I remember that when I visited Byblos, in the Jbeil district of Lebanon, in the summer of 2011, I felt like a true beholder of history. Historians agree that it’s the second oldest continuously-inhabited city on earth, runner-up only to the Palestinian city of Jericho. I sat at Feniqia restaurant in the heart of the old Phoenician city, eating shanklish cheese and tabbouleh and imagining life in that very spot, if time were to rewind 7,000 years.

Since about 5,000 BCE, people have been walking the streets of this city. Bartering turned into buying and selling; hunting and gathering was first conducted out in nature, but in the present day, it all goes down in the local souk. Undoubtedly, homemakers hunt for the freshest red peppers to use for muhammara (see our recipe here) and gather the heartiest chickpeas for making hummus, a recipe that has been perfected over generations.

Through successful trade with Egypt, Byblos grew from a small village to a wealthy city. Today still it thrives, by way of a modern phenomenon called tourism, attracting travelers like me looking for a journey back in time.

Byblos was named the 2016 Arab Tourism Capital by the Arab Council of Tourism. Green Prophet was here to salute Erbil and Sharjah as the Arab Tourism Capitals of 2014 and 2015, respectively.

Although thousands of tourists visit Lebanon every year, with Byblos as the top of their to-see lists, municipal leaders say they expect an increase in tourism by up to 30 percent, in the foreseeable future. There are plans to inaugurate five-star international hotel chains and, well, keep up the good work with the Lebanese cooking.

Archaeologically, Byblos is fascinating. It is home to Neolithic, Chalcolithic, Greek and Roman ruins, including a Church of St. John the Baptist and a restored 12^th century Crusader castle.

The Byblos International Festival is an annual summer music festival and the biggest public event in Lebanon. Musicians and singers from all over the world, including but not limited to the Middle East, fill the air with everything from classical sounds to pop tunes. For the last few years, the municipality has projected a brief 3D animation movie showing historical highlights of Byblos on tower walls in the fishermen’s harbor.

Efforts for environmental sustainability are also at work. The air in Byblos is cleaner than it has been in a while. With aims to make Byblos more pedestrian-friendly, local leaders recently closed part of the old city to vehicles after 4pm on weekdays and noon on weekends. With decreased air pollution and less noise, visitors will be breathing fresh air in this very old city.

I’d recommend a few days in Byblos, although it could easily be made into a day trip from Beirut. I think spending more than 24 hours there only makes sense, for you’ll be stepping far, far back in time and there’s a lot of ground to cover!

What will the Arab Tourism Capital of 2017 be? Comment below with your guesses.

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The original ‘iPad’ measures roughly seven inches, except it’s thicker and made of wood, and comprises five overlaid carved rectangular panels coated with wax, Discovery reports.

“Yenikapı is a phenomenon with its 37 sunken ships and organic products,” Ufuk Kocabaş, director of Istanbul University’s department of marine archeology and the Yenikapi Shipwrecks Project, told Hurriyet Daily News. Scientists have been excavating the site for 10 years.

“I think these organic products are the most important feature of the excavations,” says Kocabaş.

Thought to have belonged to the ship’s captain for use as a tool, the wooden box has a sliding lid underneath that hides a carved plate.

“When you draw the sliding part, there are small weights used as an assay balance,” Kocabaş said. 

Related: Turkey’s Yalın Mimarlık Wins Ancient Troy Archaeological Museum Design Competition

An assay balance is a super-sensitive tool used to assess gold, silver and other precious metals in order to determine their value. This is an important tool for a merchant ship.

The ‘tablet’ had other uses as well.

Greek writing found carved in the wax suggests that it was used to take notes, and leather straps that hold the layers together made the box relatively portable as well. Nothing compared to modern iPads of course, but portable for 9th century Turkey.

Discovery writes that a “research team from Istanbul University is now restoring the ship, 60 percent of which has survived in good condition, with the aim of having her set sail again by 2015.”

Only this time, it is likely to have more “advanced” tools on board.

Image: The Byzantine notebook. Credit: Ufuk Kocabaş

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Scientists have discovered the first dinosaur bones in Saudi Arabia that are identifiable – a huge discovery that has proved very difficult until now. The bones are said to be roughly 72 million years old.

Until now, any bones that have been discovered in north-western Saudi Arabia have been fragments that can’t be identified, which is partly what makes this new find so exciting.

Researchers from Uppsala University, Museum Victoria, Monash University, and the Saudi Geological Survey have  uncovered “a string of vertebrae from the tail of a huge “Brontosaurus-like” sauropod, together with some shed teeth from a carnivorous theropod,” reports Science Daily.

