Slide from a lecture by Dr. Robert Miller from Catholic University, who spoke this evening at Shippensburg about his new book on dragons in Ancient Near Eastern history. The dragon was often symbolic of chaos, and associated with the sea – appropriate because many cultures adapting this myth were not seafaring, and to them oceans […]
Dr. Robert Miller Talk on Dragons Read More »
Roman swords (here shown is a type called Gladius Hispaniensis). One ancient writer described Ancient Roman training so difficult as to be “bloodless battles” and actual warfare as “bloody trainings.”
The most famous meal in Ancient Roman history might be one described in _The Satyricon_ by Gaius Petronius Arbiter. Perhaps a send-up of the excessesses of Nero’s court, the book discusses an over-the-top umpteen-course meal where silver bowls are swept away with the trash, the meat dishes are each sculpted to look like something else,
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This is the famous “SATOR AREPO” square, thought to have had magical talisman power by people all over the Ancient Roman world. It works as a palindrome in so many ways it is called a “2D” palindrome. It was eventually used by early Christians, who scrambled up the letters to make it spell “Pater Noster”
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If you look hard at the figure in the lower center of this carved standing stone, you can make out the faint outline of a figure riding an animal. It is a donkey, and this man was named Khebeded, and he is the leading contender for one of the most transformational inventions of all time:
This is the earliest fragment of the Gospel of Mark. It was found on a famous ancient Egyptian garbage dump that was discovered early last century, but this bit was only identified recently. Date: 150-250 CE
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This diagram illustrates the scholarly consensus for authorship of the three Christian Gospels: Matthew, Mark, and Luke. “Q” is a hypothetical source, perhaps made up of sayings (like the Beatitudes).
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This is the Marduk Gate of the ancient city of Babylon, one of the world’s oldest urban settlements and now a UNESCO heritage site. King Nebuchadnezzar II built this gate about 575 BCE. Whatever beauty it contains now, where it lies in lonely ruins some 85 km south of Baghdad, is nothing compared to the
Poem about Ancient Babylon Discovered and the Marduk-Gate Read More »
Dear readers, did we want to know much about the multitude of penis graffiti from the Ancient Roman British military fort at Vindolanda and the discovery of the potential first surviving Ancient Roman dildo, or no? Ahem. Depending on your druthers, read on. In a hot-off-the interweb virtual publication from the Cambridge University Press journal
This shipwreck puts a new spin on how historians think about the earliest century of Islam. The usual story is that the decades after Muhammad’s death witnessed a real collapse of trade in the former Roman Empire we now call Byzantium. But this wreck, called the Ma’agan Michael B (or MMB) ship, suggests that eastern
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The Chi-rho page beginning the Gospel of Matthew in the Lindisfarne Gospels from the 8th century.
A reconstruction of the Jerusalem palace of King Herod the Great (d. 4 BCE). Only ruins remain, but the opulance and decor of the palace/fortress meant to many contemporary Jews that Herod was a Roman accomodationist. This had many Jewish groups – the Pharisees, the Essenes, and the Zealots, for example, upset.
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St. Daniel (5th century) was a “Stylite” or pillar saint. That meant sequestering oneself to the top of a tall column and living there. An example of early Christian asceticism, Daniel actually had worms coming out of his feet because he stayed still and pillar-bound for so many years.
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Diogenes followed the Ancient Greek philosophy Cynicism (meaning rejection of conventional materialism and a desire for extreme simplicity and authentic living). He was said to have lived in a jar, and carried a lamp around during the day in search for an honest man.
This is the _Medusa Rondanini_, an Ancient Roman copy of a Classical Greek. It is one of the most famous ancient sculptures to show Medusa as lovely — before the 5th century BCE, artists depicted her as horrifying. Regardless, her image was often used to ward off ill fortune.
Without even googling, I am certain that what you see here has been the subject of a multitude of (probably very expensive but one hopes well-executed) tattoos: this is the famous Dendera zodiac of about 50 BCE, one of the most complete star-charts from the Ancient world. What you can see on it is fantastic.
This tiny bottle contains a unique substance: a perfume called _Fougère Royale_ created by the master perfumer Paul Parquet back in 1882. The line has since been discontinued or altered, so the smell in this bottle might actually be found nowhere else on the planet. This perfume, and 400 other unique fragrances, make up only
The Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities announced this month (3/23) that archaeologists have recently discovered a small Sphinx statue dating to the Roman period with unusual features. Its facial expression has a slight smile, and some experts believe that its head might be a representation of the Roman Emperor Claudius, who ruled from 41-54
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This is a 16th century translation of “The Emerald Tablet”, among the most famous texts on alchemy ever. Although it purports to be from Egypt (that’s where a lot of medieval alchemists thought their sources originated), the first text we know of comes from an Arabic 6th/7th century source. Isaac Newton, himself an occultist, translated
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