This nobly restrained composite statue depicts a virtuous Roman matron of a distinguished family. She is commemorated as both a chaste wife and mother of children, and her portrait celebrates marriage as an enduring value and symbol of Roman life. This figure provides a notable contrast with the DMA's luxuriant Roman portrait head of a youth (1984.163) in both style and character. Whereas the boy exudes exuberant youth with his active gaze and foppish [...]

The bones don't lie: The Philistines had European ancestry. A new study published in Science Advances analyzes DNA extracted from ten people buried during the second and first millennia B.C.E. at the site of Ashkelon on the Mediterranean Sea. It shows that the inhabitants of Ashkelon during the Iron Age I (c. 1200–1000 B.C.E.)—the Philistines—had DNA with a significantly larger amount of European ancestry than the site's earlier and later inhabitants.

Rachel Kalisher, a member [...]

Greeks were aware of Egyptian deities, including Isis, at least as early as the Archaic Period (c. 700–480 BCE), and her first known temple in Greece was built during or before the fourth century BCE by Egyptians living in Athens. The conquests of Alexander the Great late in that century created Hellenistic kingdoms around the Mediterranean and Near East, including Ptolemaic Egypt, and put Greek and non-Greek religions in much closer contact. The resulting diffusion [...]