Found: An Ancient Monument to the Soul

New York Times

In a mountainous kingdom in what is now southeastern Turkey, there lived in the eighth century B.C. a royal official, Kuttamuwa, who oversaw the completion of an inscribed stone monument, or stele, to be erected upon his death. The words instructed mourners to commemorate his life and afterlife with feasts “for my soul that is in this stele.”

University of Chicago archaeologists who made the discovery last summer in ruins of a walled city near the Syrian border said the stele provided the first written evidence that the people in this region held to the religious concept of the soul apart from the body. By contrast, Semitic contemporaries, including the Israelites, believed that the body and soul were inseparable, which for them made cremation unthinkable, as noted in the Bible.
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Scholar finds Mayans' buried highway through hell

According to the Mayans, the dead, were thought to enter the afterlife through a cave populated by sinister gods and represented by the jaguar, the symbol of night. A Mexican archaelogist may have discovered the path that departed spirits had to travel after death

~ Associated Press

Legend says the afterlife for ancient Mayas was a terrifying obstacle course in which the dead had to traverse rivers of blood, and chambers full of sharp knives, bats and jaguars.

Now a Mexican archaeologist using long-forgotten testimony from the Spanish Inquisition says a series of caves he has explored may be the place where the Maya actually tried to depict this highway through hell.

The network of underground chambers, roads and temples beneath farmland and jungle on the Yucatan peninsula suggests the Maya fashioned them to mimic the journey to the underworld, or Xibalba, described in ancient mythological texts such as the Popol Vuh.

"It was the place of fear, the place of cold, the place of danger, of the abyss," said University of Yucatan archaeologist Guillermo de Anda.

Searching for the names of sacred sites mentioned by Indian heretics who were put on trial by Inquisition courts, De Anda discovered what appear to be stages of the legendary journey, recreated in a half-dozen caves south of the Yucatan state capital of Merida.
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KGAN CBS2 Report:

He says it was a dark place of fear, danger and "the abyss." Among the discoveries are a paved, 100-yard underground road, a submerged temple, walled-off stone rooms and the "confusing crossroads" of the legends. Ancient skulls are scattered around.

The caves are very remote and hidden -- possibly because, even as the Maya were forced to convert to Christianity, they still slipped away to worship underground.

Oldest Shaman Grave Found

National Geographic

Archaeologists in northern Israel say they have discovered the world's oldest known grave of a shaman. The 12,000-year-old grave holds an elderly female of the mysterious Natufian culture, animal parts, and a human foot. The immediate area contains several burials, but the shaman's grave is unique in its construction, contents, and arrangement.

"From the standpoint of the status of the grave and its contents, no Natufian burial like this one has ever been found," lead archaeologist Leore Grosman said.

"This indicates the woman had a distinct societal position."
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The Big Question: What was the Holy Grail, and why our centuries-old fascination with it?

The Independent

Why are we asking this now?

Because a new exhibition at the Royal Academy, which brings together hundreds of relics from more than 1,000 years of the Byzantine Empire, has stirred up renewed and fevered excitement over the idea that the Holy Grail is in town.

Curators spent five years bringing together a host of archaeological treasures including mosaics, jewellery, icons and manuscripts to create the first exhibition in Britain on Byzantine art in more than 50 years. But the item causing the most frenzied excitement is the Antioch Chalice, a sixth century silver cup on loan from New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art which – to grail aficionados – is one of the most credible contenders to be the Holy Grail itself.

Professor Robin Cormack, the exhibition's curator said: "[The chalice] has an inner plain cup with an ornate covering. The outer cup can be dated to the sixth century but nobody can say for sure when the inner cup was made. There is still a plausible argument that it is the Holy Grail."

What is the grail actually meant to be?

The Holy Grail is an expansion of the legend surrounding the Holy Chalice, the vessel used by Christ during the Last Supper. According to grail legend, Joseph of Arimathea used the cup to collect Jesus's blood and sweat as he was dying on the cross, giving the vessel magical, life-sustaining properties. Credited in the Gospels as the man who generously gave up his own tomb to bury Christ's body, grail legend extends Joseph of Arimathea's story further by making him the first keeper of the Holy Grail.
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Related Site:
Royal Academy of Arts - Byzantium Exhibition

Stonehenge a "Neolithic Lourdes"

After the first major dig at Stonehenge in 44 years, British researchers think they have solved the mystery of why ancient Britons transported massive rocks 250 miles from Wales to Salisbury Plain to construct the massive but enigmatic Stonehenge monument: They believed the stones possessed healing powers.

BBC News
For centuries, archaeologists have marvelled at the construction of Stonehenge, which lies on Salisbury Plain, Wiltshire.

Mineral analysis indicates that the original circle of bluestones was transported to the plain from a site 240km (150 miles) away, in the Preseli hills, South Wales.

This extraordinary feat suggests the stones were thought to harbour great powers.

Professors Darvill and Wainwright believe that Stonehenge was a centre of healing - a "Neolithic Lourdes", to which the sick and injured travelled from far and wide, to be healed by the powers of the bluestones.
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Timewatch the BBC series covered the dig and subsequent discoveries. Fascinating indepth articles and video can be found here.

Related Websites

Stonehenge - Your Guide to Stonehenge
English Heritage

Related Publications

Stonehenge by Rosemary Hill
Where Echoes Meet: Nine Lives Changed by Lourdes by Catherine Simon