Rome built nearly 300,000 km of roads. Archaeologists know exactly where only about 3% of them ran.

#ArchaeologyRocks #archaeology

Hadrian's Wall soldiers came from as far as Syria, and at Vindolanda a letter survives mentioning socks, sandals and two pairs of underpants sent to someone there. 🧦

#ArchaeologyRocks #archaeology

The Mesha Stele is real. It was found in 1868. A few years later, thousands of fake "Moabite" pieces were for sale, and they fooled plenty of people. 🪨

Christopher Rollston explains.

#ArchaeologyRocks #archaeology

A schoolboy found this bronze head of Nero in the River Alde in 1907. It had been hacked off its statue, maybe by Boudica's rebels, and then left in the river. 🪓

Thorsten Opper of the British Museum explains.

#ArchaeologyRocks #archaeology

Two of the Gebelein mummies have tattoos. They're at least 5,000 years old, the oldest known in Africa and almost as old as Ötzi's. One belonged to a woman. ✍️

Daniel Antoine explains.

#ArchaeologyRocks #archaeology

Göbekli Tepe is the oldest monumental site we know, and it was built by hunter-gatherers. No domesticated crops, no domesticated animals. The T-pillars are people, with arms and belts. 🪨

Lee Clare explains.

#ArchaeologyRocks #archaeology

The garnets in one eyebrow of the Sutton Hoo helmet have gold foil behind them. The other side doesn't. In firelight it would have looked one-eyed, maybe like Odin. 👁️

Sue Brunning explains.

#ArchaeologyRocks #archaeology

The only gold scarab of Nefertiti ever found wasn't in Egypt. It was on the Uluburun shipwreck, c. 1320 BC, with 10 tons of copper and a ton of tin. 🌊

Cemal Pulak explains.

#ArchaeologyRocks #archaeology

The oldest biblical manuscripts on Earth, the Dead Sea Scrolls, include copies of every book of the Hebrew Bible except one: Esther. 📜

And of about 230 biblical scrolls, only one is complete: the Great Isaiah Scroll. Adolfo Roitman (Israel Museum) explains.

#ArchaeologyRocks #archaeology

1872: George Smith reads a Babylonian flood story on a clay tablet and causes "a complete sensation". Then a newspaper pays 1,000 guineas to send him to Iraq for the missing piece. 🌊

Andrew George tells the story of the Gilgamesh Flood Tablet.

#ArchaeologyRocks #archaeology

Almost everything we know about ancient Persia was written by its enemies, the Greeks.

"It's a bit like knowing the story of 20th-century America entirely through Soviet sources." Neil MacGregor on why the Cyrus Cylinder matters: a message direct from Cyrus. 🏺

#ArchaeologyRocks #archaeology

Magic bowls buried under houses 🏺

Aramaic spell bowls from 4th–7th c. Iraq were dug up under floors. Or, as Matthew Morgenstern says: "if you look in the weirder corners of the internet, you will find other theories." 🛸

#ArchaeologyRocks #Aramaic

Africa's first Christian king… and son of Ares? 🤔

Ezana of Aksum opens one Greek inscription with the Trinity: "So, clearly Christian." Elsewhere he's "the son of the invincible god Ares."

Aaron Butts explains. Audio: University of Toronto
#ArchaeologyRocks #Aksum

The earliest Jesus in Arabic? 🪨

A Safaitic inscription from Jordan's Black Desert, which "likely contains our earliest invocation to Jesus in the Arabic language, predating the Qur'anic text by centuries."

Ahmad Al-Jallad. Audio: ACOR Jordan
#ArchaeologyRocks #Safaitic

What does the Rosetta Stone actually say? 📜

A 196 BC decree where Egypt's priests honour Ptolemy V like a god. Why? "He also lowered taxes, which was very popular, as you can imagine."

Curator Ilona Regulski. Clip: The British Museum
#ArchaeologyRocks #RosettaStone #AncientEgypt

“It tells you how to play the national board game of ancient Mesopotamia.” 🎲

Irving Finkel on how a Babylonian clay tablet unlocked the rules of the 4,500-year-old Royal Game of Ur.

Clip: The British Museum
#ArchaeologyRocks #RoyalGameOfUr #BritishMuseum

This is the oldest map of the world… in the world. 🗺️

Irving Finkel on a 6th-century BC Babylonian clay map, and the mountain where it says you'd find the wreck of the Ark.

Clip: The British Museum
#ArchaeologyRocks #Babylon #cuneiform

This 2,000-year-old lump hides a computer. 🤯

Sponge divers raised the Antikythera mechanism from a shipwreck in 1900–01. X-rays and CT scans revealed ~30 bronze gears that tracked the sun, moon, eclipses and even the Olympics.

Nothing as complex is known for 1,000+ years.

#ArchaeologyRocks

The real Indiana Jones? 🏺 James Henry Breasted was America's first Egyptology PhD. He founded Chicago's Oriental Institute (now ISAC), crossed a Middle East in turmoil in 1919–20 and put the "Fertile Crescent" on the map.

Indy said it belongs in a museum. He built one.

#ArchaeologyRocks

Ancient places that don't look real 🤯 Petra, Göbekli Tepe, Machu Picchu, Giza, Angkor Wat, Persepolis, Chichén Itzá, Great Zimbabwe & Mesa Verde — 9 sites, 9 countries in 40 seconds.

#ArchaeologyRocks #archaeology