The Sphinx

The sphinx was said to have the body of a lion, the head of a woman, and the wings of an eagle. The sphinx is perhaps known best for her role in the legend of Oedipus. Oedipus was traveling when he is confronted by the creature. The sphinx blocks Oedipus’ path and confronts him with a riddle.

Although the exact riddle is not mentioned in legend, the popular version goes ... "What is that which in the morning goeth upon four feet; upon two feet in the afternoon; and in the evening upon three?” Oedipus correctly answers: Man - who crawls on all fours as a child, then on two feet as an adult, and finally (with the help of a cane) on three feet during the sunset of life. Having been bested at her game, the Sphinx throws herself from a high cliff.

The Great Sphinx of Giza is a limestone statue of a reclining sphinx. Facing directly from West to East, it stands on the Giza Plateau on the west bank of the Nile in Giza, Egypt. The face of the Sphinx is generally believed to represent the Pharaoh Khafre. It is the oldest known monumental sculpture in Egypt and is commonly believed to have been built by ancient Egyptians of the Old Kingdom during the reign of the Pharaoh Khafre (c. 2558–2532 BC)

Trove of Roman coins unearthed in Spain

Workers laying pipes in a southern Spanish park in 2016 unearthed a 600 kilogram (1,300 pounds) trove of Roman coins. The construction workers came across 19 amphoras containing thousands of unused bronze and silver-coated coins dating from the end of the fourth century. The coins are believed to have been recently minted at the time and had probably been stored to pay soldiers or civil servants. The clay pots, 10 of which were said to be intact, were found just over a metre underground. The coins bear images of emperors Constantine and Maximian and with a variety of pictorial images on the reverse. The Romans began to conquer Spain in 218 B.C. and ruled until the fifth century.

Hispania was the Roman name for the Iberian Peninsula. Under the Republic, Hispania was divided into two provinces: Hispania Citerior and Hispania Ulterior. Latin was the official language of Hispania during the Rome's more than 600 years of rule, and by the empire's end in Hispania around 460 AD, all the original Iberian languages, except the ancestor of modern Basque, were extinct. Even after the fall of Rome Latin was spoken by nearly all of the population.

The Jersey Hoard (Grouville Hoard)

The last coins from an ancient Celtic hoard discovered in a field in Jersey have been successfully removed from the dirt they were buried in. Dating from around 30-50 BC, the collection of nearly 70,000 coins was six times larger than any other similar Celtic artifacts and also included jewellery, beads and fabric.

The Jersey Hoard (Grouville Hoard) is a hoard of an estimated 70,000 late Iron Age and Roman coins discovered in June 2012. It was discovered in a field in the parish of Grouville on the east side of Jersey in the Channel Islands. The hoard is thought to have belonged to a Curiosolitae tribe fleeing Julius Caesar's armies around 50 to 60 BC.

Jersey Heritage's conservation team have been excavating an area known to contain gold jewelery. One end of a solid gold torc was uncovered. The find follows the discovery of two other solid gold torcs - one gold-plated and one of an unknown alloy - along with a silver brooch and a crushed sheet gold tube.

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At least 50,000 coins dating back to the time of Julius Caesar were found in a field in Jersey. The Roman and Celtic coins, which date from the 1st Century BC, were found by two metal detector enthusiasts. Archaeologists said the hoard weighed about three quarters of a tonne.

It is the first hoard of coins found in the island for more than 60 years. Several hoards of Celtic coins have been found in Jersey before but the largest was in 1935 at La Marquanderie when more than 11,000 were discovered.

This is the world's biggest Celtic coin hoard ever, and was a significant part of a tribe's wealth. It is also one of the world's biggest coin hoards and certainly the biggest coin hoard found in Britain. The value of the hoard was estimated at up to £10m when it was first removed from the ground.

How Eratosthenes calculated the Earth's circumference

In the mid-20th century, satellites determined the exact circumference of the Earth, 40,030 km. But over 2,000 years earlier in ancient Greece, a man arrived at nearly that exact same figure by putting a stick in the ground. That man was Eratosthenes. A Greek mathematician and the head of the library at Alexandria. The idea of a spherical Earth was floated around by Pythagoras around 500 BC and validated by Aristotle a couple centuries later.

