Alison Fisk

Superb Owl! Superb Owl!

My photo shows a roughly square-shaped piece of limestone with a relief carving depicting a front facing owl on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. This relief represents the ancient Egyptian owl hieroglyph ‘m’. Limestone plaque dimensions H. 10.3 x W. 11.1 x D. 2.5 cm

Happy #SuperbOwlSunday!

Here’s a lovely limestone plaque carved with the face of an owl!🦉😍

From Egypt, Late Period–Ptolemaic Period, 400–30 BC.

Met Museum www.metmuseum.org/art/collecti...

📷 by me

#Archaeology

A beautifully carved owl from ancient Egypt. It is the hieroglyph for the letter "M". It is unpainted limestone.

Happy #SuperbOwl🦉 Sunday! This is one of my favorite examples from ancient Egypt, the letter "M". Share your favorite Superb Owls.

A Greek vessel with an armed owl, wearing helmet, shield, and a lance.

For #SuperbOwlSunday a gorgeous armed #owl, depicted on a Greek vessel, dating 5th century BC.

📷Louvre, Paris

A haloed Christ holds a book.

Rothbury Cross c. 800 CE
Northumberland

Part of the shaft section of the Anglo Saxon cross. On one face a haloed Christ holds a book.

Now Great North Museum: Hancock, Newcastle

#SundayStonework
#SaxonSunday

A square-headed Anglo-Saxon brooch from Warwickshire. Dating to the 6th century, the brooch is now on display at the Ad Gefrin Anglo-Saxon Museum at Wooler in Northumberland.
📸 My own. #SaxonSunday #AdGerfin

The much anticipated Gladiators of Britain & Uncovering Roman Carlisle exhibition finally opens today at Tullie House.

My photo shows two Roman gold-band mosaic glass bottles on display at the Met Museum. Made of mosaic patterned translucent cobalt blue, turquoise green, and opaque white glass, together with gold leaf encased in colourless glass. Both bottles have round bodies, flat bases, and cyclindrical necks with horizontal everted rims. The larger bottle on the left is 10.5 cm tall, the smaller bottle on the right is 4.8 cm tall. They are displayed on a clear glass shelf against a light beige background. According to the museum label: “Gold-band cast glass was a particularly opulent type of early Roman glassware. It combines canes of brightly colored translucent and opaque glass with strips of gold leaf encased between layers of colorless glass. Only a limited number of vessel shapes were made in this way, and some of the most common are small globular or carinated bottles such as these. They were presumably used to store expensive cosmetics and perfumes”.

Luxury Roman scent bottles made of gold-band mosaic glass. 1st century AD.

This opulent glass was made by encasing strips of gold leaf between layers of colourless glass.

Beautiful example of the skill of ancient glassmakers some 2,000 years ago!

The Met. 📷 by me

#Archaeology

Stunning work! ❤️

Anything the Met Museum can do, we can do.... (and we're going to be honest here)...

...broken-er. 😬

Glass gold-band mosaic bottle - Roman - Early Imperial, Julio-Claudian - The Metropolitan Museum of Art Metropolitan Museum of Art. 1930. The H. O. Havemeyer Collection: A Catalogue of the Temporary Exhibition, March 10-November 2. no. 1949, p. 111, New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art.Richter, Gise...

Here are the two object records:

www.metmuseum.org/art/collecti...

www.metmuseum.org/art/collecti...

Read more about Roman gold-band glass on this link:

www.metmuseum.org/essays/roman...

My photo shows two Roman gold-band mosaic glass bottles on display at the Met Museum. Made of mosaic patterned translucent cobalt blue, turquoise green, and opaque white glass, together with gold leaf encased in colourless glass. Both bottles have round bodies, flat bases, and cyclindrical necks with horizontal everted rims. The larger bottle on the left is 10.5 cm tall, the smaller bottle on the right is 4.8 cm tall. They are displayed on a clear glass shelf against a light beige background. According to the museum label: “Gold-band cast glass was a particularly opulent type of early Roman glassware. It combines canes of brightly colored translucent and opaque glass with strips of gold leaf encased between layers of colorless glass. Only a limited number of vessel shapes were made in this way, and some of the most common are small globular or carinated bottles such as these. They were presumably used to store expensive cosmetics and perfumes”.

Luxury Roman scent bottles made of gold-band mosaic glass. 1st century AD.

This opulent glass was made by encasing strips of gold leaf between layers of colourless glass.

Beautiful example of the skill of ancient glassmakers some 2,000 years ago!