These are the first “formally identified dinosaur fossils” from Saudi Arabia, and they were found along the Red Sea coast. The researchers findings were published in the journal PLOS ONE.

“Dinosaur fossils are exceptionally rare in the Arabian Peninsula, with only a handful of highly fragmented bones documented this far” Dr Benjamin Kear from Uppsala University in Sweden, who is the study’s lead author, told Science Daily.

“This discovery is important not only because of where the remains were found, but also because of the fact that we can actually identify them. Indeed, these are the first taxonomically recognizable dinosaurs reported from the Arabian Peninsula” Dr Kear continues.

Dr Tom Rich from the Museum Victoria in Australia says that it’s rare to find dinosaur remains throughout the Arabian Peninsual or east of the Mediterranean Sea because the region was completely submerged in water – making it very difficult to find fossils.

However, Dr Rich adds that the first fossil is the hardest to find. Now that the researchers know where to find them, it will be easier to unearth more.

The two types of dinosaur fossils and bones belonged to “a bipedal meat-eating abelisaurid distantly related to Tyrannosaurus but only about six metres long, and a plant-eating titanosaur perhaps up to 20 metres in length.”

Image of Adaffa Theropod tooth belonged to the first identifiable carnivorous theropod dinosaur from the Arabian Peninsula. (Credit: Photo by Maxim Leonov (Palaeontological Institute, Moscow) 

:: Science Daily

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Turkey’s Ministry of Culture and Tourism chose the team led by Ömer Selçuk Baz out of 132 project submissions for their design of a corten-clad cubic structure that resembles an archaeological excavation site.

The museum’s weathered exterior conceptually matches the antiquities that will be held inside.

Tendered in beautiful images by Cihan Poçan, the winning concept design includes 2,000 square meters of storage space, conservation and restoration labs, both permanent and temporary exhibition space, and a series of food and retail establishments.

We spotted Yalın Mimarlık‘s design for the project slated for construction at the UNESCO World Heritage site in the province of Çanakkale over at Dezeen, where it’s also possible to watch a short video presentation.

Overall it was important to the design team to create a sort of dissonance in observers that would allow them a more acute perspective of the site’s historical importance.

A 12 meter wide ramp leads underground and then winds up through the rusted steel exhibition to a rooftop terrance flanked by remarkable views of the 5,000 year old site. Small cutouts in the weathered facade permit panoramic views of the mythical battlefield.

It’s a spectacular design and we can’t wait to see its implementation.

:: Dezeen

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Three thousand years ago four stone lions guarded a temple in Iraq, but their work was short lived. The Assyrians invaded the city Nuzi and annihilated everything in sight, including the lions and other artifacts. One lion that remained almost intact now lives at University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, while fragments of another, its front paws and rear end, have been languishing in the basement of Harvard University’s Semitic Museum since 1930.

Archaeologists haven’t known what to do with the ruined lion, but new restoration opportunities have emerged alongside the rise of 3D modeling and printing. We’re typically skeptical of 3D printing because it enables the fast production of a lot more unnecessary stuff, but there is something astounding about technology that revives an artifact that was first built three thousand years ago. Read on for the scoop.

We’ve seen a variety of applications for 3D printing technology, such as an electric car dashboard, but archaeologists are only now beginning to grasp the ramifications this new wave of technology has for their work.

Assistant director of the Semitic Museum wrote in the Harvard Gazette that digital modeling and fabrication techniques have enabled them to “wring new data from objects that have been in our basement for 80 years,” FastCo.Design reports.

In order to restore missing parts of the lion kept at Harvard, the museum recruited restoration experts Learning Sites, who took a total of 120 photographs of the Penn State lion. From these images, they were able to create an exact 3D replica!

“It is very cool to hold a duplicate of an ancient artifact in your hand, especially one that was created by such leading-edge digital technologies and not by someone spending hours carving one by hand,” Learning Sites President Donald H. Sanders told Co.Design.

“This is not your grandfather’s archaeology.”

Now the two lions are on display at the museum, reunited, but missing their kin.

The next step is to use a CNC router to create a foam middle section in order to complete the resurrection. And then there’s a chance that the Harvard lion will be re-painted its original color, which, as it turns out, was a deep blue.

:: FastCo.Design

Lead image by Kris Snibbe/Harvard Staff Photographer

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Bulldozers in Beirut tore down remains of a 2,500 year old Phoenician port on Tuesday with blessings from the Culture Minister. Eventually, three new skyscrapers will be built in its place, further blighting a once-beautiful city. The former Culture Minister Salim Wardy thwarted efforts by Venus Construction to proceed with the demolition in Mina al-Hosn and activists have engaged a year-long battle against the firm, but Gaby Layyoun ordered the port’s destruction, denying claims of its historical importance. Activists told The Daily Star that they will not rest until both Layyoun and Venus Construction stand trial for destroying the city’s cultural heritage.

