Tossed away callously in a dark corner of the lavish Treasury in the subterranean tomb of Tutankhamun was possibly the most poignant remnant of the boy king’s short life. Positioned next to the...
Xiwangmu (西王母), whose name means ‘Queen Mother of the West’ is a goddess in the Taoist pantheon, and worshipped in Chinese folk religion. Xiwangmu is considered to be one of the most prominent female...
Throughout the ancient history of the world, polytheism - commonly known as paganism or heathenism - was the defining aspect of all societies and civilizations. Our ancestors had complex and...
Frigg or Frigga (which means ‘Beloved’ in Old Norse) is a goddess found in Norse mythology. As the wife of Odin and the mother of Baldur, she is the ‘Queen of the Æsir’. This deity was worshipped as...
Tiamat is an ambiguous deity who played an important role in the creation myth of ancient Mesopotamia . She was their personification of the primordial sea, from which the first generation of gods...
Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities have announced that archaeologists have uncovered in Aswan, Egypt, the skeletal remains of a woman who died towards the end of her pregnancy, still holding the...
According to the ancient Greeks, Gaia was a primordial deity and the personification of the Earth. In fact, her name can actually be translated to mean ‘land’ or ‘earth’. In Greek mythology, Gaia was...
If childbirth is still today one of the most dangerous things a woman can do, imagine how dangerous it was 7,700 years ago, before modern medicine. The remains of a Stone Age Siberian mother and her...
Nammu was the primeval Sumerian mother goddess who gave birth to the gods and created humanity. Despite her extremely important role, much of her story is wrapped in mystery. Some information can be...
You may have heard of the golden apples of Greek myth, but do you know of the Chinese Peaches of Immortality? These sacred fruits have become symbols that continue to hold significance at yearly...
In Brihat-Samhita , Indian astronomer Varahamihira (505–587 CE) says that "Mothers are to be made with cognizance of gods corresponding to their names” leading to the birth of Matrikas (“Divine...
All eyes focused on the figure of Rangda as she emerged from the inner part of the temple, about a third of the way through the Barong dance (an ancient dance which predates even the Hindu influences...
Oftentimes, few people are interested in the findings of archeological digs – broken pots, scattered bones, it usually takes a sign of cannibalism or extraordinarily old carbon dating to draw the...
The tomb of Cyrus the Great is the name given to a monument located in the ancient Persian city of Pasargadae. This city was founded by Cyrus, and served as the capital of the Achaemenid Empire until...
We can only guess about the life and times of a young mother and two children buried with her, possibly felled by the first wave of the bubonic plague in the 1340s in Italy. They were all buried in a...
For centuries, the Roman emperor Nero has been well chronicled for his cruelty. Stories about his madness include divorcing his first wife before having her beheaded and then bringing her head to...