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Byzantine Floor Mosaic from Eastern Mediterranean
This exceptional mosaic likely comes from the floor of a house or public building. It reflects the Late Romand and Early Byzantine taste for intricate and colorful designs. It dates from c. 325-350 CE and is made of limestone tesserae. The...
Article
Caesarea Maritima's Role in the Roman Empire
Caesarea Maritima, the city Herod the Great (r. 37-4 BCE) built for Rome on the southeastern coast of the Mediterranean served as the Roman Empire's powerbase of operations both commercially and militarily. With Rome's ultimate goal of adding...
Video
Rock Art of the Mediterranean Basin on the Iberian ... (UNESCO/NHK)
The late prehistoric rock-art sites of the Mediterranean seaboard of the Iberian peninsula form an exceptionally large group. Here the way of life during a critical phase of human development is vividly and graphically depicted in paintings...
Video
History of the Phoenicians: The Maritime Superpowers of the Mediterranean
The Phoenicians were the maritime superpowers of the Mediterranean. Their culture flourished and was at its most powerful between 1500 and 332 BCE when Alexander the Great entered the region and decimated the cities and their populations...
Definition
Greek Colonization
From around 800 BCE, ancient Greek city-states, most of which were maritime powers, began to look beyond Greece for land and resources. As a consequence, they founded colonies across the Mediterranean. Trade was usually the first step in...
Article
Roman Shipbuilding & Navigation
Unlike today, where shipbuilding is based on science and where ships are built using computers and sophisticated tools, shipbuilding in ancient Rome was more of an art relying on rules of thumb, inherited techniques and personal experience...
Definition
Side
Side (pronounced see-day) was a city on the southern coast of Cilicia (modern-day Turkey) first settled in the 7th century BCE by immigrants from Cyme, an Aeolian municipality to the north near the kingdom of Lydia. Its name means 'pomegranate'...
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On the Ocean: The Famous Voyage of Pytheas
Sometime around 330 BCE, Pytheas, a little-known Greek merchant, embarked on an astonishing voyage. It was a voyage that would take him far beyond the known boundaries of the Mediterranean, into lands thought to exist only in myth and legend...
Article
Herod's Harbor
Herod's Harbor was a giant port built between 22 and 15 BCE by Herod the Great (r. 37-4 BCE), Rome's client king. Situated on the lower eastern Mediterranean coast north of Alexandria and south of Tyre, with Rome's largess and building skills...
Article
The Dolmens of Sicily
It is a well-known fact that Sicily, the largest island in the Mediterranean sea, went through a quite complex prehistoric period. So much so that it is difficult to navigate through the muddle of people that have followed each other over...