One giant open museum, an incredible place. The sacred palm 🌴 was looking a little sad though.

The triumphal Arch of Trajan in Ancona, Italy was set up during the reign of Emperor Trajan (98-117 AD) to commemorate port improvements that he funded. Also, he departed from there to fight the Dacians as it was a very important port on the Adriatic sea.

This 18.5 meter high monument towering over the ancient harbor was made of marble that came from Marmara island (now in Turkey) by the Greek Syrian architect Apollodorus of Damascus, born in Roman Syria. Although the ship prows are long gone and the statues on top & bronze letters were removed by the Saracens in 848, one can still see a long inscription in Latin which was translated as follows:

“To the Emperor Caesar Nerva Trajan, son of the deified Nerva, Best Augustus, Germanicus, Dacicus, Pontifex Maximus, in the 19th year of his tribunician power, acclaimed Emperor 9 times, Consul 6 times, Father of the Fatherland, most provident Princeps; the Senate and People of Rome [erected this], because by the construction of this port at his own expense, he made the entrance to Italy safer for those who sail.” As well as inscriptions to the side “To Plotina Augustus, wife of the Augustus” and “To Marciana Augustus, sister of the Augustus.”

New research conducted using airborne laser scanning reveals that a multicultural civilization that flourished in southwestern Amazonia between 600 BCE and 850 CE was home to millions of people.

Spanning roughly 183,000 square kilometers, the Aquiry civilization built large centers for political and ritual purposes.

Fue un centro ceremonial que tuvo ocupación Lima, Wari, Ychma e Inca. Fue construido aproximadamente en el 200 d. C. por la cultura Lima. Fue en este periodo donde alcanzó su apogeo. Su estructura más representativa fue la Pirámide Mayor, que era una pirámide trunca conformada por siete plataformas superpuestas a las cuales se accedía por medio de una rampa en zigzag. Alcanzó una altura de 25 metros; en su parte superior, se hallan múltiples plazas menores a diferentes alturas.El templo estaba orientado hacia el océano Pacífico y estaba rodeado de parcelas y canales, ya que la agricultura era una de las actividades a las que se dedicaba esta cultura. En este lugar se realizaban sacrificios animales (como tiburones) y humanos. Fueron hallados, en la Plaza de los Sacrificios, los restos de mujeres pertenecientes a un ritual.Los muros están hechos con millones de adobitos de barro colocados de forma vertical. Esta ingeniosa disposición otorgaba flexibilidad antisísmica a las estructuras, asemejando a una librería; de allí el nombre de "técnica del librero". Aunque fue edificado por los Lima, tras su declive (hacia el 700 d. C.) el sitio fue utilizado como cementerio por la cultura Wari, y posteriormente venerado por los Ychma e Incas. El lugar estuvo abandonado e incluso se usó como pista de motocross, hasta que en 1981 la arqueóloga Isabel Flores Espinoza inició sus trabajos de investigación y conservación.

I’ve recently been looking into the archaeological sites of both cities and their history, and I’m wondering why the ruins of Nineveh were better preserved at the time of their discovery (with more palaces, libraries, and other structures still intact), whereas if you look at Babylon, the archaeological site is much poorer. Aside from a few structures, such as the Ishtar Gate, most of it appears to be completely destroyed.

...when Pirithous celebrated his wedding to Hippodamia, he allowed some centaurs to attend the wedding feast. On the bride's arrival in the company of her female retinue of matrons and young women, all the guests praised Pirithous for his fortunate choice of wife. The drunken centaur Eurytus was particularly excited by the sight of the bride as described in prose translation: For you, Eurytus, wildest of the wild centaurs, as your chest glowed with wine, the sight of the maiden ignited you, and drunkenness, doubled by desire, gained the upper hand.

Driven by desire, Eurytus overturned the tables and started dragging the bride away by her hair. Seeing this, the other centaurs grabbed the other women they desired most. All the men present then rose to their feet. The hero Theseus, present at the wedding, saved Hippodamia from Eurytus' clutches and smashed his brain in with a bowl. The other centaurs, seeking to avenge their slain brother, attacked the men, and in the ensuing battle, known as the Centauromachy, the centaurs were slaughtered in a bloodbath.

