In July of 1799, Napoleon’s forces had been ordered to restore an old fort on the Mediterranean coast in the port city of el-Rashid (which means Rosetta in English).
While digging the foundations of an addition to the fort, the soldiers found an old piece of stone with strange messages carved into it. Pierre-Francois Bouchard, the officer in charge, realized the importance of the stone. When the British won that war in 1802, it was shipped to England and has been in the British Museum ever since.
The Rosetta Stone enabled 19th century scholars to break the code of Egyptian hieroglyphs. Before this discovery, no one knew how to read the ancient Egyptian language.
The same message, written in Greek, Demotic, and Egyptian, was a decree for the Egyptian priests to support King Ptolemy V who reigned in Egypt from 204-181 BC.
The discovery of the Terracotta Army in 1974 was a complete surprise. They had waited quietly underground for more than 2200 years!
From Smarthistory.org we learn:
The Terracotta Warriors were discovered accidentally by farmers who, while digging for a well, unearthed several figures. Archaeological investigation soon revealed four large underground chambers, or pits, surrounding the tomb of China’s first emperor, Qin Shi Huang, containing warriors made of terracotta. Referred to as the eighth Wonder of the World, the original Terracotta Warriors date back to 209 B.C. It is believed as many as 8,000 warriors exist, nestled in the grave among chariots, animals, entertainers and other clay representations of afterlife needs.
A massive workforce of convicts managed to do the incredible task of excavating the pits. Pit 1 alone necessitated the removal an estimated 70,000 cubic meters of earth, or 242,000 tons.
From LivingLondonHistory.com:
London, at its heart, is a Roman city, founded just after the Roman invasion in 43AD. Many Roman remnants survive today including sections of the wall, a temple and bathhouses.
It was assumed that Londinium, as the Roman city was known, must have had an amphitheatre, but they had no idea where it was.
Then, in the 1990s, the City of London started rebuilding the Guildhall Art Gallery after the Blitz destroyed the previous gallery. During a standard excavation they made one of the most extraordinary archaeological discoveries in London’s history: a series of Roman stone remains, laid out in a giant oval – an amphitheater!
Prior to 1990, a Turkish farmer named Safak Yildiz found a stone figure on a rounded hilltop while plowing the soil. Thinking that it looked important, he took it to Samliurfa, a museum.
Gobekli Tepe was first examined—and dismissed—by anthropologists as part of a sweeping survey of the region. They visited the hill, saw some broken slabs of limestone and assumed the mound was nothing more than an abandoned medieval cemetery.
After reading reports on the area named Potbelly Hill, or Gobekli Tepe, Klaus Schmidt decided to investigate. At first sight, he knew this was a man-made mound from the Stone Age.
Schmidt mapped the entire summit using ground-penetrating radar and geomagnetic surveys, charting where at least 16 other megalith rings remain buried across 22 acres.
Older than Stonehenge, Gobekli Tepe turned out to be an ancient temple, or pagan ritual site, complete with great pillars arranged in circles buried underground for centuries.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/
Imagine! You’re renovating your basement, demolishing a wall. When the dust clears, you’re looking into a dark abyss. Grabbing a flashlight, you poke your head in and discover… another world!
Further digging reveals a network of tunnels. Tunnels that lead to cave-like rooms stretching on for hundreds of miles! Archaeologists even think that another 200 or so smaller, separate underground settlements are connected to these tunnels, creating a massive network. This shocked home-owner had discovered one of 600 secret doorways hidden in private homes to the underground city of Derinkuyu!
Decades ago, the inhabitants enjoyed chapels, schools, several communal living areas and kitchens, as well as stables for horses! At least 50 ventilation shafts provided fresh air.
Derinkuyu encompasses 18 stories, like an inverted apartment building, and could house 20,000 people simultaneously, not to mention great numbers of livestock, horses, and supplies.
As the largest excavated underground city in the world. Derinkuyu was in near-constant use for thousands of years, changing hands from the Hittites to the Phrygians to the Persians to the Byzantine Christians. It was finally abandoned in the 1920s by the Cappadocian Greeks.
England’s King Richard lll was a cruel, heartless tyrant. His own countrymen rose up against him because he had the rightful heirs to the throne, his own two nephews, imprisoned and murdered.
After his death, Richard lll was buried at a church in Leicester. Later, Henry the Vlll had his remains exhumed and thrown into the River Soar.
Strangely, in 2004, a woman named Philippa Langley one day visited Richard lll’s former gravesite. When she stepped onto the church’s parking area she felt an eerie sensation, as though she was walking on a grave.
Langley convinced archaeologists to investigate the lot and compare any DNA found to that of a descendant.
Astonishingly, Langley was right. One of the skeletons recovered had a curved spine consistent with Richard III’s known scoliosis and showed evidence of battle wounds. In 2013, the team announced they’d identified the skeleton as that of Richard III.
In 1968, workers digging an air raid shelter near Changsha, China, unearthed the tombs of Xin Zhui, her husband, and son. Archaeologists began a large excavation of the site beginning in 1972. Xin Zhui (217 BC–168 BC), aka the Marquise of Dai, was a Chinese noblewoman. She was the wife of Li Cang, the Marquis of Dai, during the Western Han dynasty of ancient China.
She was buried with 1,400 artifacts including an extensive wardrobe, make-up, carved wooden servants, and more. Her body and belongings are currently under the care of the Hunan Museum.
Although she was buried in 169 BC, she is notable as being one of the most well-preserved mummies ever found. Her tissues were moist and flexible which allowed doctors to perform an autopsy!
She was obese and very sick with many illnesses from an overindulgent lifestyle. She died about the age of 50, in much pain as you can see in the face of her mummy.
