Italy is putting forward two candidates for this year's International Archaeology Discovery Award, now into its sixth edition. The award is dedicated to Syrian archaeologist Khaled al-Asaad, the head of antiquities in the ancient city of Palmyra who was killed by Islamic militants in 2015 for refusing to reveal the hiding place of the museum's most precious antiquities.

Last year's prize went to Jonathan Adams, head of the Black Sea Maritime Archaeology Project, for the discovery of the world's oldest intact shipwrecked vessel, dating back to 400 BC.

The five candidates for this year's prize come from Cambogia (with the lost city of Mahendraparvata, capital of the Khmer empire), Kurdistan Iraq (ten Assyrian rock reliefs of gods of Ancient Mesopotamia), Israel (a 9000 year-old Neolithic metropolis at Motza) and Italy, which is proposing the newly discovered Room of the Sphinx in Nero's Domus Aurea and a 6^th century BC Etruscan statue of a winged lion from Vulci.

The awards will be announced in November 2020 at Paestum during the 23^rd edition of the Borsa Mediterranea del Turismo Archeologico (BMTA)

Info: www.borsaturismoarcheologico.it/premio-khaled-al-asaad