Examine a 3D model of the Rosetta Stone

The Rosetta Stone helped scholars decipher Egyptian hieroglyphics

With the same verses written in three languages, the stone—discovered during Napoleon's campaign in Egypt—let scholars decipher hieroglyphics for the first time, unlocking the secrets of ancient Egypt. Learn why the task, originally expected to take two weeks, ended up taking 20 years with this fascinating essay.

The Rosetta Stone praised the Pharoah Ptolemy V in the 196 BCE

Since its discovery in 1799, 27 other copies have been found throughout Egypt, the most recent in 2011. Dr. Ilona Regulski, curator of ancient writing at the British Museum, discusses the crucial artifact and its specific content.

The Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum: a virtual tour

The Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum houses the largest collection of Egyptian artifacts on exhibit in western North America. Located in San Jose, California, the museum is home to over 4,000 artifacts, including four mummified individuals. The institute was founded by the centuries-old mystical Rosicrucian brotherhood, a group which claims special awareness of ancient wisdom. Take a 3D tour, complete with descriptions of some its most famous pieces.

Flip through centuries-old artifacts in this 3D library

Archaeology is hands-on work, giving researchers the ability to analyze artifacts from as many sides as possible to find marks left by those that came before us. While looking at pictures of artifacts gives you some insight, you're limited to...

Explore a database of ancient graffiti

Take a look at thousands of pieces of graffiti from the walls of Herculaneum and Pompeii, including name tags, crude jokes, and crude drawings. The database, maintained by classical scholars, allows you to explore maps of the cities and images of the original inscriptions.

Go inside Queen Meresankh III's tomb

Examine art, explore the structure, and let yourself be transported back 3,000 years to when the granddaughter of the Pharaoh Khufu was buried. The site, first discovered in 1927, is known as a unique underground chapel with preserved depictions of the daily life of ancient Egyptian royals, and features one of the earliest known canopic jars, vessels used to store the organs of mummified individuals.

See the major Egyptian monuments in high definition

The massive, hard-to-imagine mammoth structures can be viewed here in 4K, dramatic detail with this stunning video. Visit the Great Pyramids of Giza, the temples at Karnak and Luxor, the Valley of the Kings, and more millennia-old monuments.

Explore the archaeological treasures of Pompeii, the city buried under volcanic ash when Mount Vesuvius erupted in 79 CE.

Archaeologists decode the first known sentence in what may be the oldest written alphabet

This five-minute video details the accidental discovery and subsequent decoding of the first known sentence in what's believed to be the oldest written alphabet. The Canaanite sentence was found on a Bronze Age hair comb unearthed in Tel Lachish, a city of the ancient Biblical Kingdom of Judah, during a dig focused on excavating the kingdom's first Iron Age city. The Canaanite language developed sometime between 3,000 and 1,000 BCE.

Was the stone that sealed Jesus's tomb round or square?

Archaeologist Amos Kloner's survey of more than 900 Second Temple-era burial caves found only four with round, disk-shaped stones—all belonging to the very wealthy. The other 98-plus percent used square, cork-shaped stones, suggesting the popular image of a wheel rolled away from Jesus's tomb is probably a later artistic invention. The Greek verb translated as "rolled" can also mean "moved."

A particle accelerator allowed researchers to noninvasively examine a mummy

The mummy hailed from the Faiyum oasis, where Egyptian and Roman cultures intersected, and was analyzed using the Advanced Photon Source at Argonne National Laboratory. The device used high-energy X-rays to probe the material composition of numerous objects embedded deep inside the mummy without damaging its remains.

Four astronomical discoveries from ancient Greece

Modern astronomy relies on making discoveries without being present on the planets, stars, galaxies, and other objects studied. Imagine the difficulty the ancient Greeks had studying them without computers and telescopes. Yet somehow they calculated precise measurements of planetary distances, sizes, and more. Read this page to learn more about early triumphs in astronomical science.

An Egyptologist answers questions from the internet

Professor of Egyptology and Archaeology Laurel Bestock answers your questions about ancient Egypt from X. What did ancient Egyptians sound like? Why is King Tut so enduringly popular? What ancient Egyptian medicine and tools do we still use in modern times?

What Stonehenge sounded like

Researchers built the first scale model of the world's best-known prehistoric stone circle, Stonehenge, to study its acoustic properties. Built approximately 5,000 years ago, the landmark in southern England has puzzled historians for centuries, but...

Some of the oldest photographs in the world

Scholar and artist Joseph-Philibert Girault de Prangey ventured around the Mediterranean with some of the earliest photographic equipment in tow. He captured hundreds of images during his tour of Rome, Venice, Cairo, and more, in what would become...

The history of the Met

From a single sarcophagus to a collection of more than a million artifacts that span nearly the entirety of human civilization, the Met and its importance have grown significantly over the last 150 years. This history of the museum hits all the highlights, including important acquisitions, new wings and galleries, and the importance of the buildings that hold and display all of the incredible artwork.

Archaeologists race to record ancient Nubia

Long ignored by white archaeologists as a mere footnote, modern scientists are now racing to document what’s left of the African civilization. Evidence of ancient Nubia is at risk of vanishing under environmental, societal, and political pressures. This Undark Magazine article walks you through archaeologists' fight to record ancient Nubia.

The history and significance of rosemary

Rosemary is more than just an herb—it’s a powerful symbol intertwined with ancient Egypt, Christianity’s origins, Shakespeare, the culinary arts, and more. Native to the Mediterranean area, this plant has accompanied humanity for centuries, providing us with pleasant aroma, adornment, and even medicine. Explore this article for further insight into the significance of our long-standing relationship with rosemary.

