Over three thousand years ago, in the Fertile Crescent that stretched from the eastern Mediterranean seaboard to the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, legends about horrific floods sent by the Gods to destroy humankind became prominent. For instance, in the literary works _Atrahasis_, the Bible, and _The Epic of Gilgamesh_, a single hero and his family […]
The Fertile Crescent and Attempts to Destroy Mankind Read More »
The myth of Persephone has deep origins — It was old even in the Golden Age of 5th-c BCE Athens. The daughter of Demeter, Persephone was abducted by the God of the underworld as a forced bride. The grieving mother happened to be a fertility Goddess, and refused to allow the crops or any plants
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The Ancient Romans atttibuted the Goddess Vesta with the power to keep Rome safe and prosperous, and they conceived of these qualities with the symbols of fire, penises, and female chastity. Vesta’s ancient temple (third slide) in the city of Rome had sacred fires, tended to by full-time priestesses whose ritual care preserved the integrity
Ancient Roman Goddess Vesta and the Temple Servants Read More »
We are approaching that holiday time of the year again: Saturnalia is almost upon us! The Ancient Romans celebrated this winter solstice festival for several days in late December. Although it was a religious festival, Romans thought of it as a fun, carnival time, when gifts were exchanged and lots of food consumed. The fifth-century
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This is one of the most famous pharaohs from Ancient Egypt: Hatshepsut (d. 1458 BCE). She was highly effective in all arenas — economic, foreign policy, religious affairs — but although those who lived under her rule recognized her authority, having a female ruler (even a super talented one) jarred too much with expectations about
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This closeup of a female figurine now at the Penn Museum of Anthropology and Archaeology is an example of similar ones common to the Kingdom of Judah in the 8th through 6th centuries. (The second image shows more.) Historians debate their meaning — did they represent the Cannanite Goddess Asherat, who was sometimes associated as
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The Ancient Roman deity Janus appears as a two-headed God. With one face looking backwards in time and the other forward, he was appropriately worshipped at the start of the New Year. Janus was invoked for good luck in all new undertakings, and today many of us continue a long tradition when we set out
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It’s almost New Year’s Eve, a time when many people gather for celebrations throughout the night and into the wee hours of the morning. Rationally we know that nothing really changes when the clock rolls from 11:59 to midnight – The new calendar year is a human invention, and yet we are conditioned to feel
The Aztec’s New Fire Ceremony Read More »
I hope you’re not too hungry as you read this, because it’s time to talk about cannibalism. Dear readers, although we might recoil now at the thought of consuming human flesh, it turns out that this practice is extremely ancient: cases among Homo Neanderthalis, another early human species called Homo Antecessor, and Homo Sapiens have
Cannibalism Practices of the Ancient Homo Neanderthalis Read More »
Check out this early selfie: it’s a first-century CE Ancient Roman fresco showing a woman looking at herself in a mirror. The image is a rare subject in early art, largely attributable to the fact that mirrors were extremely expensive throughout most of human history. Often, they were made of polished stone, like obsidian, or
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This is the most famous Loch Ness Monster photo in existence. Taken in 1934, it wasn’t officially shown to be a hoax for another sixty years. Turns out, someone purchased a toy submarine and added a putty head to create this image. Much evidence has been put forth to suggest that there is not a
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An idea is only as influential as a society is able to appreciate. The invention of the steam engine bears this truth out. Here you see an “aeolipile,” described in the first century CE most notably by Hero of Alexandria (d. 70 CE). In the first image is a drawing of his machine – so
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Here’s a story for you: the oldest recorded story we know of, in fact. This smudgy cave painting made international headlines last December when scientists in Indonesia reported the discovery of a panel measuring about 14 feet depicting a hunting narrative — this picture is a detail. Dating the mineral deposits atop the pictures, which
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The earliest date that humans first settled in the Americas is something anthropologists do not agree upon – yet. Although whole-genome DNA processing might someday shed more light on the subject, some scholars favor an idea that people first crossed the Bering Straights less than 20,000 years ago, while others argue for an earlier wave
Meadowcroft Rockshelter Read More »
Today’s beauty industry did not invent the idea of valuing people for their external appearance, and the Ancient Greeks’ estimation for what made a fine behind seems pretty in line with contemporary models. Witness this famous first-century BCE Roman copy of a Hellenistic sculpture from 300 BCE. She is known as “Aphrodite Kallipygos” with “Kallipygos”
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A Roman (1st or 2nd c CE) and 12th-century examples of foliage faces that became known as “the Green Man.” For centuries, these carvings existed, adorning buildings, as a man’s face surrounded by leaves, or spewing greenery, or having hair that morphed into plants. But it wasn’t until folklorist Lady Raglan wrote an article that
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Here’s a detail from a fresco by the early 15th-century painter Giovanni da Modena, showing Satan munching on some poor damned soul, while defecating some other poor damned soul from his mouth-sphincter. Eew. The grotesque body of the Devil would have been especially horrifying in light of the Medieval belief that Satan had once had
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Thinking ahead to Halloween 2020, I offer you you, dear reader, a suggestion, and one which is unlikely to be duplicated by your neighbors. Folks in Western Europe in the Ancient, Medieval, and Early Modern periods would have been much likelier to identify this creature, because it was a type of monster that many believed
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There is a tradition of misogynist scholarship which traces continuously from Ancient Greece to the early twentieth century. Legal, medical, philosophical, and theological arguements promoted the idea that women were inferior to men, and this was sincerely believed by many educated people. Yet this scholar pictured here — Henricus Cornelius Agrippa (1496-1535) — stood in
Contrasting Opinions of Henricus Cornelius Agrippa Read More »
The Ancient Egyptian Goddess Sekhmet has a fascinating double role as both a vengegeful deity of destruction — especially bringing plague — but also a force that was thought to ward off disease. Her name can mean “The Mighty One” but she was also called the “Mistress of Dread.”. A particularly entertaining myth associated with
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