Images

A perfume-pot made from amber and depicting cupids and a panther. Roman, Aquileia, 100-120 CE. (British Museum, London)

An amber necklace from Archaic Greece, 600-480 BCE. Potidaea, ancient Macedon. (British Museum, London)

A Roman dice made from amber. 1st-2nd century CE. From Aquileia, central Italy. (British Museum, London)

A figurine of a woman holding a child. Amber, 5th century BCE, Etruscan. Height: 6.3 cm. (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York)

The entrance ramp to the tomb excavated near Xigaoxue in Henan province which Chinese authorities claim as the tomb of the military dictator Cao Cao (c. 155-220 CE).

Tombstone of a sailor in the Roman fleet at Misenum. 2nd century CE. It records that he died aged 30 and was originally from the Roman province of Asia, roughly today's western Turkey. (Museo dei Campi Flegrei, Naples, Italy, on display at...

Relief from a monument near the Roman naval base at Misenum. At the stern of the ship, the pausarius is keeping the rowers in time with a drum. The larger man facing the rowers is possibly the trierarch, the ship's captain. End of 1st century...

This is a pottery pilgrim flask. Phoenician bi-chrome ware and wheel-made. There is a pair of pieced lugs on either aspect of the sides; these are handles or suspension holes. Phoenician, 850-800 BCE. From Grave 8/33 at Tharros, Sardinia...

This white marble anthropoid (human-shaped) coffin shows a male head wearing a Egyptian style headdress. Phoenician art was influenced by many different traditions. Coffins of this Gaeco-Egyptian style have been found in large numbers at...

This lintel was part of a rock-cut tomb. The text, inscribed in Hebrew, mentions that this tomb belongs to the "royal steward" and that there is no gold or silver inside it, just his bones and those of his maid-servants. Although the lintel...