The Tyrant Collection

When Edward VIII became King of England, the Royal Mint prepared five proof sets of the coins bearing his portrait, and these were scheduled to be issued in January of 1937. But on December 11, 1936, Edward VIII abdicated. By this act, Edward VIII became the only king of England for whom no coins were issued as money within the United Kingdom.The Prince of Wales, (1894 - 1972)

This Ptolemy IV gold octodrachm (circa 202-200 BC) is one of the collection's highlights

The Tyrant collector has been assembling what is the world’s most valuable coin collection in private hands, worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Excessively rare with only 8 recorded specimens, the Marcus Junius Brutus, d. 42 BC. Gold Aureus (8.07 g), was struck at a traveling mint in Macedonia or Western Asia Minor, in summer/autumn 42 BC. A choice example made $ 525,000 in 2010.

Gold Roman aureus issued by Marcus Junius Brutus

St Nicholas burial site

The church in the small coastal town of Demre is one of Christianity's most legendary sites. St Nicholas' body is believed to have laid in a tomb inside the church before being stolen by Italian thieves. But using radar technology, Turkish archaeologists preparing for restoration work detected another tomb 5ft beneath the marble slabs which make the church's floor. One theory is that the tomb shifted underground during an earthquake and has remained undiscovered.

A well-worn church behind a scruffy shopping square in a small Turkish town has been described as the original Santa's grotto.

St Nicholas is believed to have been born 270 years after Jesus and lived in Demre for most of his life. Inspired by the message of Jesus, he sold all his possessions and gave out the cash to the poor. His legend for gift-giving gave rise was the inspiration behind Santa Claus.

Christmas: The meaning behind the word

Brain being pulled out of the nose with a hook.

When you wish someone a Merry Christmas, you are really wishing them a merry burial, a historian claims. The word Christmas has its origins in ancient Egypt, deriving from the word ‘krst’ meaning ‘at rest’ in the sense of a burial or dead, according to Malcolm Hutton. The word ‘krst’ appears on most coffins which contain Egyptian bodies. Egyptians often referred to mummified bodies as ‘The Anointed’ because the body had been anointed with embalming fluid and natron - a salt mixture blended with oil and used for cleaning the body. The connection between Christ and anointed was made explicit in both Hebrew and Greek. In Hebrew, anointed translates as ‘Masiah’ (or ‘Messiah’) while in Greek it means ‘Christós’.

Monstrance, a vessel in which the consecrated Host is exposed.

Traditionally, "Christmas" is thought to be a shortened form of "Christ's mass". Some Roman Catholic monstrances - used in the Benediction blessing - still have the image of Ra with a bull’s head below it. “It was the Church that did the hijacking, taking from the Ancient Egyptians.”

The Minotaur

The monstrous minotaur was ferocious.

In Greek mythology, the Minotaur is a creature portrayed with the head of a bull and the body of a man. The Minotaur dwelt at the center of the Labyrinth, which was an elaborate maze designed by Daedalus and his son Icarus, on the command of King Minos of Crete. The Minotaur was eventually killed by the Athenian hero Theseus. Being the unnatural offspring of a woman and a beast the minotaur had no natural source of nourishment so devoured humans for sustenance.

Theseus volunteered to slay the monster. He entered the labyrinth with a ball of thread and after killing the minotaur with the sword of Aegeus retraced his path.

Mummies of Museo Leymebamba

The Leymebamba Museum in Peru was inaugurated in 2000, specifically to house 200 mummies and their burial offerings. The mummies were recovered during a 1997 excavation on the banks of Laguna de los Cóndores, a lake about 50 miles south of Chachapoyas. The mummies are from the Chachapoyas culture from about 800 AD. Nestled into the limestone cliffs around the lake were a series of chullpas, or tombs. The stone burial structures had been untouched for 500 years, until local farmers started to rummage through the funerary site.

The Chachapoya were skilled embalmers. They treated the skin and vacated bodily cavities. Then they left much of the remaining mummification process to the cold, dry, sheltered lakeside ledges.

It’s an unnerving sight for some. A few of the mummies stare back with pained expressions, an occasional face so well-preserved that it looks like it would blink. A few bundled babies also sit on the shelves, their tiny bodies carefully wrapped in cloth. Now in the controlled climate of the museum the mummies found a new resting place. Here they sit huddled together like a lost tribe, eternally silent.