News from the ancient world
Byzantium · AD 330 to 1453
New discoveries from the Byzantine Empire, AD 330 to 1453: Constantinople, churches and mosaics, shipwrecks, coins, seals and fortresses.
Byzantium · Late 7th to early 8th century AD · Polače, Mljet, Dubrovnik-Neretva County, Croatia
The 7th or 8th-century ship that sank near Mljet carried more than 600 grams of gold, jewelled belt sets and a signet ring showing a Heraclian emperor.
Byzantium · 4th century AD · Ain el-Sabil, Dakhla Oasis, New Valley Governorate, Egypt
The 4th-century AD mudbrick settlement at Ain el-Sabil had a street grid, a central church, a fortress and an earlier house that may have served as a church.
Byzantium · 6th century AD · Great Lavra Monastery, Mount Athos, Mount Athos, Greece
Codex H, a copy of St Paul's letters cut up for bindings at the Great Lavra Monastery, holds the earliest known chapter lists for Paul's letters.
Byzantium · Mid-6th century AD · Phanagoria, Krasnodar Krai, Russia
Coins dropped as residents fled a blaze of AD 545–554 include bronze staters minted two centuries earlier and local fakes struck from a single die.
Byzantium · Late 6th to mid-8th century AD · Hippos, Northern District, Israel
The southern hall at Hippos, above the Sea of Galilee, was sealed by the earthquake of AD 749 with a three-cavity marble block, a reliquary and a bronze candelabrum inside.
Byzantium · 5th century AD · Al-Qalaya, Hosh Issa, Beheira, Egypt
The 13-room building at Al-Qalaya in Beheira has a prayer room, a hall for visitors, wall paintings of monks and a Coptic epitaph.
Byzantium · 10th century AD · Blois, Centre-Val de Loire, France
The 10th-century leaf, identified in Blois by CNRS researcher Victor Gysembergh, carries part of On the Sphere and the Cylinder and is half hidden under a painting added around 1942.
Byzantium · c. AD 712/713 · St Catherine's Monastery, Mount Sinai, South Sinai, Egypt
Written around AD 712/713 in Syriac and later translated into Arabic, the 'Maronite Chronicle of 713' survives in one damaged 13th-century copy at St Catherine's Monastery.
Byzantium · 7th–15th century AD · Deep Mani, Peloponnese, Greece
Over half of men in the remote Peloponnese region descend from one man who lived around the 7th century AD, which researchers read as a sign of a severe population collapse.
Byzantium · AD 541–750 · Jerash, Jerash Governorate, Jordan
Bodies were laid in the disused arena within days, and the University of South Florida team says the dead were part of a mobile population within the city.
Byzantium · 5th–6th century AD · Al-Qarya bi-al-Duweir, Tama, Sohag Governorate, Egypt
Excavators in Upper Egypt found a fifth- or sixth-century AD monastic complex with a church, vaulted rooms thought to be monks' cells and Coptic inscriptions.