Pallisades View
View of the Pallisades from the Medieval Cloisters at the New York Metropolitan Museum, where over 200 million years ago the supercontinent Pangea ripped apart.
Chinese New Year
Today (January 22, 2023) marks the lunar New Year in Chinese culture, marked by many festivities and foods as the celebrants hope to usher in a year of prosperity and happiness. This reel and the following images show the New Year Lion Dance, an ancient tradition wherein people (often martial artists from a local school)
Ikkyu the Zen Monk
Ikkyu (d 1481) was a famous Zen monk. Since Zen Buddhism focuses on getting practitioners to think outside the box, it shouldn’t be surprising that he was highly unorthodox. Fond of drinking and attending brothels, Ikkyu critiqued many Zen leaders of his day for getting too caught up in propriety and material possessions. He eventually
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Mosque-Cathedral of Cordova Dome
The dome above the mirhab in the Mosque-Cathedral of Cordova, 965 CE. The octagonal-faceted dome is worked with gold and crafted with some of the finest mosaic tile-work in the world. The mirhab oriented Spanish Muslims to the direction of prayer. The fact that it was funded with gold from the Christian Byzantine Empire illustrates
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French Book of Hours Illustration
This illustration from a French _Book of Hours_ dating c. 1475 depicts a bleeding Eucharist wafer that medieval people considered miraculous. It even has a name: “the Sacred Bleeding Host of Dijon.” Medieval people were spellbound by miraculous bleeding communion wafers such as this one, but there was an ugly underside to this devotion: it
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Hindu Goddess Kali
This 10th c. sandstone relief depicts the Hindu goddess Kali – the Goddess of time, destruction, sexuality, salvation, and protection. She has a horrifying image – bloody fangs, belt of human hands, necklace of skulls, with eyes bright red and skin blue or black. This appearance would have represented a completely uncontained female, something wholly
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Medieval University Students
Our modern university is a direct descendant of the Medieval institution. Of the many differences between these early centers of education and our modern ones (eg, only dudes allowed), there are some significant similarities. You can see from this illuminated illustration from 1400 that the lecturer up at the podium to the left is not
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Drought Conditions and the Collapse of the Visigothic Kingdom
The ruins of Suso Monastery in San Millán de la Cogolla look eerily beautiful in this image, evocative of a distant past whose details are lost to us now. Situated in northern Spain, they are some of the last surviving remains of the Visigothic Kingdom that ruled the Iberian peninsula from the late fifth century
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Hawk Hat
Here is a teeny hat for a hawk to wear during a hunting expedition. Dating to about 1700 CE, it was made for somebody’s pet “bāz”, or falcon/hawk in Persia/modern Iran. The cover here is made of velvet and silver thread, but that’s not the only reason we know it was meant for this bāz
Michael the Archangel and the Conquering of Peru
This enormous oil painting of Saint Michael the Archangel was completed in Peru (Cuzco) around 1700. Despite the picture’s large size (it was at least 5 feet tall), no artist’s name appears on it. And that’s because the Spanish conquerors had commissioned the piece as propaganda and couldn’t care less about the artist. At this
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Sor Juana Inez de la Cruz
This is a painting of Sor Juana Inéz de la Cruz, one of the most celebrated Latin American authors of the Colonial period (1651-1695). An essayist, playwright, and poet, Juana Inéz de la Cruz decided to join a convent at an early age because she thought it was the best way “to have no fixed
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Feces Dispersal
This painting is a super blunt image of a woman relieving herself. Painted in the early 1600s, it gets at a very different perspective (compared to modern USA) about human effluences in Medieval and Early Modern Japan. Instead of pushing our human elimination as far away as possible, urban dwellers strove to use it. Historian
Charles Joughin and the Titanic
I am not particularly enamored by the story of the Titanic, which sank on April 15, 1912. To be sure, I think it was a grave tragedy: 1,517 passengers died after the boat hit an iceberg. Yet I never felt pulled by the Romance of the luxury ship, nor engaged with the minutiae about the
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Chicha and Ecuadorian Burials
You’re looking at a recreation of a funerary site from ancient Ecuador, where these three levels of human remains were unearthed in 1980 as builders were getting ready to construct an airport at the capital city of Quito: a total of nine vertical burial tunnel-chambers were found. These bodies date from 680 CE, to a
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Acoma Pueblo
This is Acoma Pueblo, aka “Sky City,” and one of the oldest continually inhabited places of north America. Located on a nearly 400-foot mesa, it dates back as early as 1100 CE and has been a home to the indigenous Acoma people of modern New Mexico ever since, preserving ancient customs and beliefs even as
Mummy Workshop
In an article published in the premier science journal _Nature_ earlier this week, a team of scholars announced their analyses of the operations of the first-ever discovered mummification workshop, and what they found was fascinating! This picture shows the layout of the “mummy factory”, first unearthed at the Egyptian site of Saqqara, about 20 miles
Sir Morien
The Knights of the Round Table, part of the adventurers of the Medieval Arthurian legends, included the nobleman featured here in this manuscript from about 1350. He was courageous, he helped his mother gain political power, and he was a bad-ass fighter. And also, Sir Morien was black. King Arthur et al were not real,
Viking Human Sacrifices
This is a pretty good artistic rendering of a tapestry so damaged that I didn’t bother posting a photo of it here. And although it’s hard to see, if you look just right you’ll make out a bunch of human dead (probably) bodies hanging from the branches. You can see their limbs dangling and their
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Cleopatra’s Twins by Mark Antony Identified
“PetThe political intrigues and love affair of Mark Antony and Cleopatra have captured the imaginations of generations, even before the famous couple’s deaths in 30 BCE in their war against the future Emperor Augustus of Rome. This statue is the only known image of their twin children, Cleopatra Selene and Alexander Helios. At least, that’s
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A Cat Called Room 8
“Pets are humanizing,” wrote James Cromwell, “They remind us we have an obligation and responsibility to preserve and nurture and care for all life.” Room 8, the cat featured here in this portrait next to the classroom after which he was named, exemplifies this beautifully. In 1952 this stray, gray-striped tabby strolled into the Elysian
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