömür Harmanşah

CHRIS CATLING

Metaphors, metal monsters, and the Venus de Milo’s arms

THINKING ALOUD

Neil Faulkner discusses listening to little voices

OBJECT LESSON

The Battersea Shield