Gods and goddesses revealed themselves rather remarkably often to the privileged and chosen ancient Greeks, even if it was in disguise to hide their blinding brilliance. Like English, Greek did not...
In 1294, after almost 30 years of peace, England and France went to war. This sowed the seeds of the conflict known as the Hundred Years War, the era of the longbow and the famous Battles of Crécy...
Queen Anne Boleyn, King Henry VIII’s second wife, was executed on 19 May 1536 on charges of adultery with five men, including her own brother, and plotting the King’s death. She was believed to have...
The Nibelungs are one of the most mysterious peoples of the ancient world. Some scholars regard them as a race of dwarfs or elves. On the other hand, their close identification with giants suggests...
The first mention of the famous ‘Sword in the Stone’ of the Arthurian tradition is found in Robert de Boron’s Merlin , a medieval French poem, part of the 13th-century Lancelot-Grail cycle of French...
Typical of cats, the leonine goddesses of ancient Egypt, including Sekhmet are very elusive, despite countless research papers. A review of the attestations of the cult of feline deities in Egypt...
The Anglo-French war of 1294-1303 has not been the subject of a major study since the early 1900s. Recent histories tend to treat it as a sideshow compared to King Edward I’s wars in Wales and...
The Humanities are by definition concerned with humankind’s life-chances and life-fates, and mortality captures humanness from one essential viewpoint – all humans inevitably die. All human life, and...
People have collected objects, scripts, fossils, specimens, precious stones, artifacts and memorabilia since the dawn of mankind’s memory, for different reasons. Many possible motives come into play...
Alexander the Great conquered Egypt in 332 BC and after his death, his empire was divided. In 305 BC Egypt fell to his general Ptolemy I Soter . The Ptolemaic Dynasty was a powerful Hellenistic state...
Due to the growing independence and complexity of society, the greatest families in Rome met their downfalls. However, the heiresses of those great houses took up the chance to reclaim the power that...
At the beginning of Herodotus’ Histories, the Athenian lawgiver Solon, one of the seven sages of ancient Greece, points out to his interlocutor Croesus, King of Lydia, that if a person lives to be 70...
The Tetrarchy, inaugurated in 285 AD by Emperor Diocletian, had been instituted mainly with the intent of mitigating successions tribulations such as those that had plagued the third century. But the...
Few periods in history have brought women to the fore, to the centre of events, as the Anarchy did in England. From 1135 to 1154, conflict raged when Stephen of Blois usurped the throne that...
The English crown is hereditary. Over the centuries, the succession has been largely determined by both blood and the accidents of birth. This has given rise to some glorious reigns, such as that of...
Numerous papers have been written about the Egyptian god Seth in recent years, but his essential identity seems to have evaded modern commentators. Seth's role is pivotal in determining the...
The death of Emperor Nero in 68 AD ended the Julio-Claudian dynasty of Roman Emperors. It also initiated a succession crisis which degenerated into a short but deadly civil war. This was the first...
In the Christian church, January 6 is commemorated as the feast of Epiphany, the day on which the three wise men, or three kings, arrived at the stable in Bethlehem to visit the newborn baby Jesus...
In 29 AD, Livia, the Empress of Rome and the widow of Emperor Augustus, died at the age of 86. Although she was the mother of Tiberius, the current Emperor of Rome , and an Empress through her own...
Nationhood is a figment of the collective imagination, actualized by a cluster of symbols and ideas – flags, anthems, sports teams, traditional dress (sometimes), a common religion (often), shared...
Girona in Catalonia, Spain, is an experience in polarities, capturing the romance of Paris but also a tinge of foreboding prevalent in Moscow. Girona is both a very popular modern destination and an...
The year 1843, was to mark a turning point in how the British – and eventually much of the wider world – celebrated Christmas. Not only was it the year in which Charles Dickens’ novella, A Christmas...
Ancient megalithic sites all over the world are still visited in celebration of winter solstice , to welcome the sunrise on the shortest day of the year in the northern hemisphere. From Newgrange in...
Once upon a time, Zeus spent nine consecutive nights sleeping with Mnemosyne, the Titan goddess of memory. These passionate nights gave birth to the nine Muses. The Muses are Erato, Euterpe,...