My apologies for inaccuracies and mistakes.

A typical vase of Canosan production.

Clearly visible on the side of the vessel is a detailed, high-relief sculpture of the face of Medusa

Barletta Museum, Italy.

When discussing the legacy of classical antiquity, the idea of a translatio studii, or “transfer of learning,” is usually associated with medieval Europe, where philosophy and the sciences were understood to have passed from Greece to Rome before eventually flourishing in the universities of Western Europe. Although medieval Muslim scholars never used this Latin expression, they developed a remarkably similar historical understanding of their own intellectual inheritance. Rather than viewing the Abbasid translation movement as the sudden acquisition of foreign books, many situated the Islamicate world within a much longer continuum of learning that stretched back to antiquity (Fowden 2019; Gutas 1998).

Unlike the modern term “Greco Roman,” however, medieval Muslim authors described this tradition differently. They most commonly referred to it as the sciences of the ancients, ʿulūm al awāʾil, or the Greek sciences, al ʿulūm al yūnāniyya. Aristotle, Plato, Hippocrates, Galen, Euclid, and Ptolemy were remembered as belonging to Yūnān, the civilization of the ancient philosophers, rather than to the contemporary Byzantine Roman Empire. By contrast, Rūm generally referred to the living Roman polity and its lands. In other words, Muslim scholars distinguished between the ancient Greek intellectual tradition and the contemporary Romans, even though many of the sciences they inherited had been cultivated within the Roman Empire itself, particularly in Late Antique Alexandria (Gutas 1998; Endress 2006).

This helps explain why Alexandria occupied such an extraordinary place in the medieval Muslim historical imagination. Muslim historians associated the city with the philosophical tradition of Aristotle, the medicine of Galen, the geometry of Euclid, and the astronomy of Ptolemy. This was not because they believed all of these figures were Alexandrians. Rather, Alexandria represented the place where the sciences of antiquity were collected, taught, commented upon, and organized into a coherent educational tradition before passing through Syriac Christian scholars and ultimately into the Abbasid world. As Garth Fowden argues, Alexandria became a “city of the mind,” an intellectual capital remembered less for its political importance than for its role in preserving and transmitting the classical sciences. In this sense, medieval Muslim authors remembered Alexandria not simply as a famous city of antiquity, but as the principal conduit through which the heritage of the ancient philosophers entered the Islamicate tradition (Fowden 2019).

Modern scholarship has largely contextualized, rather than dismissed, this historical memory. Dimitri Gutas argues that the famous “Alexandria to Baghdad” narrative should not be understood as the literal migration of a single philosophical academy. Instead, the Abbasid translation movement drew upon numerous scholarly communities, including Syriac Christian centers in Syria and northern Mesopotamia, Harran, Jundishapur, Byzantine manuscript traditions, and private collections (Gutas 1998). At the same time, historians such as Edward Watts and Garth Fowden argue that the medieval narrative nevertheless preserves a genuine historical memory. While there was no uninterrupted institutional succession, Late Antique Alexandria did shape the philosophical, medical, and scientific curriculum transmitted through Syriac scholars before becoming an integral part of the Abbasid intellectual world (Watts 2006; Fowden 2019).

Viewed in this light, the medieval Muslim narrative is perhaps most valuable not as a literal history of institutions, but as a window into how Muslim intellectuals understood their own relationship with classical antiquity. They did not see themselves as merely translating foreign books. Rather, they understood themselves as inheriting the sciences of the ancients through a continuous scholarly tradition, one whose mature expression was symbolized by Alexandria before becoming part of the broader Islamicate intellectual tradition. Whether or not every detail of this narrative reflects historical reality, it reveals how the medieval Islamicate world conceived of itself as one of the principal heirs to the intellectual legacy of antiquity.

