The symbol you see here that means “prescription” comes from an abbreviation of the Latin word “recipe” meaning “take”, as in the command form of the verb recipere, which means “to hold or contain.” It doesn’t come from a joining of the letters R and x, but rather the slashed line through the “R” was
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The stately Classical background of Paris’ Panthéon has been the perfect location to house the invention of 19th-century physicist Léon Foucault: a massive pendulum made of a 62-lb brass-coated led bob, suspended from the Panthéon’s central dome by a 220-foot wire. Foucault debuted his pendulum in 1851, and although the original was damaged in 1995,
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Lookit these super bitchin’ swords! This past week (Sept 6, 2023), archaeologists working in Israel announced their discovery of four Ancient Roman swords and the head of a javelin (called a pilum), found in amazingly preserved condition in a cave near the Dead Sea in Israel. Three of the swords were of a kind known
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This is an “oath skull” from the secret “vehmic” courts of northwest Germany’s Westphalia region. Dating to about 1600, it is carved with the initials S.S.G.G., which stood for “Stein, Strick, Gras, grün” (“stone, rope, grass, green”). The whole thing is macabre to modern viewers, and it might have been meant to be spooky and
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Exhibit from the NYC Met, where you can see a teensy dragon (if you squint) on the robes of this eastern medieval bishop, showing cultural influences from east Asia.
Eastern Medieval Bishop Read More »
Clio was the Ancient muse of history, and this painting by the 17th-century Dutch artist Johannes Moreelse has the saucy expression that comes from being a Time Lord (or Lady).
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This 3rd-century CE mosaic illustrates the month of April in the Ancient Roman world, which was then, as now, a time when sun and rains could be expected as part of the spring season. It was during this month that the religious feast devoted to the deity of mildew was celebrated. The Ancient Romans
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This is a wall painting from the Dura-Europos synagogue of the Biblical foundational character Abraham sacrificing his son Isaac — you can see his soul going up to heaven (mid third-century CE). But wait — everyone knows that in the Bible (Genesis 22), God prevented Abraham at the last minute from killing his beloved son,
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Almost 200 years ago (May 7, 1824), Beethoven’s Ninth – and final – Symphony debuted, and yesterday I got a chance to hear it at the First Evangelical Lutheran Church in Carlisle. It took the combined efforts of three groups (the Dickinson College Choir, Cantate Carlisle, and the Dickinson Orchestra) to perform the famously monumental
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It’s really difficult for me, dear readers, not to love the Whore of Babylon, the metaphor and shibboleth from the New Testament Book of Revelations. As a reminder, here are some lines from that apocalyptic book: “‘Come, I will show you the judgement of the great whore who is seated on many waters, with whom
“But think of the many endless ills old age is full of!”, writes the early second-century Roman satirist Juvenal. In his usual style, he cruelly remarks, “Take a look, first if all at its (old age’s) ugly face — repulsive/ And wholly altered, with an ugly hide in place of/ Smooth skin, the drooping jowls,
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Late 18th-century Georgian Britain had such fascinating trends. An age of Enlightenment, it brought forth people who were in love with science and anything that sounded “science-y”, even when the actual science was missing. And, no surprise, interest peaked when said pseudo-science trend dealt with sex. This brings me to one James Graham (1745-1794), a
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On today’s history menu we have a special duo-treat: art, as well as a revised theory about women hunters in early human cultures. And both stories are bound in the spear-throwing devices known as “atlatls”. An atlatl (the name is in the Aztec language Nahuatl because the Spanish saw the Aztecs using it, but
As indigenous peoples around the world encountered Westerners with increasing frequency in the 19th century, many distinctive aspects of their culture were obliterated by the tugs of globalized culture. The Yaghan peoples (a few shown here in this 1883 photo) of the southernmost part of South America in Tierra del Fuego experienced this, but at
Here’s the world’s smallest primer for a really fascinating topic in anthropology: ritual. We’ll take the “Healy Howl” tradition from Georgetown University as our case study application. Here’s a picture of a cemetery near Healy Hall, where the ritual howl happens every year on Halloween. At Georgetown on October 31, the 1973 movie “The Exorcist,”
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We all know the man on the right — that’s Albert Einstein, the most famous scientist of the 20th century. But to his left is another important scientist, Kurt Gödel, a mathematician so brilliant that Einstein said that he used to come to the Institute of Advanced Study at Princeton just “to have the privilege
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Medieval people drank wine, and a lot of it. Some speculate that it would have tasted much worse than today’s drink, because it wasn’t stored in glass bottles, and corks hadn’t been invented. This might have made older wines murky with dead yeasts, and easily spoiled. The best wines likely were the newer ones which
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What makes this statue of Buddha so different from any others? Location, location, location: it was recently unearthed in Egypt, where it had been buried at an ancient temple at the seaport city of Berenice Troglodytica. The state dates to the second century CE from the Roman occupation of Egypt, and showcases the far-flung trading
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This post is about a mathematical puzzle and a French astronomer-mathematician who tried to solve it: the Three-Body Problem, and Nicole-Reine Lepaute, an aristocratic woman working in Enlightenment-Era France. (See images one and two.) Practically as soon as Isaac Newton developed his ideas about gravity, he also realized that, while he could predict the orbits
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At Shippensburg University, undergraduates have many opportunities to do original historical research projects supervised by faculty who are experts in their fields. Here you can see Jared Diehl and Anna Crawford’s poster presentation for the annual 2023 Academic Day, which commences the semester. Anna and Jared worked this summer to uncover whatever sources they could
