This place looks bucolic and peaceful, no? Hard to believe it’s in a place called hell. This warrants an explanation. What you see here is a photo of part of the Valley of Hinnom, which is located outside of modern Jerusalem. Translated into the Aramaic language, that reads “Gehenna,” which does in fact refer […]
The Carpathian Mountains in Western Ukraine are some of the traditional homelands of the Hutsul peoples. Although their roots extend back hundreds of years, the term “Hutsul” first appears in written sources in 1816, when it was used by outsiders — in fact, the term’s etymology, although uncertain, might derive from the critical words for
In 1980 nearly 200 square miles of subarctic meadow, forest, peat bogs, and mountains were set aside to form the Carpathian National Nature Park. Home for many plants and animals in its Alpine climate, the Carpathian National Nature Park is located in Western Ukraine. The park’s great beauty includes glacial lakes and waterfalls, trees like
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This painting, from Ukrainian artist “AveOko”, is called “Mofar (3)”, and is a modern rendition of a figure from the Hutsul culture. The Hutsuls, a mountain- and- forest- dwelling people in Western Ukraine, consider mofars to be a type of shamen, using herbalism and folk magic. Mofars are considered neither evil nor good per se,
Modern Rendition of The Hutsuls Read More »
Is this the face of the Slavic pagan Goddess Mokosh? If so, it would be one of the only remaining images of the powerful fertility deity whose influence eroded with the arrival of Christianity among the Kievan or Kyivan Rus in the 10th century. Much about this period is unknown, but the Kievan/Kyivan Rus
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This is the childhood face of one of the most famous Ukrainians in history, the pro-Zionist, pro-labor, and former Prime Minister of Israel, Golda Meir. Born Golda Mabovitch in 1898 to a carpenter father in the city of Kyiv, which was then part of the Russian Empire, Golda’s Jewish ancestry put her in company
Here’s an Ancient Egyptian tomb warning for you, just in case you were thinking of violating the resting place of the dead any time soon! In fact, these sorts of warnings were a lot more banal than figure in the imagination — more like “no trespassing” signs and less “curse of the mummy.”.
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The grumpy faces you see here belong to invaders captured by the Pharaoh Ramses III (about 1186-1154 BCE). Many scholars have interpreted these men as the infamous “Sea Peoples,” about whom little is known for certain, but to whom historians have attributed the collapse of many civilizations in the Bronze Age. The Sea Peoples
This is a late 12th-century illustration of “the Witch of Endor,” a prophetess from the Bible who could raise the spirits of the dead and talk to them. Artists have enjoyed illustrating her almost as much as religious people have enjoyed debating about her powers. In the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament First Book of Samuel
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Volodymyr Zelenskyy has emerged as a heroic leader in no small part because of his willingness to endure the dangers and hardships of the battlefield for a cause that seems larger than him. In this, he parallels the popularity of another unlikely ruler of the Middle Ages: King Baldwin IV of Jerusalem, aka “the leper
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Take a guess as to what this Medieval illustration is a drawing of: upside-down fallopian tubes? Sea-creatures? Mirror-image diagrams of some planetary motion? The answer is below, but before you look — ask yourself how you are arriving at your guesses. The process of investigative inquiry to figure out the nature of reality is something
Hasan Ibn al-Haytham and the Scientific Method Read More »
Slander against the Islamic prophet Muhammad was rife in the Medieval Christian world. The religion of Islam spread rapidly and successfully, and in the agrarian hinterlands of Western Europe, many people’s fear of Islam was matched by their ignorance of it. Many depictions of Muhammad from the 12th to the 18th centuries reflect this. Here,
Depictions of Muhammad in Medieval Europe Read More »
“At one glanceI love youWith a thousand heartsLet the zealots thinkLoving is sinfulNever mindLet me burn in the hellfireOf that sin”This is just one snippet of a poem from an unusual source: Mihrî Hatun of the Ottoman Empire (1460-1515). In a place and time where most written voices were of men, the _meclis_ were intellectual
Mihri Hatun the Early Modern Ottoman Woman Poet Read More »
A new article from the science journal _Nature_ throws another wrench in the mystery about the origins of the greatest pandemic in history, the Black Death. Here you see the Chüy Valley in modern Kyrgyzstan and one of the tombstones involved in the recent study. Dating to 1338, and written in Syriac, the stone’s translation
This cast of a Mesopotamian ruler dating from 2300-2000 BCE is a fine example of the artistic skill of some of the world’s earliest metallurgists. Usually we think of the Bronze Age, when people first started metalworking, as marked by the mixture of copper with tin — a classic combination which produced a pliable, hard,
Arsenical Copper Mask Read More »
Shippensburg University hosted a speaker event on the Israel-Palestine crisis in Gaza. Four specialists gave short presentations from their areas of expertise: Dr. Mireille Rebeiz from Dickinson College spoke about international law and human rights; the three other scholars are from Shippensburg University. Dr. David Weaver addressed the military strategy of Hamas and IDF (Israel
Discussion of the Israel-Palestine Crisis in Gaza at Shippensburg University Read More »
Slavery is a horrible human invention that has been around at least since the development of cities. And probably just as ancient were slave rebellions by those discontented with their situation, many of them ultimately failures, but nonetheless important for understanding the history of resistance to oppression. The Zanj Rebellion of 869-883 is a fascinating
“Have you thought of al-Lat and al-‘Uzza and Manat the third, the other?” . . . . “These are the exalted gharaniq, whose intercession is hoped for . . .” And these are the infamous Satanic Verses, passages in an Islamic tradition that most Muslims have rejected, but that an early source claims were lines
Ancient Islamic Goddesses Read More »
Look above the manager roof in this scene from Italian Renaissance master Giotto di Bondone’s _Adoration of the Magi_. The “star” that Giotto painted had been famous for centuries as the one featured in the Gospel of Matthew which inspired the wise men to travel to King Herod of Judea to inquire about the prophecy
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This painting by al-Qazwini (1203-1283) shows a monster from the Gog and Magog legend. The Hebrew Bible, the New Testament, and the Qur’an each mention Gog and Magog as either monstrous people or wild places. Their stories evolved, but usually referred to a threatening, beastly pseudo-human group that threatened a righteous (usually Godly) and civilized
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