Ancient Origins Premium offers a wealth of knowledge and a variety of learning methods (articles, eBooks, webinars, expeditions and more) that will help you embark on a journey you will never forget!
Watching the fast-evolving state of affairs following Alexander’s death, the Athenian demagogue Demades compared the Macedonian army to the: “Cyclops after his one eye had been burned out, seeing its...
A famous Roman aphorism was used well by Tacitus: “They plunder, they slaughter, and they steal; this they falsely name Empire, and when they create a desert, then they call it peace”. It is a...
Few pharaohs in ancient Egyptian history could hold a candle to the stupendous achievements of Amenhotep III in various spheres. Everything that this daring king touched turned to gold. Be it...
Alexander the Great has been termed a maverick whose 13-year meteoric reign was an aberration in the history of the age. He was a mythopoeic conqueror who simultaneously lived by the tenets of the...
The Varangians were an elite guard that once served as the personal bodyguards of Byzantine emperors. When not protecting the emperor, they served at the frontlines in times of war to protect and...
The word ‘crusader’ conjures up images of scarlet-cross Knights Templar. Although these heroes of the 12th century may dominate popular culture, their Order was rivalled by the black-cross Order of...
Truth is sometimes stranger than fiction. One of the debates among fans of the ‘Potterverse’ – the fictional universe that is the setting for the Harry Potter-related novels and movies – is where did...
Not only does Akhenaten, the man and ruler, pose a conundrum to Egyptologists; but his entire family is shrouded in mystery too. Prime among them is Kiya, his obscure wife, who seems to have...
Every proper myth and legend features a door, gateway or mirror acting as portals to other dimensions of reality. In modern mythology this component features as children venturing to ‘Narnia’ through...
Kiya, a secondary wife of Pharaoh Akhenaten is one of the most shadowy royals of the Amarna Period. Virtually nothing is known about her origin or the reasons for her disappearance. All that is...
In the Rigveda, the ancient Indian Vedic Sanskrit canonical sacred texts, a hymn is dedicated to each deity and the goddess Saraswathi is revered as a female deity with healing and the purifying...
Isla del Coco , or Cocos Island, has been visited for over 300 years by infamous pirates like ‘Benito of the Bloody Sword’ and explorers such as Sir Francis Drake. In more modern times famous...
Both Empress Euphemia and the succeeding empress Theodora transformed from sinners to Saints and although 5th to 6th century Roman society may have been more lenient, due to the empresses’ charity...
A new technology in weaponry, the introduction of the bow and arrow, might have led to the collapse of the prehistoric, American Hopewellian Culture somewhere between 450 to 500 AD. A socio-spiritual...
Erected 7,000-years-ago, 20 unique standing stone monuments in the remote north of Scotland mystify archaeologists, because they are unparalleled anywhere else in the world. By conducting a research...
The death of Pharaoh Akhenaten in Regnal Year 17 was a powerful body-blow to the promotion of his fledgling religion, Atenism. Evacuated from their original communal crypt at Amarna, the royal dead...
Not much was known of the young Antinous before he attracted the attention of the ruler of the Roman world at its zenith. He was born in 111 AD in the Roman province of Bithynia, which would include...
A 1,500-year-old carved marvel, the Ulbster Stone, was unearthed from the grounds of an ancient Celtic chapel in the remote Highlands of Scotland and is renown to have more symbols than any other...
By Cam Rea / Classical Wisdom In 636 AD, the armies of Islam under the Rashidun Caliphat, defeated the forces of the Byzantine Empire at the Battle of Yarmouk (near the Yarmouk River, along what...
Faeries may be just figments of our imagination, but they may have deeper roots of Celtic origin embedded in oral narratives and serve to remind us of a long-forgotten belief system that embraced a...
Gold has always captured the imagination of mankind. Long before it acquired any monetary value and became a source of greed, gold was valued for its spiritual connotation. By 2000 BC the Muisca...
The Lost Continent of Lemuria or Mu, (used interchangeably) has long lived under the shadow of its more well-known relation, Atlantis. Therefore, it may come as a surprise that for a brief moment in...
The devious plot of the secondary wife, Queen Tiye, to murder King Ramesses III came-a-cropper. In no time the conspirators, who included palace staff and her own son, were apprehended, interrogated...
The hideously contorted facial features of ‘Unknown Man E’ - also called the ‘Screaming Mummy’ - are unlike any we have witnessed in an ancient Egyptian mummy. It bears mute testimony to the gruesome...