Ancient Greece

The glorious entrance of Alexander the Great in Babylon as conqueror and savior was the culmination of his great achievements

The myth of Theseus and the Minotaur is one of the most tragic and fascinating myths in Greek mythology. Until British archaeologist Sir Arthur Evans unearthed the palace of Knossos, the story of the half-man, half bull killed by Theseus...

Even though archaeology claims that writing was invented in Sumer between 3,000 and 4,000 BC, a tablet that contradicted this perception was found in 1993 in Dispilio in the northern Greek province of Kastoria. The Dispilio Tablet is a wooden...

A German archeologist has allegedly solved the mystery of the ancient Greek Paestum swimmer. The debate has endured for years about the possible interpretations of the fresco. Yet Tonio Höschler, a Professor Emeritus of Classical Archeology at the Ruprecht...

The life of the great Athenian general Themistocles is well known, as the low-born leader was lauded even in his time for his brilliance.

Heron of Alexandria was a brilliant ancient Greek inventor who was ahead of his time and created a prototype of a steam engine. This unique mechanism was perhaps too modern for its epoch and remained unappreciated. It was mainly used...

The Minoan civilization was one of the most prominent civilizations in the Bronze Age. This was also the era in which the Greeks first clearly emerged as a distinct people. Unsurprisingly, this important civilization right at the start of...

The Islamic Golden Age was a period during which science, literature, geometry, astronomy, and other fields of knowledge flourished from the eighth to the thirteenth century. Without the scholars of this period, who translated the works of the Ancient...

Homer’s Iliad is usually thought of as the first work of European literature—and many would say it is the greatest. It tells part of the saga of the city of Troy and the war that took place there. In...

Linear A, a writing system that was used by the ancient Minoans from 1800 to 1450 BC, has intrigued and frustrated experts for centuries. Despite the fact that it has never been fully decrypted, scientists and archaeologists believe they...