The Met. 📷 by me

#Archaeology

A Corinthian delight: three examples of ancient caricatures. The pyxis at the top shows a child-like Herakles drawing water from a fountain. On the lower left, a kylix depicting a woman playing the usually all-male drinking game kottabos. On the lower right, Artemis and her curious dog. 🏺 1/

📸 me

Thread of the Day 🥇

A pile of polished stone axe-heads, ranging in colour from black to brown.

Neolithic axe-heads from the Ness of Brodgar, Orkney #FlintFriday
One of the most iconic tools of Europe's first farmers, wear analysis reveals they were treated in diverse ways, used for cutting wood, chiselling stone, scraping hides and more.

🆓 doi.org/10.15184/aqy...

🏺 #Archaeology

The ‘Balmaclellan Mirror’ - an Iron Age mirror which was found as part of a hoard at Balmaclellan in Kirkcudbrightshire. Now part of the collections at the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh. 📸 My own. #BalmaclellanMirror #IronAge

Elephant bone finding in Spain may be from time of Hannibal's war against Rome

A new study suggests that a 2,200-year-old bone, which was discovered in 2020 near Córdoba might have originated from one of Hannibal's war elephants during the Second Punic War.

www.livescience.com/archaeology/...

A red-figure lekythos featuring a stylized owl perched on olive branches on a glossy black body, with reserved red-orange clay for the figure and fine painted details; narrow shouldered form with flaring mouth and footed base, shown on a white stand against a plain background.

Timeline cleanse!

A Greek Lekythos (a vessel to store and pour scented oil) decorated with an #owl, 470 BC. 🦉

The owl was the sacred animal of Athena, the goddess of wisdom, who was also the protector goddess of Athens.

On display at Antikensammlung München

📷me

🏺

🥰

Photo by G. Solecki/A. Piętak of a small figurine of a bear carved out of amber between 9600 and 4100 BC. The amber is a deep translucent orange. The display lighting makes it glow in places. The bear's head is carved to show ears, mouth, nostrils and eyes. A hole runs through the bear’s torso, suggesting it was threaded onto a cord. Dimensions: Length 10.2 cm, Height 4.2 It was discovered in Słupsk during peat mining in 1887. According to the museum catalogue ‘’Shortly after its discovery, the figure underwent conservation work to restore its original appearance as it was covered with a layer of dull patina from the exposure to the minerals contained in the peat. Already at that time, at the end of the 19th century, it was assumed the restoration had gone too far. The figure was stripped entirely of patina, the anatomical features of the animal were emphasised, the eyes and nostrils were sharply drawn, and the amber was carefully polished”. In 2013, a competition was organised by the Education Department of the National Museum in Szczecin, for children to choose a name for the bear. The winning name was ‘Słupcio’,

A little bear figurine carved out of amber some 6,000 years ago 🐻❤️

A hole runs through the bear’s torso suggesting it was threaded on a cord, perhaps worn or carried as a protective charm.

Found in a peat bog near Słupsk, Poland, in 1887.

📷 National Museum in Szczecin

#FindsFriday
#Archaeology

New!
The first comparative, international, cross-disciplinary study of silver in late antique Europe. And includes full catalogues of major UK hacksilver hoards: Norrie’s Law (Fife), Gaulcross (Aberdeenshire), Tummel Bridge (Perthshire) and Patching (Sussex).
www.sidestone.com/books/silver...

Archaeologists have discovered 3,400-year-old tombs in Cyprus yielding extraordinary riches: imported pottery—including this octopus krater—along with lapis lazuli from Afghanistan, Baltic amber, and more!

archaeology.org/news/2026/01/29/bronze-age-tombs-containing-luxury-goods-unearthed-in-cyprus/

Archaeologists analyzed the residue in a Roman glass vial and found it contained what was likely a preparation to treat inflammation and infection, as described by the physician Galen. It was *very* rough medicine …

archaeology.org/news/2026/02/02/contents-of-1900-year-old-roman-vial-analyzed/

The Museum's Curator of World Archaeology places a pit within the display case. Within the case are numerous pots shaped like animals or birds.

One of our displays has had a makeover! Previously a visible storage case - now, thanks to our Archaeology Collections and Workshop teams, it explores the impact of the natural world on Moche pottery and brings you face to face with portraits of individuals from this ancient Andean civilisation.

Large wooden version of a king from the Lewis chesspieces, with a stile in the background.

Stile with added chesspiece. #Lewis

Proud of my colleagues @earlymedieval.bsky.social et al. I saw the years of work that went into this firsthand.

Available NOW, free to read online, completely beautiful and packed with discoveries rewriting the end of Empire in Britain and beyond

Hi David
I’ve given the dimensions in the Alt text. Just click on the Alt text icon on the image

Not quite as old, but this has reminded us of our piggy bank which was made at Wood Brothers Glassworks in Barnsley

Gorgeous! 🐷 🥰