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Ancient Origins Tour IRAQ

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The Native American Legend of the Sleeping Giant and the Whiteman

The Native American Legend of the Sleeping Giant and the Whiteman

Not very long ago, a Native American tribe known as the Ojibwa tribe roamed the Great Lakes region of the United States and Canada. They were much loved by the powerful god, Nanabozho, who was very...
Green Man in the Louvre

The Truth Behind the Christ Myth: The Green Man and the Legend of Jesus – Part II

So how did the oft-used legend of the Green Man eventually become chosen to be the legend of Jesus? Let us begin when it was the life story of the ancient Green Man and work forward to the time of...
The Ancient of Days (William Blake, 1794)

Ancient Gods – When Darkness Ruled the World

Darkness is the opposite of brightness and it is characterized by the absence of visible light. The emotional response of humans to darkness has led to many culturally different metaphorical usages...
How Europeans saw the Garden of Eden in the Middle Ages. Painting by Lucas Cranach the Elder (1472-1553)

Was the Garden of Eden a Real Place?

Mention the Garden of Eden to a group of friends and you are likely to get as many suggestions on its true location as people you ask, plus a fair number who will deny that it was ever a real place...
The Loa Giants: Impressive and Enigmatic Geoglyphs in Northern Chile

The Loa Giants: Impressive and Enigmatic Geoglyphs in Northern Chile

Alberto Nadgar Rojas, researcher, visual artist, and photographer, defends the existence in northern Chile of an ancient civilization of giants as a hypothesis to explain what may be the biggest...
An image of the god Soma and its representations.

The Secret Substance Soma: Bringing Human Beings Closer to the Gods

Soma is both the name of a god and a substance that is found in Hindu mythology. As a deity, Soma is one of the most important gods in the Rigveda . Soma is also considered to be a primeval being,...
Hermas as Guidance and Protection for Travelers in Ancient Greece.

Herma as Guidance and Protection for Travelers in Ancient Greece

The herma (more commonly written in English as herm; plural as hermae or hermai) was a form of statuary that originated in ancient Greece. In general, these statues were stone columns that...
Vahagn: The Armenian Dragon Slayer God and Bringer of Fire

Vahagn: The Armenian Dragon Slayer God and Bringer of Fire

Vahagn is a deity that was worshipped in Armenia during the period prior to the coming of Christianity. Vahagn was revered as a fire god. The name Vahagn is derived from a combination of two Sanskrit...
The Jagannath Temple in Puri.

The Jagannath Temple in India: Home to a Trio of Deities and Numerous Religious Festivals

The Jagannath Temple is an ancient temple located in Puri, a city in the state of Odisha on the eastern coast of India. This temple is dedicated to Jagannath, a Sanskrit name which may be translated...
Battle between Veles and Perun.

Veles and Perun: The Legendary Battle of Two Slavic Gods

Veles and Perun are two deities found in the religion of the Slavs prior to the coming of Christianity. The Pre-Christian Slavs were polytheists, and worshipped a pantheon of deities, just like the...
Two quivers made of copper/bronze found at Mudhmar East

Tiny, 3,300-Year-Old Metal Weapons, Possible War God Offerings, Discovered in Arabia

A cache of small, ornamental daggers, battle axes, bows and arrows, possibly offerings to a war god, has been excavated in a 3,000-year-old building in what researchers think was a religious complex...
Assembly of twenty gods, predominantly the Twelve Olympians, as they receive Psyche (Loggia di Psiche, 1518–19, by Raphael and his school, at the Villa Farnesina).

Disbelieve it or Not, Ancient History Suggests That Atheism is as Natural to Humans as Religion

People in the ancient world did not always believe in the gods, a new study suggests – casting doubt on the idea that religious belief is a “default setting” for humans. “Early societies were far...
The bronze statuette of Artemis and the marble one of Apollo.

Spectacular Statuettes of Apollo and Artemis Discovered in Rare State of Preservation in Crete

While the size of the find may be small, the quality is great. Archaeologists working in Aptera in Iraklio, Crete, have recently unearthed well-preserved statuettes of the mythical Greek goddess...
Nuada The High King by Jim Fitzpatrick

King Nuada and his Famous Sword of Light

Dating back to the 12 th century, the “Lebor Gabala” or “The Book of Invasions” talks about how Ireland came to be populated. After the great flood, only the Fomorians, a supernatural race in Irish...
Hercules Fights the Hydra of Lerna, a painting by Francisco de Zurbarán

Like Father, like Son: Altar shows heroic son of Hercules slaying a many-headed Hydra

A second century AD altarpiece carved in marble and showing a strongman battling a monster has been found near a river by villagers in Turkey. Experts think the mythic scene may depict Bargasos, a...
The Annunciation by Fra Angelico

Virgin Mothers and Miracle Babies: The Ancient History of Miraculous Conceptions

At the centre of the annual Christian festival of Christmas, particularly among those of the Catholic faith, is the sacred narrative of the Virgin Birth. In the New Testament Gospels of Matthew and...
Detail, An illustration of Loki with a fishnet, from an Icelandic 18th century manuscript.

Loki – The Trickster Redeemed?

For a long time, Loki, the Trickster of Norse mythology, has been demonized as a figure of evil. But is he really so? Many mythologies speak about beings that are neither good, nor evil, entities of...
The Great Day of God's wrath (1853), oil on canvas by John Martin, Tate Gallery in London.

Archaeologists Claim to have Discovered the Location of the Biblical City of Sodom

After a dozen years excavating, an archaeological team led by Steven Collins claims to have discovered a city that matches the Bible’s Sodom, the city destroyed, along with Gomorrah, by the wrath of...
A detail of the star chart of Idy of Asyut showing the sky goddess Nut holding up the heavens at the top.

Star charts reveal how ancient Egyptians planned to navigate the sky after death

Like others in the ancient world in the Americas, Asia, Europe and around the Mediterranean, Egyptian pharaohs and nobles associated stars with their gods or thought they could be deified by becoming...
Priapus fresco at the House of Vettii in Pompeii

Pompeii fresco depicts hapless Priapus with a painful condition

Maybe Priapus, the ancient Greek and Roman god with the enormous phallus, was not so lucky after all. An Italian doctor and researcher says one of the most famous paintings of the rustic divinity...
A limestone sarcophagus of an unknown person has been unearthed near Aswan. Some of the sarcophagi at the site have mummies intact.

Six tombs containing mummies belonging to elite figures of 26th Dynasty unearthed in Egypt

Six ancient Egyptian tombs belonging to elite members of the 26 th dynasty of the Late Pharaonic Period have been excavated by an Egyptian archaeological team. The Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities...
‘The Elevation of the Great Elector into Olympus’. Ceiling painting (detail: Mercury), City Palace, Potsdam

Two thousand year old Mercury figurine found in Yorkshire

A metal detector enthusiast has discovered a 2000-year old figurine depicting the Roman god Mercury in a field near Selby, Yorkshire, UK. It is the 1,000 th officially recorded archaeological find of...
The Obsequies of an Egyptian Cat

The Veneration and Worship of Felines in Ancient Egypt

The ancient Egyptians revered and worshipped many animals, just as the ancient Greeks, Romans, and Norse did, but none were worshipped as reverently as the cat. It was not until the Pre-dynastic...
A Blythe Intaglio in the Colorado Desert.

Blythe Intaglios: The Impressive Anthropomorphic Geoglyphs of the Colorado Desert

The Blythe Intaglios, often called America’s Nazca Lines, are a series of gigantic geoglyphs found fifteen miles north of Blythe California in the Colorado Desert. In the Southwestern United States...

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