This article focuses on the problem of identifying the possible origin of the so-called Black-on-Red pottery of the Iron Age found at Tell Keisan, a site in southern Phoenicia/Lower Galilee. Sixteen samples were selected for petrographic, chemical, and micropaleontological analyses, representing the entire period of the pottery occurrence (late tenth–fifth century BC) at the site. The results allow the authors to conclude that most of the vessels from which the samples came should be considered imports from southern and western regions of Cyprus. This result aligns with similar studies undertaken on Black-on-Red pottery from other sites on the Levantine coast. Looking at it from a broader perspective, the currently dominant hypothesis of Cyprus as the main production centre of the Black-on-Red pottery in the Iron Age also gains a strong reinforcement from Tell Keisan.
In the Hellenistic world, landscapes were often tied to the borders of kingship. This paper challenges the prevailing geopolitical framework by showing that Eratosthenes defined the oikoumene not by shifting imperial frontiers, but through a mathematical conception of its outermost edges. It examines how his Geographika constructs a borderscape shaped by intellectual inquiry and mathematical precision, drawing on geographical evidence through textual analysis, empirical observation, and scientific reasoning. His engagement with mathematics moved his research beyond the Library of Alexandria into the natural world. This interplay reveals an alternative mode of boundary-making: one rooted in scientific inquiry. To examine these borderscapes, this study employs GIS to reconstruct Eratosthenes’ spatial framework, focusing on the southern connections between the Near East and North Africa to show how boundaries and landscapes were theorised in the Hellenistic world.
The Collection of Ancient Art at the National Museum in Warsaw constitutes the largest assemblage of its kind in Poland. Until recently, its history during the Second World War (1939–1945) had been neglected. However, thanks to recent research, it has become possible to provide new information about the wartime robbery and destruction of the collection. The latter tragedy, especially, concerns the Egyptian mummies, which were allegedly destroyed by German soldiers. The research has also brought to light new details concerning the first X-ray examination of an Egyptian mummy in Poland, which took place in 1941, as well as new information concerning the provenance of some of the objects from the collection.
This paper presents Eastern Sigillata C and Late Roman C ware vessels, discovered during the excavations in two residence buildings in the south-western area of Nea Paphos (Maloutena): the Villa of Theseus and the House of Aion. One of the buildings, the House of Aion, destroyed by an earthquake in the late fourth century, was subsequently abandoned and demolished. The much larger residential complex of the Villa of Theseus was repaired, enlarged and continued to be inhabited for several decades after the same disaster, but for unknown reasons it was abandoned by its regular dwellers shortly after the mid-fifth century, and gradually ruined afterwards. The studied materials were found in the contexts connected with the aforementioned, chronologically defined events. This gave us a unique insight into the ceramics used in Nea Paphos in the fourth and early/mid-fifth centuries, which is the least known time of production of the two fine wares imported from the Pergamene and Phocaean regions in north-western Asia Minor.
Drawing on Egyptian and Meroitic sources, as well as archaeological evidence from the region, this paper offers an overview and a nuanced synthesis of how the frontier was shaped in Lower Nubia during the Ptolemaic and Roman periods, spanning nearly six centuries. The interactions between Egypt, the kingdom of Meroe, and various groups of Nubian people are examined to assess the porosity of this frontier zone. Trade and religion played key roles in the development of Lower Nubia and in the formation of a distinct regional identity. By investigating this region over a long chronological span and in its full historical complexity, the paper supports recent scholarship that has called for moving beyond modern, overly rigid interpretations of ancient frontiers and for challenging asymmetrical models that portray influence as flowing exclusively from Egypt and the Roman Empire toward the kingdom of Meroe.
