Search Results: Opet festival

The gods of the ancient Egyptians were always apparent to the people through natural events. The sunrise was Ra emerging from the underworld in his great ship, for example, and the moon was the god Khonsu traveling across the night sky. When...

The Festival of the Federation (Fête de la Fédération) was a celebration that occurred on the Champ de Mars outside Paris on 14 July 1790, the first anniversary of the Storming of the Bastille. With over 300,000 people in attendance, the...

The Cult of the Supreme Being was a deistic cult established by Maximilien Robespierre (1758-1794) during the French Revolution (1789-1799). Its purpose was to replace Roman Catholicism as the state religion of France and to undermine the...

The greatest party ever thrown in antiquity is the inaugral event thrown by Ashurnasirpal II (r. 884-859 BCE) in 879 BCE at the completion of his new city of Kalhu which was attended by almost 70,000 people who were served, among other treats...

Daily life in ancient China changed through the centuries but reflected the values of the presence of gods and one's ancestors in almost every time period. Villages like Banpo show evidence of a matriarchal society, where there was a priestly...

The Qingming Festival is held one hundred and four days after the winter solstice, and is known as the ‘pure bright festival’, ‘tomb-sweeping day’ and ‘ancestors day’. For over 2,500 years, this festival has been a day for Chinese people...

Festivals in ancient Mesopotamia honored the patron deity of a city-state or the primary god of the city that controlled a region or empire. The earliest, the Akitu festival, was first observed in Sumer in the Early Dynastic Period (2900-2334...

Festival of the Federation (14 July 1790) on the Champ de Mars, from a perspective close to the king's pavilion, engraving by Isidore Stanislas Helman, after a painting by Charles Monnet, 1790. Bibliothèque nationale de France.

Did you know that the festive greeting Io Saturnalia to the Romans was much like Merry Christmas, or Happy Holidays is to us today? This video is all about the earliest predecessor to Christmas, the Roman festival of Saturnalia. The Ancient...

The Hungry Ghost Festival, also known as the Ghost Festival is celebrated either on the night of the 14th or the 15th day (depending on where you live in China), of the seventh month of the lunar year, known in the West as August. In other...