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Anglo-Saxon England was a wealthy world with a gold and silver coinage from the early 600s, beginning in Kent and East Anglia. It had been pagan in the 400s but by the ninth and tenth century it was...
“ Every man can tell how many goats and sheep he possesses but not how many friends ”. Marcus Tullius Cicero Titus Pomponius was neutral both in character and in policy. Perhaps this was his natural...
About 1,800 years ago, a group of people migrating from an unknown northern location began to settle in what is now called the Valley of Mexico. They are called Aztec, a name derived from the word...
The Abbasid Dynasty, founded by Abu al-Abbas as-Saffah in 750 AD, marked a significant transition in the Islamic world. It succeeded the Umayyad Caliphate and shifted the Islamic capital from...
When Roman General Diocletian was designated Emperor by his army in 284, he followed suit of many General-Emperors before him and engaged in war against the legitimate Emperor in place in order to...
To the ancient Greeks, philosophy – literally the love of wisdom - as a therapy or treatment of bodily ailments implied a holistic, psychosomatic understanding of the human mind, body and soul...
On the banks of the Tigris river, not far from the confluence of the Tigris and Diyala rivers, about 35 kilometers (21 miles) southeast of Baghdad, lie the ruins of two ancient cities, who once...
Infuriated that her husband Zeus gave birth to Athena on his own, Hera, the Queen of Heaven, impregnated herself to have a child independent of Zeus, and thus she gave birth to Hephaestus. Hephaestus...
Biblical Samson challenged his wedding guests with a riddle: “ Out of the eater came something to eat, and out of the strong came something sweet ”. The simple answer is Samson was referring to a...
During the period designated by modern historians as the era of Roman military anarchy which lasted from 235 to 285 AD, 20 generals unconventionally elected as emperors fought and succeeded each...
Who was Osiris? Was he a mythological God in ancient Egypt before Christianity began, or was he a real person, a King of Egypt? Dr Ken Jeremiah provides his thoughts on the existence of a real person...
A time-traveler considering taking a stroll through Periclean Athens has a very narrow window of time to visit Athens in its heyday. Pericles, sometimes noted as the greatest statesman of Athens,...
By the first century AD, papyrus paper was available throughout the Roman Empire, a market that consisted of the area stretching from Hadrian’s Wall in the northern wilds of Caledonia, east to the...
The Roman Empire during the first half of the third century AD experienced a rapid succession of no less than eight Emperors, battling the Persians in the east and the invading Goths on the northern...
The enigmatic script Linear A has long been one of antiquity's most enduring mysteries. Emanating from Bronze Age Crete, its undecipherable cryptic symbols have frustrated researchers, historians,...
Most experts today recognize that the period of the Antonine Imperial Dynasty, which lasted from 96 to 192 AD, corresponded to the zenith of the Roman Empire . Yet, just over 40 years later, the...
In 49 BC, Roman statesman Marcus Tullius Cicero sent a letter to his friend Atticus informing him about the current gossip in Rome. This time, the big news involved the famous Mark Antony. “ Marcus...
The ancient Greek city of Poseidonia, now Paestum , lies on the Italian coast of the Tyrrhenian Sea. Paestum, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, is famed for its well-preserved ruins. In fact, posterity...
The Devonshire Manuscript contains love poems written by the ladies at the court of Queen Anne Boleyn, second wife of King Henry VIII. It consists of 124 pages on which 184 poems had been lovingly...
One hears of Aeneas’ pedigree for the first time from his own mouth, in the Iliad , as he stands facing his arch-foe, Achilles, on the battlefield before Troy: ‘ Learn then my lineage if you will –...
The history of the Castle of Ivry is one of betrayal and bloodshed. Its very construction ended in violence. Countess Aubrée, who had the castle built, was so impressed with it that she had the...
The life of a woman in Tudor England was not an easy one, even for those of noble birth and royal status. The role of a woman was to marry, run a household and produce the all-important male heir...
The story of the settlement of the Israelite tribes in the Promised Land has long been the subject of controversy among scholars. Moreover, the narrative of the Book of Judges has been regarded as...
Like many ancient cities, and some modern, Augustan Rome was a combination of public magnificence and private squalor. There were the temples, the aqueducts, the basilicas, and other grandiose public...
