Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey, A View from the East
What is The Odyssey? Is it an accurate historical depiction of a hero returning to his island home? Or a tale of existential crisis about a brave man drawn into a foolish and des
Why Odysseus Had to Go to Scheria —Memories, Flashbacks, and the End of the Bronze Age
As the main setting for a large part of The Odyssey, Scheria is not meant to be understood as just another stop on Odysseus’s wanderings, but as a deliberate flashback to a vanis
Ancient Thrace Comes to the Getty Villa Museum
Was peppermint actually found in ancient Egyptian pyramids? Retailers of peppermint products like to say so. What’s the truth, and where did this factoid come from?
Oil, Wine, and People: A Mediterranean Triad
january 2023 | Vol. 11.1 By Catherine E. Pratt Olive oil and wine are integrated into the daily lives and seasonal rhythms of people living in modern Greece. Perhaps even more stri
The Medico-Magical Squill
January 2022 | Vol. 10.1 By Maddalena Rumor Penetrating the deepest meaning of a word allows our brain not only to make sense of the idea it conveys, but also to disentangle relate
The Phaistos Disk–An Enigmatic Artifact in its Cultural Context
The Phaistos Disk is a unique Minoan object that has intrigued scholars since its discovery in 1908. Still undeciphered, the disk displays over 240 signs in a spiral. Is it authent
Visualizing Ancient Athens in 3D
March 2021 | Vol. 9.3 By Dimitris Tsalkanis Today Athens is a city of some 3.75 million people, a far cry from antiquity. Ancient Athens 3D is an effort to digitally reconstruct
Monkey Business: New Evidence for Aegean-Indus Exchange
The Aegean is over 6000 kilometers from the Indus Valley. So how did these two centers of ancient civilization come into contact, and why were monkeys involved?
What’s in a Style? Minoanizing Paintings in the Eastern Mediterranean
Do similarities in style mean a shared set of styles, craftsmen, or a network? The mid-second millennium BCE case of Minoan-like paintings in Near Eastern palaces shows the problem
Trees and Power in Aegean Art
Every society has symbols of leadership, and in a surprising number of Mediterranean and Near Eastern societies these are trees. A look at tiny examples of Aegean art gives some hi