It is not always easy to read the stories of real people from the artifacts they left behind. This is especially true if they lived 5,000 years ago. However, the story of a remarkable woman from that...
An ancient cuneiform tablet dating back to 3,000 BC, which was discovered in the Mesopotamian city of Uruk, in modern day Iraq, reveals that the workers of the ancient city were paid with beer...
Much of what is considered normal in the present day might have been seen as shocking in the past and vice versa. This idea applies to many of the aspects of daily life, including customs related to...
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...
Between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, lies a land once known as Mesopotamia. It was here that humanity found suitable land to rip open and seed. Once the seeds took root, civilization was born...
George Smith was born in 1840 in London to poor parents, and consequently left school at the tender age of fifteen to take up an apprenticeship with Messrs Bradburry and Evans, a firm of engravers...
Ninsun is a female figure found in Sumerian mythology. She is a goddess whose parents are the deities Anu (the sky god) and Uras (a goddess of the earth). As a goddess, Ninsun was worshipped by the...
Lamassu are human-headed, eagle-winged, bulls or lions that once protected cities in Mesopotamia. They were believed to be very powerful creatures, and served both as a clear reminder of the king’s...
A new analysis of a set of ancient clay tablets has revealed that ancient astronomers of Babylonia used advanced geometrical methods to calculate the position of Jupiter – a conceptual leap that was...
Mitanni was a state that existed between the 16th and 13th centuries BC. This state occupied the land of the Hurrians. This area is located in the upper Tigris-Euphrates basin, and corresponds today...
Dilmun (Telmun) was a civilization located in the eastern part of the Arabian Peninsula. Although this was quite an old civilization, it is much less famous than the four cradles of civilization of...
One of the most well-known forms of punishment today is imprisonment. One could argue that for any society to function properly, public order has to be maintained. This is an important function of...
An Assyriologist at the University of London (UCL) has discovered that a stolen clay tablet inscribed with ancient cuneiform text that was recently acquired by a museum in Iraq, contains 20...
New research reveals that some of the earliest civilizations in the Middle East and the Fertile Crescent may have been affected by abrupt climate change. These findings show that while socio-economic...
The ziggurat is arguably the most distinct architectural feature of the Mesopotamian civilization. Nevertheless, some of these structures have been found to exist outside the area once occupied by...
The time is 360 BC, the dawn of Western civilization. Athens, the cradle of democracy, is the epicenter of the ancient world. In his dialogues of Timaeus and Critias, Plato introduces a tale of an...
Some young boys in Israel took great care in excavating a winepress about 1,400 years old, not realizing they were doing anything wrong. The Israel Antiquities Authority got wind of the dig and took...
A clay tablet from ancient Babylon reveals that no matter where (or when) you go, good customer service can be hard find. So it was revealed by the irate copper merchant, Nanni, in 1750 B.C. The...
Sun and moon iconography can be found on the impressive standing pillars of Göbeklitepe, the Neolithic temples that are among the most important archaeological sites of our time. Guest author Özgür...
The weapons, tactics and strategies of warfare have changed enormously through the centuries, but the hellish aspects of war and the deep psychological scars it leaves on warriors were apparently...
Archaeologists digging in the Burnt City of southeastern Iran have excavated a piece of leather adorned with drawings from the Bronze Age. The Burnt City, known as Shahr-e Sukhteh in Persian, is a 5,...
Stories of epic cosmic battles can be found in many world cultures. In these battles, the lines are often drawn clearly, with the forces of good on one side and the forces of evil on the other. For...
More than 2 millennia before the French Revolution introduced the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizens , an ancient Near Eastern monarch issued a charter that is considered to be the...
Graham Hancock, in his famous work “The Fingerprints of The Gods” argues that certain civilizations around the globe showed these signs of unusual intelligence in their architecture, science and...