“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

1780 BC clay tablet → Babylon’s recipe for the ark. Irving Finkel calls it an utter corker. Real writing of real language. 🧠📜

#ArchaeologyRocks #cuneiform

Sea Peoples slammed Egypt in 1207 and again in 1177 — that’s the book title.

Old story: drought → famine → Sea Peoples → collapse.
Cline: survive one disaster — but what about a perfect storm?

Eric H. Cline (GWU) on the Late Bronze Age collapse.

#ArchaeologyRocks #1177BC #BronzeAge

On the other: Ethiopic “Lord of Heaven / Lord of Earth.”

Clip: Aaron Butts.

#ArchaeologyRocks #Ezana #Aksum #Ethiopia #epigraphy #ancienthistory

Clip: Matthew Morgenstern on recovering the lost history of Eastern Aramaic.

#ArchaeologyRocks #Mandaean #magicbowls #Aramaic #ancienthistory