Sprawled across a hemispherical mound where the Judaean Hills meet the desert, ancient Herodium lies deep inside the occupied West Bank but has borne up a treasure trove of finds for Israeli archaeologists.

Herod the Great, the Roman-era Jewish king infamous for the biblical massacre of the innocents, had a taste for theatre, new excavations of his vast palace complex south of Jerusalem have found.

Palestinian authorities have seized hundreds of antiquities as they smashed a major smuggling ring in the West Bank town of Bethlehem, police said on Wednesday.

Valuable objects from the Canaanite, Roman, Byzantine, Greek and Islamic periods were seized by police in a Bethlehem house on Tuesday night, said Colonel Hassan Abu Namus, who heads the Palestinian antiquities police.

JERUSALEM, Oct 21, 2007 (AFP) - Archaeologists have uncovered artifacts under Jerusalem's contested Al-Aqsa mosque compound that may shed light on the first Jewish temple, the Israel Antiquities Authority said on Sunday.

'An apparently sealed archaeological level dating to the first temple period was exposed in the area close to the southeastern corner of the raised platform surrounding the Dome of the Rock,' it said in a statement.

LONDON, Oct 15, 2007 (AFP) - An environmental protestor put anti-pollution face masks on at least two of China's terracotta warriors at an exhibition in London, to highlight China's pollution record, a report said Monday.

Martin Wyness jumped over barriers to place the masks bearing the slogan 'CO2 emission polluter' on the warriors, some 20 of whom have been on display at the British Museum since last month, the Evening Standard reported.

ATHENS, Oct 14, 2007 (AFP) - Three giant cranes began the painstaking task Sunday of transferring hundreds of iconic statues and friezes from the Acropolis to an ultra-modern museum located below the ancient Athens landmark.

The operation started with the transfer of part of the frieze at the northern end of the Parthenon.

That fragment alone weighed 2.3 tonnes and in the weeks to come, the cranes will move objects as heavy as 2.5 tonnes.

ATHENS, Oct 11, 2007 (AFP) - Greek authorities held a dress rehearsal on Thursday ahead of the weekend relocation of iconic statues and friezes from the Acropolis to a new museum located below the ancient Athens landmark.

Three giant cranes were stationed between the current museum near the famed Parthenon temple and the new site located about 300 metres (984 feet) downhill to transport a marble sculpture weighing 2.5 tonnes.

The sculpture was packed in a metal container.

DAMASCUS, Oct 9, 2007 (AFP) - Mural paintings dating back 11,000 years have been found in a building on a bank of the River Euphrates in northern Syria, a French archaeologist said on Tuesday.

Eric Coqueugniot said they were the oldest murals found in the Middle East.

'Geometric paintings -- black, white and red -- have been found on the wall of a house in Jadeh,' he said, adding that they were discovered in late September in a circular house with a diameter of 7.5 metres (25 feet).

GENEVA, Oct 9, 2007 (AFP) - Switzerland on Tuesday returned to Turkey a bronze hand which had been looted from a Roman archaelogical site near the southwestern Turkish town of Denizli, Swiss authorities said.

The artefact from the ancient Roman city of Laodiceia was sold at auction in Germany in 2005 to a Swiss bidder, who handed over the bronze after he learned that it had been stolen, the Swiss Federal Culture Office said in a statement.

ATHENS, Oct 4, 2007 (AFP) - The former curator of the Getty museum in Los Angeles will go before a Greek judge in November, charged with having knowingly acquired a stolen gold Hellenic crown for the museum's collection, her lawyer said Thursday.

Marion True was charged in January with handling stolen antiquities following the 1.15 million dollar (778,000 euro) acquisition of the crown in 1993 for the Getty.

The museum returned the masterpiece and three other works that illegaly left Greece in March.