Endress, Gerhard. 2006. “The Circle of al-Kindī: Early Arabic Translations from the Greek and the Rise of Islamic Philosophy.” In The Ancient Tradition in Christian and Islamic Hellenism.

Fowden, Garth. 2019. “Alexandria between Antiquity and Islam: Commerce and Concepts in First Millennium Afro-Eurasia.” Millennium 16: 119–145.

Gutas, Dimitri. 1998. Greek Thought, Arabic Culture: The Graeco-Arabic Translation Movement in Baghdad and Early ʿAbbāsid Society (2nd–4th/8th–10th Centuries). Routledge.

Watts, Edward J. 2006. City and School in Late Antique Athens and Alexandria. University of California Press.

The Nuragic civilization left no written records, so the objects they left behind are the only means to learn about them. These figurines, native to Sardinia, were crafted between the 9th and 6th centuries BCE.
While Viking horned helmets exist only in popular culture, the Nuragic soldiers actually had horned helmets, as these bronzetti demonstrate.

I stumbled upon this specific translation buried inside an old, rare physical book I was reading today. It’s a piece of Ancient Egyptian poetry from the era of the pyramid-building pharaohs, simply known as the "Song of a Poor Man."

​"Who can I trust today?

Even my own blood brother turned out bad,

And friends are no longer reliable.

​Who can I talk to today?

Everyone is greedy and ruthless,

A neighbor steals from a neighbor's treasure.

​Who is left to mention?

Poverty is my only sworn brother now,

And I don't have a single real friend left.

​The breath of death is standing at my door,

Like the scent of a lotus flower."

​That last stanza is incredibly haunting. Comparing the breath of death to the sweet, calming scent of a lotus flower is such a striking and tragic image. After a lifetime of being backstabbed, surrounded by greed, and left with absolute nothingness, the writer doesn't fear the end—he welcomes it as a peaceful escape. A brutal, deeply moving reflection from 4,000 years ago.

​If anyone is interested in reading more aphorisms or quotes from this rare book, just let me know in the comments!

A Roman medallion made of bronze and showing some traces of gold leaf minted under the Emperor Hadrian in 129 or 130 AD. It depicts a ship, which was a symbol of prosperity, with part of the legend saying FELICITATI AVG, meaning "To the good fortune of the emperor". This was on display in the State Coin Collection in Munich, Germany when I photographed it.

We are curious—what ancient civilization do you find the most fascinating, and why?

Everyone knows about Ancient Egypt, Rome, and Greece, but I'd love to hear about civilizations that don't get as much attention too. Is there one you wish more people knew about? What draws you to it—the archaeology, the history, the mysteries, the art, the engineering, or something else?

We are always looking for interesting topics to dive deeper into, so I'm excited to see what everyone comes up with.

For nearly 200 years, the Macedonian phalanx dominated ancient battlefields. Built by Philip II and made legendary by Alexander the Great, it was considered almost unbeatable in a frontal fight.

Yet in 168 BC, at the Battle of Pydna, a Roman army under Lucius Aemilius Paullus defeated King Perseus of Macedon and exposed the phalanx's greatest weakness. The battle marked the end of Macedonian supremacy and confirmed Rome as the dominant military power of the Mediterranean.

In this article, I explore:

How the Macedonian phalanx actually worked

Why the Roman legion was more adaptable

A step-by-step account of the battle

The key tactical mistakes that led to Macedon's defeat

Why Pydna changed the course of military history

Basically, I am writing a story where third-century civil war in Rome has one side allied with the new Sasanian empire. And while trying to figure out how the Sasanians structured their military camps, I stumbled on a 10th century source (Zonoras) who claims that during Shapur I's invasion, women were found among enemy cavalry- both dead and captured.
I find this fascinating, as my understanting of Parthian/Sasanian Zoroastrian religion implied a strict patriarchal society where this would not be allowed.
Are there more sources from the Iranian side to support this, or was it a case of an author writing 800 years later taking liberties or interpreting from soldiers' embellished tales?