Open Antiquities

Detail of the mosaic: the boar’s head looking down with its mouth open just enough to see the red tongue.

The mosaic boar against a white background propped up on its front legs.

View through the house from the entrance hallway across the atrium and onto the terrace which had a majestic view of the Lattari mountain range.

What a privilege to see the wild boar mosaic up close. The blood spot in the eye, the redness in the mouth and the blueish tesserae making up the diffused shadows.
Quite the welcome in the entrance hall of the recently conserved House of the Boar, #Pompeii

15.07.2025 05:48 — 👍 343    🔁 81    💬 11    📌 3

> XML is obviously a format created for machines to read, not for people.

This part is absolutely not true. Xml was designed from the outset to be both human and machine readable.

23.04.2025 15:54 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0

Post on twitter falsely identifying a modern sculpture as ancient, and from Hadrian's villa

Post on Facebook falsely identifying a modern sculpture as ancient, and from Hadrian's villa

Post on Instagram falsely identifying a modern sculpture as ancient, and from Hadrian's villa

Fun facts about antiquity make easy & popular content on social media, even when they're not true. This "Medusa from Hadrian's villa at Tivoli"? Hadrian definitely never saw it, because it isn't ancient. Sadly, there is almost no info online about this sculpture that isn't repeated clickbait lies

29.01.2025 14:22 — 👍 4    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0

Lots of applications won't accept dates going back this far. Excel's date fields only work with dates from 1900 onwards. MySQL's minimum is 1000CE. Java though will let you work with dates going back (or forward) a billion years though, using a proleptic Gregorian calendar.

01.01.2025 11:16 — 👍 0    🔁 1    💬 0    📌 0

Well, looks like Apple uses Julian Day Numbers to store their datetimes. A value of zero in the JDN epoch system is 12pm on 1 January 4713BCE, using a proleptic Julian calendar. Pretty useful if you want to record Ea-nāṣir's birthday in your calendar.

01.01.2025 11:16 — 👍 1    🔁 1    💬 1    📌 0

This is the exact opposite of what lecturers and universities need

15.12.2024 04:18 — 👍 7    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0

They shouldn't have hired the lazy budget contractor

18.11.2024 12:38 — 👍 2    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0

The pyramid of C. Cestius, incorporated as part of Rome's Aurelian Walls

The Arch of Severus at Ammaedara (modern Haïdra in Tunisia), partially encased in blocks

Throughout Late Antiquity Roman cities became increasingly vulnerable to attack. As a result many cities built walls and defences, and often hastily reused existing structures in their new defensive works, such as C. Cestius' pyramid tomb in Rome, or (ironically) Severus' victory arch at Ammaedara.

18.11.2024 12:15 — 👍 7    🔁 1    💬 1    📌 0

oh no, you'll be able to unlock their phone 😱

16.11.2024 06:32 — 👍 5    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0

Like many of his enemies, Justinian couldn't defeat the whale. Instead, Porphyrios brought its own reign of terror to an end. The whale beached itself, and a mob of locals struck the killing blows.

16.11.2024 01:33 — 👍 3    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0

Justinian daydreaming about the dreaded whale

During his long reign, Justinian fought many enemies: insurgent mobs, Vandals, Goths, Lombards, Franks, Persians, Slavs, his own paranoia, pandemic plague, and so on. Perhaps his most unusual enemy was a whale, named Porphyrios, who terrorised the waters around Constantinople for decades.

16.11.2024 01:33 — 👍 18    🔁 1    💬 1    📌 1

A section of damaged mosaic in the Basilica of San Lorenzo, showing the ancient artists' original underdrawings

The Basilica of San Lorenzo in Milan was built in Late Antiquity, and like many churches of the era it was richly decorated with mosaics. San Lorenzo's mosaics stand out for an unusual reason though - damage and neglect have exposed the ancient artists' original underdrawings

15.08.2024 11:40 — 👍 1    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0

A mosaic from the Basilica of Sant'Apollinare Nuovo in Ravenna, showing disembodied hands

A closeup of a mosaic from the Basilica of Sant'Apollinare Nuovo in Ravenna, showing a disembodied hand

Theodoric, Gothic king of Italy, built Sant'Apollinare Nuovo in Ravenna & decorated it with mosaics, incl. one showing the king and court in front of the palace. After Emperor Justinian's conquest of Italy, the Gothic king & court were erased from the mosaics, all except for a few disembodied hands

27.07.2024 06:21 — 👍 1    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0

In the coming months Open Antiquities - a new library and research resource for the ancient and medieval Mediterranean - will launch. Updates and further information to follow.

26.07.2024 15:12 — 👍 10    🔁 1    💬 0    📌 0