Videos

This gate was built at the northern side of the city of Babylon by the king Nebuchadnezzar II in 575 BCE. It was the eighth gate into the city of Babylon, Mesopotamia (modern Babil Governorate, Iraq). The gate was built with glazed bricks...

Like the proverbial iceberg, there is much more to a museum and its collection than you can see at any one time. Keeper of Anthropology, Wayne Modest, takes us behind the scenes to show us some of his favourite pieces. This collection...

The tower lies on a hill near Barkal, a modern village south-west of Lake Darband-i-Khan, Sulaimaniya Governorate, Iraq. It was set up as a monument commemorating the victory of the Sassanian king Narseh over his nephew Warham III. The inscriptions...

The Alexander Sarcophagus, c. 312 B.C.E., Pentelic marble and polychromy, found in Sidon, 195 x 318 x 167 cm (İstanbul Archaeological Museums) Speakers: Dr. Elizabeth Macaulay-Lewis and Dr. Steven Zucker

Lamassu (winged human-headed bulls possibly lamassu or shedu) from the citadel of Sargon II, Dur Sharrukin (now Khorsabad, Iraq), Neo-Assyrian, c. 720-705 B.C.E., gypseous alabaster, 4.20 x 4.36 x 0.97 m, excavated by P.-E. Botta 1843-44...

http://www.ted.com How do you read a two-thousand-year-old manuscript that has been erased, cut up, written on and painted over? With a powerful particle accelerator, of course! Ancient books curator William Noel tells the fascinating story...

http://www.ted.com A clay cylinder covered in Akkadian cuneiform script, damaged and broken, the Cyrus Cylinder is a powerful symbol of religious tolerance and multi-culturalism. In this enthralling talk Neil MacGregor, Director of the British...

http://www.ted.com Ancient monuments give us clues to astonishing past civilizations — but they're under threat from pollution, war, neglect. Ben Kacyra, who invented a groundbreaking 3D scanning system, is using his invention to scan and...

http://www.ted.com Rajesh Rao is fascinated by "the mother of all crossword puzzles": How to decipher the 4000 year old Indus script. At TED 2011 he tells how he is enlisting modern computational techniques to read the Indus language, the...

http://www.ted.com With wisdom and wit, Anupam Mishra talks about the amazing feats of engineering built centuries ago by the people of India's Golden Desert to harvest water. These structures are still used today — and are often superior...