The Phoenicians

The ancient Phoenicians maintained a maritime trading culture all along the Mediterranean Sea, including present-day Lebanon.

Archaeologists and maritime historians hired by the former Culture Minister compiled a scientific report that evidence suggests that the presence of dry docks dating to 500 B.C. were likely to exist in Beirut. The Directorate General of Antiquities then discovered two ancient dry docks that were used for shipbuilding and their maintenance at the site of Venus Construction’s planned $500 million development.

Based on these findings and the discovery of two large sandstones dating to the first and third centuries A.D., Wardy issued ministerial decree 25 in April, 2011 designating 1200 square meters of land owned by Venus Construction as public property of archaeological importance that should not be tampered with, according to The Daily Star.

Wiping out history for money

Venus Construction hired a team of experts who refuted the team’s report. Instead, they said, since the site is 8 meters above sea level and 230 meters from the Mediterranean Sea shore, it couldn’t have functioned as either a port or a storage facility for ancient ships.

But Layyoun revoked the decree on Tuesday saying that there is no evidence related to ships or any type of works related to maritime activity at the site. This announcement delighted Venus CEO Mohammad Kassem, who wasted no time dispatching bulldozers to the site, where 2,500 years of history was destroyed in one very shortsighted day.

Today at noon, activists are expected to gather in front of the Culture Ministry to protest the demolition following calls from the Association for the Protection of the Lebanese Heritage. Salim Wardy says that both Layyoun and Venus Construction “have committed a crime by destroying the port.”

If you’re in Beirut, please make your voices heard.

:: The Daily Star

image via Mahmoud Kheir, The Daily Star

More on Archaeology in the Middle East:

Archaeologists Discover Lost Language in Turkey

Man Evolved When Elephant Meat Ran Out

Ancient Paw Print Found Near Roman Bath In Jerusalem

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Found in the remains of an enormous palace that was destroyed by a fire around 700 BCE, the clay tablet pictured above holds the only remnants of a language previously unknown to modern scholars.

The language could contribute to our understanding of the ethnic groups who lived in the area thousands of years ago, and help map their interactions with the Assyrian Empire, according to Science Daily.

List of names holds key to language

On the banks of the Tigris River in southeastern Turkey are the magnificent ruins of Ziyaret Tepe, probable site of the ancient Assyrian frontier city of Tušhan. The site has been under excavation for the past 15 years, with special attention paid to the palace, which may have been built by the Assyrian King Ashurnasirpal II (883 — 859 BCE).

The tablet seems to be a list of all the women associated with the palace and the local Assyrian administration. Of 144 names on the table, just 59 are legible. One or two are Assyrian, a few are from other languages spoken in the Assyrian Empire, and 45 belong to the mysterious language.

The tablet was found by a team of researchers led by Timothy Matney, professor at the University of Akron, Ohio. It was deciphered by  Dr John MacGinnis, from the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research at Cambridge University, who described his findings in the April 2012 issue of the Journal of Near Eastern Studies.

MacGinnis’s analysis has determined that the names could not have come from other commonly spoken languages of the time, such as Urartian, Elamite, Egyptian, or West Semitic.

Who spoke the language?

There are several theories for where the language could have come from:

1) The language could have been Shubrian, the language indigenous to the area around Tušhan before the arrival of the Assyrians. However, Shubrian is believed to have been a dialect of the Hurrian language, which doesn’t resemble the names on the tablet.

2) The language could have belonged to the Mushki people, who were migrating into Eastern Anatolia at the time the tablet was made. However, historians haven’t found evidence that the Mushki had any interactions with the Assyrian Empire — and it seems unlikely that their names would have been recorded by Assyrian administrators if not.

3) The most convincing theory, according to MacGinnis, is that the language belonged to a people captured by the Assyrians and forcibly moved to Tušhan. In fact, of all the areas under Assyrian occupation, historians are only missing the language of one: the Zagros Mountains in Iran.

“If correct this suggests that Iran was home to previously unknown languages,” wrote MacGinnis in his article.

:: Science Daily

Read more about archaeology in the Middle East:

Man Evolved When Elephant Meat Ran Out

Ancient Paw Print Found Near Roman Bath In Jerusalem

This UNESCO Bioreserve Is Refuge For Prophets, People and Wildlife

Image via John MacGinnis

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Without an historical record, our future would seem shallow. A future sans identity. A future that lacks the benefit of hindsight to inform important decisions. Because ancient relics – fossils, petroglyphs, and architecture – shed light on our origin, they also help us to put the future into perspective.

