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The artisans and builders who resided at Set Ma’at (‘The Place of Truth’) were among the most valued workers in all of Egypt. Yet, there came a time when the economy of the country was on the verge...
A couple of years before he celebrated his jubilee, Ramesses III was beset by internal problems. A great king who had combated vicious enemies from all corners and was deified by his subjects for his...
Left brain-right brain, intuitive-intellectual, patriarchy-matriarchy, make love-not war; is there a reason humankind seems so bi-polar? Maybe there is and the answer might be surprising. Of all the...
Sometime during the third millennium BC, a group of nomadic raiders expanded out of their mountainous homelands in Syria and stormed Mesopotamia. They were known as the Martu or Tidnum to the...
According to Greek mythology, Tiresias, the blind prophet of Apollo, was well-known as much for his clairvoyance as for being transformed into a woman for seven years. He was present for seven...
Indigenous Australian cultures held animistic beliefs and their everyday reality was a living, pulsing matrix of mythological cycles, outdoor rituals and ceremonies. Extending across the ancient...
With their daughter, Tiye, married into the powerful ruling family of Egypt, Yuya and Tjuyu led a charmed life. With strong ties to their hometown Akhmin, Yuya seems to have participated actively in...
Queen Tiye stands head and shoulders above all the Great Royal Wives of ancient Egypt. Though it is said that her background was that of a commoner, she rose to prominence mainly due to her...
History is threaded together with texts, scrolls and grimoires which were believed to contain the powerful supernatural rituals required to raise and control demons. A dark ancient text existed which...
Benzaiten is one of Japan's most complex and popular syncretic deities who has long ago been conflated and associated with other divinities from the Hindu, Buddhist, and Japanese pantheons. Her many...
‘Call in the Cavalry’ has become a proverb for reverting to damage-control expert assistance when things get out of hand. Yet the quote is embedded in the history of a noble and often elite unit...
On Orkney, the archipelago of the north coast of Scotland, ancient temple sites such as the Ness of Brodgar and Barnhouse Settlement, stone circles like Ring of Brodgar and Standing Stones of Stennes...
According to legend, about 3160 years ago, in the Levant, there was an enormously strong man, who tore the jaws of an adult male lion with his bare hands. Samson’ name was derived from the word semes...
According to the Bible, in the Book of Joshua , the Israelites encountered the city of Jericho as the first Canaanite stronghold they had to conquer in order to settle in their promised new land. In...
Creating abstractions of reality, art has been a part of human expression for hundreds of thousands of years. Prehistoric stone and bone sculptures, and cave art are ideas and emotions expressed...
Few gods achieved the fame that the lion-dwarf Bes managed to garner. He was not only a popular god among the elite in ancient Egypt, but in time was worshipped by people of every strata of society...
Few ancient cultures rivaled the Egyptian pantheon of gods and goddesses. Virtually every known creature was represented and venerated as they were believed to possess magical qualities of different...
The Greek Dark Age fits between the Late Bronze Age Collapse - often alternately referred to as the Mycenaean Civilization Collapse, around 1200 BC - and the Greek Archaic Period, around 800 BC. The...
It is Halloween and what better than a story about a sinister Scottish castle, its ghosts, its legends, and its blood-soaked history? Not referring to Glamis Castle with its notorious secret chamber...
‘The paths he would take were strange, With little cheer to glean, And his hopes would often change Till that chapel could be seen.’ Sir Gawain and Green Knight is a late 14th-century poem, set in an...
When the word ‘shaman’ is mentioned, it is common for one to visualize semi-naked cat-skin clad witchdoctors, wheeling around fires in mild southern climates. Less often does one picture holy men...
Scribes were counted among the elite in ancient Egypt and led charmed, yet challenging, lives. They influenced virtually every sphere of the public and private affairs of the citizenry to an...
The rich scribal tradition of ancient Egypt was one of the foremost pillars of the development of that culture. At a time when much of the world could not read or write; these resourceful and erudite...
In 1898, a group of German archaeologists working in the Demeter sanctuary at Priene unearthed a peculiar set of Hellenistic female figurines. The head of each of these figurines sits directly on her...
