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 »
So here’s a provocative set of evidence from our pre-historic past: hand stencils. Among other questions, they raise a debate about whether the first artists were mostly women. The painted shadows that silhouette the hands you see in this image were frequent subjects of our paleolithic and neolithic ancestors (40,000-1,000 BCE). In 2013, archaeologist Dean
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
Early Islamic Trade Read More »
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.
Jerusalem Palace of King Herod The Great Read More »
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.
St. Daniel The Stylite Read More »
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
Roman Period Sphinx Read More »
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
The Emerald Tablet Read More »
This object, now in a musuem in Harare, Zumabwe, dates from 1300. Purely indigenous drum? Replica of the Ark of the Covenant? The ways we attach meaning to ancient objects tells us far more about the present than about the past.
Ark of the Covenant Read More »
This is a 15th century aquamanile (pouring water vessel) representing the humiliation of Aristotle by Phyllis: a sort of “world-turned upside down” motif that actually reinforced ideas that men’s real place is above women. Picture taken at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC.
15th Century Aquamanile Read More »
This is Plympton 322, and this mathematical tablet written in cuneiform has been studied a lot to work out how much the Babylonians understood trigonometry. I love how much we still can learn and study about the history of math!
These are shoes from Roman Britain. Not a lot of support in the soles, eh? (Even considering the decay over centuries.)
Roman Britain Shoes Read More »
This is the Ishtar Gate to the entrance of the city of Babylon, dating to the 6th century. The lion was important to the Goddess Ishtar, who was worshipped as one of the main deities of Mesopotamia.
Ishtar Gate Entrance Read More »
Sumerian is the first written language and linguists think of it as a “language isolate”; it isn’t related to any other known languages. This tablet is from the 26th century BCE.
