THE SUSSEX Archaeological Society has apologised to protesters after they allowed a controversial stunt by ITV to give the Long Man of Wilmington a sex change.

ITV and the archaeological society caused fury among Pagans and other protesters when they allowed fashion gurus Trinny and Susannah to add breasts and pigtails to the figure many believe is sacred. (more…)

More than 2,000 years after Alexander the Great founded the city, archaeologists are discovering its fabled remains, from the likely site of Cleopatra’s palace to pieces of an astonishing lighthouse that was one of the Seven Wonders of the World

There’s no sign of the grand marbled metropolis founded by Alexander the Great on the busy streets of this congested Egyptian city of five million, where honking cars spouting exhaust whiz by shabby concrete buildings. But climb down a rickety ladder a few blocks from Alexandria’s harbor, and the legendary city suddenly swims into view. (more…)

It is a certainty in the United States that no one knows or cares to know the exact value of the ecclesiastic demesne. We can, however, guess. In 1875, President Ulysses S. Grant said that taxable church property amounted to $1 billion. One hundred and one years later, in a 1976 study that has never been replicated or updated, researchers Martin A. Larson and Rev. C. Stanley Lowell found that total ecclesiastical property by 1906 came to about $1.3 billion. According to Larson and Lowell, by 1936 it was $3.8 billion. By 1964, it had risen to a spectacular $79.5 billion. When Larson and Lowell tallied their figures for 1976, real church wealth amounted to at least $158 billion, with churches the owners of an estimated 10 percent of all U.S. property. The figure adjusted for inflation today comes to at least $560 billion, likely the greatest non-profit wealth expansion in history (with the real value likely much greater). The reason for the accumulation transcends the giving of the flock: It is due, rather, to a systemic political bias in the form of the generous tax exemption traditionally afforded religious property and income, an arrangement that in Western history is as old as the Sumerian kings and the pharaohs of Egypt. (more…)

An archaeological expert has claimed that two innocuous-looking stones at the side of a road in Berwick St James could hold clues to the secrets of Stonehenge.

Dennis Price, who is a renowned expert on the site and used to work with Wessex Archaeology, believes the two large stones standing at the side of a lane next to the B3083 could be parts of Stonehenge’s mysterious altar stone. (more…)

Apropos charting the ups and downs of certain dislogistic terms in the recent columns, I was reminded of a remark made by Richard Trench (1807-86) in a speech to the Philological Society of London that “the history of … the wrong ways into which a language has wandered… may be nearly as instructive as the right ones.” The Society, on Trench’s suggestion, decided to undertake the complication of A New English Dictionary that was eventually published as the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), justly called `the mother’ of all English dictionaries.

As an example of the twists and turns of etymology, particularly the pejorative mantle that certain words took on in a religious sense, the last column traced the life history of `ethnic’. Ethnic was born, as it were, as ethnos (through Greek ta ethne), meaning “a band of people living together, nation, people”, then “people of one’s own kind”, but began to mean a heathen, a barbarous or unenlightened person, and was applied to all people except Christians, Jews, and Muslims until reverting to its ancient, original meaning only over a century ago. (more…)

Greece - Excavation work at a site in a northern Athens suburb, where sections of an ancient Greek theater were discovered on Thursday, should prove whether the structure is the fabled ancient theater of Acharnae, archaeologists said yesterday.

Modern Menidi, where the remains of the 4th century BC theater were found by construction workers, is believed to have been built upon the ancient village of Acharnae, the largest of a string of settlements outside Athens, according to chief excavator Maria Platonos-Yiota. (more…)

Siem Reap , Cambodia — Built by a mighty ninth -century Khmer king, the soaring temple of Phnom Bakheng stands atop the highest peak of ancient Angkor. With a sweeping view that takes in Angkor Wat — the world’s largest religious structure — the monks stationed here were probably among the first to glimpse the approaching Siamese troops who snuffed out this city’s centuries-long domination of much of Southeast Asia.

So perhaps it is not surprising that more than 500 years later, Phnom Bakheng has become the ideal perch from which to watch another assault on Angkor — by marauding armies of tourists. (more…)

Cairo, Egypt - Archeologists have uncovered three wooden pharaonic sarcophagi, dating back to the 20th century B.C., the chief of Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities said on Saturday.

“The three sarcophagi were found in a very well preserved condition inside three burial shafts,'’ Zahi Hawass, the council chief, told The Associated Press. (more…)

They didn’t have metabolic diet boosters or form-fitting footwear, but the ancient athletes may have been genetically superior in endurance sports.

And who knows: if the research is correct, it may make man-on-man oil rubdowns and expressions like “Row, you Saracen dogs,” popular at the gym again. (more…)