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Life and Easy Living
Floor mosaic with allegorical representation of Life and Easy Living. Crafted from limestone and glass tesserae, this mosaic was excavated in Syria and dates to approximately 350-400 CE. In the mosaic, an affluent couple is shown engaged...
Image
Iktomi Sitting by the Fire
The supernatural entity/trickster-spirit Iktomi (Unktomi) depicted sitting in human form in front of a fire cooking ducks. Image taken from modern artist Gertrude Spaller's illustration of the story of Iktomi and the Ducks included in The...
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Gregory of Tours Listening to King Chilperic's Poetry
Gregory of Tours is forced to listen to the bad poetry of King Chilperic I (r. 561-584) of Neustria. Illustratuon by Jean-Paul Laurensfor the work of Augustin Thierry, Récits des temps mérovingiens (Paris, 1881).
Article
Native American Land & The Mysterious Butte Legend
The Native American understanding of the land as a living thing, providing for, guiding, and speaking to the people, is expressed in many of their stories, legends, and lore and, among these, in the Sioux legend of The Mysterious Butte in...
Definition
The Pillow Book
The Pillow Book (Makura no Soshi) is a personalised account of life at the Japanese court by Sei Shonagon which she completed c. 1002 CE during the Heian Period. The book is full of humorous observations (okashi) written in the style of a...
Interview
Interview: Bringing Down the Roman Empire in a Game
Today we are talking to Jon Shafer, lead designer of the computer game At the Gates, now available on PC, Mac, and Linux. In this game, you control a Barbarian tribe during the Migration Age, helping them survive, grow, and hopefully bring...
Definition
Dowding System
Britain's integrated air defence system in the Second World War (1939-45), known as the Dowding System after the air chief marshal of that name, included code-breakers, radar stations, observers, searchlights, barrage balloons, anti-aircraft...
Article
Daily Life in Ancient Mesopotamia
Daily life in ancient Mesopotamia cannot be described in the same way one would describe life in ancient Rome or Greece. Mesopotamia was never a single, unified civilization, not even under the Akkadian Empire of Sargon of Akkad (the Great...
Article
Women in the New Testament
Women in the New Testament are presented for the most part along the contours of both Jewish and Greco-Roman concepts of the social construction of gender roles. Women’s value to society was in their role in procreation. There are some exceptions...
Definition
Johann Sebastian Bach
Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) was a German organist and composer whose work is today regarded as amongst the finest of mature baroque music (c. 1600-1750). More famous as an organist than as a composer in his own lifetime, Bach's rich...