The land where Greece's ancient language survives

In a remote corner of Turkey, locals speak Romeyka, a language with no written form and an "impressive" similarity to ancient Greek. This article details how the language may have survived and highlights the roughly 5,000 Romeyka speakers in the area. Research shows that Romeyka bears a startling resemblance to the Koine Greek spoken at the height of ancient Greek influence between fourth century BCE and fourth century CE.

Explore a 3D model of the experimental setup Rosalind Franklin used to take Photo 51

To capture the X-ray diffraction image of DNA from the thymus of a calf, Franklin built a humidity-controlling camera to isolate the B form of DNA. The exposure lasted 60 hours and produced a cross pattern, indicating a helical structure.

The story of Kryptos, the long unsolved cryptographic sculpture outside the CIA's headquarters

Made by American artist Jim Sanborn, the sculpture features four copper plates engraved with messages written with the 26 letters of the Latin alphabet and question marks. The last of these plates was solved in 2025, but the piece remains of interest to cryptoanalysts.

Scientists discover what looks like an underwater road

Crew aboard the Exploration Vessel Nautilus discvered a “yellow brick road” that looks it leads to Atlantis. Climage change may affect future ocean studies.

The archaeological sites uncovered through London's Crossrail Project

The Crossrail Project is an underground train system in London, which saw 26 miles of new tunnels created over more than a decade. The project provided unique access to long-buried layers of London's history, and a massive parallel archaeological excavation took place.

The European Space Agency placed a lander on the surface of a comet in 2014

Launched in 2004, the Rosetta spacecraft performed three flybys of Earth and one of Mars as gravitational slingshots to gain the necessary velocity to successfully place the Philae lander module on comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. Philae achieved a soft landing only after bouncing twice from failed deployments of its anchoring harpoons.

Machine learning produces photorealistic portraits of Roman emperors.

Toronto-based designer Daniel Voshart used photo editing and machine learning to catch a glimpse of Ancient Rome’s emperors. Employing contemporary descriptions, statues, and paintings, Voshart created lifelike portraits of 54 emperors including Augustus Caesar and Hadrian as well as the more infamous Nero and Caligula, though he stresses they’re only artistic interpretations.

Sculpting the unrivalled stone, marble

Marble is considered the chief material for sculpture due to its intrinsic beauty, stemming from its white translucence which makes the light appear to come from the stone. In this video, sculptor Simon Smith recreates Donatello's 15th-century Prato Pulpit panel which still hangs on the outside of a church. Watch as he explains the painstaking process and reveals the beautiful final output.

The Mona Lisa's celebrity status and repeated restorations have obscured what made the painting so revolutionary for its time

Stanford built a Google Maps for the Roman Empire, revealing how much it cost to travel in the ancient world

Explore the known asteroids, comets, and spacecraft involved in asteroid studies within our solar system with 'Eyes on Asteroids,' a 3D visualization from NASA.

Objects can be 3D printed with light by projecting 2D computerized tomography (CT) scans onto rotating cylinders of resin, which solidify upon exposure.

In 1963, a basement renovation in Turkey revealed a passageway to a hidden, multilevel underground city that once housed as many as 20,000 people

Apollo astronauts left items in the moon's 'toss zone,' including golf balls, family photos, and bags of human waste, to make room for lunar rocks.

See a 3D reconstruction of Tenochtitlan, the Aztec capital that was home to an estimated population of 200,000 to 400,000.

Explore fun facts from the USPS, including unique post office buildings, a stamp that traveled past Pluto, and more.

Clever Hans was a 1900s horse that was believed to be able to solve math equations, tell time, and read and comprehend German, until a psychology student discovered how he got his answers.

See photos of Meteora, a mountainous site in central Greece, home to 14th-century monasteries perched atop soaring outcroppings.

Scientists can determine Earth's past climate conditions by analyzing air trapped in microscopic bubbles within ice cores—columns of compressed snow layers that build up over hundreds of thousands of years.

Visualize how CRISPR-Cas9—a type of immune system used by single-celled organisms to attack invasive viruses—targets and makes precise changes to a gene's DNA.

Explore the history, structure, and species of Australia's Great Barrier Reef with this interactive journey narrated by Sir David Attenborough.

The American cockroach is actually from Africa, an apparent hitchhiker aboard ships carrying enslaved people, with evidence suggesting the bug may have arrived in the New World as early as the 1600s.

Browse a detailed visual analysis of over 200,000 similes—comparisons that often use 'like' or 'as'—from popular fiction to see how frequently writers the same idiomatic expressions.

Search a massive database of over 4 decades of clues from the TV quiz show 'Jeopardy!'

In 2019, a laptop loaded with six of the worst malware in history and described as 'an exhibit of historical weaponry' sold for $1.3M.

The first horror movie is believed to be George Méliès' 1986 short 'The Haunted Castle,' which pioneered the use of special effects

Meet the 56 signers of the Declaration of Independence—most of whom didn't put pen to paper until August 2, 1776—and see their original signatures.

Some coin denominations have ridges etched on their sides, partly to prevent counterfeiting, in a practice called 'reeding.'

Neutron stars, the remains of some massive stars after they explode in a supernova, are the densest directly observable objects in the universe.

See how fireworks are made and learn how metals like magnesium and copper are responsible for different colors.

Learn how to read a prospectus, the juicy document that any company must file with the SEC before going public.

Researchers believe the brain consolidates memories, processes emotions, and plans for the future during dream states