Otherwise, we would think of ourselves as mostly urban people with no tool-making or agricultural history, without a rich menu of mythology and culture. Which is why archaeologists in the United Arab Emirates are fighting so hard to protect the few remaining petroglyphs from encroaching industrial development.

Throughout the UAE mountains, once inaccessible petroglyphs are threatened by development. Many of these ancient drawings date back to the iron age, between 1300 BC and 300 BC, and depict our ancestral relationship to nature.

Telling etchings of hyenas and camels and leopards, of people riding horses and fighting battles that are at once so remote and yet so similar to our own could be lost without a national effort to steer development away from known rock art locations.

Salah Ali Hassan, the resident archaeologist at the Fujairah Museum, and his associate Dr. Michele Zlolkowski have been working to relocate small petroglyphs to the museum, while larger installations are left behind and cordoned off with fences.

Dr. Zlolkowski has been racing against time to build a database of known sites, but this is hard work. and she could use national assistance, she told The National.

The team hopes to drum up support for their cause at a March archaeology symposium in Al Ain.

Meanwhile, more than 100 petroglyphs near Wadi al Hayl in Fujairah are potentially at risk since manufacturing plants and garages plan to expand their operations into the area. Dr. Zlolkowski believes that community engagement is the key to protecting petroglyphs.

Formerly in Hassat al Risoum, translated as “rock with drawings,” locals defeated a road construction project that would have destroyed an area rife with ancient sketches.

“When people found out they will be losing their ancestor’s petroglyphs, they reacted. So that is what we need, on a national level,” Dr Ziolkowski said.

While a certain amount of mining and development is inevitable, it is not helpful to bulldoze through history with blinders on. But if the rock art sites are not known, then it will be difficult to take developers to account.

:: The National

More archaeological news from the Middle East:

3500 Year Old Cultic Vessels Unearthed in Israel

The Marvel Of  A Two Thousand Year Old Olive Tree In Israel

Saudis Long Love Of Wealth Exhibited At The Louvre

The post “Progress” Ploughs Through UAE Petroglyphs appeared first on Green Prophet.

When we think of Saudi Arabia, we think of oil, robed men, Mecca, and more oil. Certainly there’s an abundant supply of it, though, like in Egypt, the country experienced power shortages this summer as a result of excess demand during a heatwave so strong it set off fires in Iran. However, even before the oil boom, Saudi’s historical artifacts – some only recovered within the last five years – demonstrate that the people from Saudi have always had a penchant for wealth. And because of the country’s geographical location, it has also had a lasting influence on other nations along its trading route.

Saudi’s place in history

Saudi’s historical role is becoming clear for the first time as the country’s artifacts take their long-distance tour to the Louvre in Paris. There they have been arranged for an exhibition called Roads of Arabia: Archaeology and History of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

Opened on 14 July, 2010, the exhibition is showcasing 300 archeological treasures, many dating to before the 7th Century birth of Islam, and drew approximately 38,000 visitors in its first month. The exhibition will continue until 27 September, 2010.

“It’s a groundbreaking historic event,” the Saudi Minister of Tourism and Antiquities, Sultan Bin Salman Bin Abulaziz Al Saud told CNN’s Laura Allsop.

The Golden Glove

Among the artifacts shown are gold and pearl jewelry, a gold glove recovered from a tomb in Thaj, as well as a door from Mecca that was a religious gift from an Ottoman sultan.

According to the Louvre website:

Despite a hostile natural environment, the inhabitants succeeded in taking advantage of their country’s geographical situation as a crossing point for the roads linking the shores of the Indian Ocean and the horn of Africa to Egypt, Mesopotamia, and the Mediterranean world. Early in the first millennium BC this trans-Arabian trade flourished, bringing prosperity to the caravan cities and permeating the local culture with new fashions and ideas from the great neighboring empires.

Among the ideas that continues to flourish is Islam.  At least two million people attend the Hajj at Mecca each year, which does not take into account the Umrah, or the lesser pilgrimage. As such, millions of people head and look to Saudi Arabia, to some extent, for their spiritual guidance.

Might it be said, then, that their environmental policy could be equally compelling? Recently, Saudi Arabia committed to developing solar power technology on a fairly substantial scale. If this historically influential nation modifies their energy agenda, then is it possible that other Arab nations such as Oman, Qatar, and Iraq will be inspired to do the same?

:: image via SCTA and story via CNN

More news from Saudi Arabia:

Saudi Arabia’s “Vision Electro” Looks Up to Solar, Not Down to Oil

Protective Fence Causes Mass Starvation of Saudi Wildlife

Ban Saudi’s Bottled Water?

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