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
The Myth of the Servant: A New Tale of Kingship from the Ancient Near East
Why do so many of the ancient world’s most famous kings share the same unlikely origin story? The answer may lie in a mythical template first forged in Mesopotamia.
Lifting the Sky: The Cosmic Program on the ˁAin Samiya Goblet
The ˁAin Samiya goblet is small enough to sit in the palm of a hand — barely eight centimeters tall — yet its imagery reaches for the architecture of the cosmos.
Osiris Must Die – Understanding the Practice of “Menacing the Gods” in Ancient Egyptian Magic
September 2024 | Vol. 12.9 By Franziska Naether Ancient Egyptian magical texts offer a rich repository of spells and incantations designed to manipulate divine forces for diverse p
The Myth of the Twelve Tribes of Israel
april 2023 | Vol. 11.4 By Andrew Tobolowsky The twelve tribes of Israel are, in a nutshell, how the Hebrew Bible’s historical narratives define Israel. Even today, the tribes are
What Can Mythological Narratives tell us about Mycenaean Long-Distance Trade in the Bronze Age?
February 2023 | Vol. 11.2 By Jörg Mull Locations of Mycenaean Pottery Finds in the Mediterranean basin. Map by Olav Ode. The Late Bronze Age (ca. 1600 to 1150 BCE) was a time of u
Ancient Automatons in Myth and History
Robot, androids and other artificial beings are common today, mixing technology and imagination. But they have unexpected ancestors in antiquity.
Birth and Rebirth in Ancient Egypt
Birth is one of the most dangerous parts of life. But for ancient Egyptians the birth of a child had a counterpart: the rebirth after death. Both of these were necessary to maintai
The Golden Pome: The Pomegranate from its Deepest Roots to Modern Culture
Pomegranates are renowned as health food but that association is very ancient. And it should not be surprising that pomegranates are also associated with powerful deities across th