More Frequently Asked Questions about the Ancient Greeks and Romans
In a series of short and humorous essays, Insane Emperors, Sunken Cities, and Earthquake Machines features more answers to questions that ancient historian Garrett Ryan is frequently asked in the classroom, in online forums, and on his popular YouTube channel Told in Stone.
Sumerian was the first language to be put into writing (ca. 3200-3100 BCE), and it is the language for which the cuneiform script was originally developed. Even after it was supplanted by Akkadian as the primary spoken language in ancient Mesopotamia, Sumerian continued to be used as a scholarly written language until the end of the first ......
Frequently Asked Questions About the Ancient Greeks and Romans
Why didn't the ancient Greeks or Romans wear pants? How did they shave? How likely were they to drink fine wine, use birth control, or survive surgery? In a series of short and humorous essays, Naked Statues, Fat Gladiators, and War Elephants explores some of the questions about the Greeks and Romans that ancient historian Garrett Ryan has ......
In Travels with Plotinus, Moin Mir follows Plotinus's 1,780-year-old journey of personal discovery across India, Egypt, Italy, Greece and Turkey as he tries to understand the core concept of Plotinian thought, derived from studying the Upanishads - 'Unity and Oneness'. He uses Plotinus's philosophy to observe how the free will of intellect uses ......
The History and Administration of Judah in the 8th-2nd Centuries BCE in Light of the Storage-Jar Stamp Impressions
Examines the administrative system and function of stamp impressions on storage jars in ancient Israel, illustrating the history of Judah during six centuries of subjugation to the empires that ruled the region.
The history of biblical Israel, as it is told in the Hebrew Bible, differs substantially from the history of ancient Israel as it can be reconstructed using ancient Near Eastern texts and archaeological evidence. In A Brief History of Ancient Israel, Bernd U. Schipper uses this evidence to present a critical revision of the history of ......
What do rituals have to do with knowledge? Knowledge by Ritual examines the epistemological role of rites in Christian Scripture. By putting biblical rituals in conversation with philosophical and scientific views of knowledge, Johnson argues that knowing is a skilled adeptness in both the biblical literature and scientific enterprise. ......
A Theology of Deception and YHWH's Fidelity to the Ancestral Promise in the Jacob Cycle
The book of Genesis portrays the character Jacob as a brazen trickster who deceives members of his own family: his father Isaac, brother Esau, and uncle Laban. At the same time, Genesis depicts Jacob as YHWH’s chosen, from whom the entire people Israel derive and for whom they are named. These two notices produce a latent tension in the ......
Son of a mortal king and an immortal Muse, Orpheus possessed a gift for music unmatched among humans; with his lyre he could turn the course of rivers, drown the fatal song of the Sirens, and charm the denizens of the underworld.
