Videos

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

It's a classic underdog tale: David, a young shepherd armed only with a sling, beats Goliath, the mighty warrior. The story has transcended its biblical origins to become a common shorthand for...