Cremation: Did you mean...?

Stonehenge is a Neolithic / Bronze Age monument located on Salisbury Plain, Wiltshire, southern England. The first monument on the site, began around 3100 BCE, was a circular 'henge' earthwork about 360 feet (110 metres) in diameter, a 'henge'...

Excavations at Vergina in northern Greece in the late 1970s CE unearthed a cluster of tombs thought to be the burial site of Philip II (r. 359-336 BCE), the father of Alexander the Great (r. 336-323 BCE), with a wife interred in a vaulted...

Burial in ancient Mesopotamia was the practice of interring a corpse in a grave or tomb while observing certain rites, primarily to ensure the passage of the soul of the deceased to the underworld and prevent its return to haunt the living...

The Bronze Age in Sicily, considered one of the most important periods of the island's prehistory, witnessed the establishment of a unitary and in some ways artistically vibrant culture. The three main phases of the period take their name...

In Norse belief, the soul of the deceased might wind up in any one of a number of afterlife realms. There was Valhalla, the realm of Odin where the dead warriors drank, fought, and told stories, Folkvangr ('the Field of the People'), the...

Nero (37-68 CE) was the fifth Roman emperor, who reigned from 54 to 68 CE. The last emperor of the Julio-Claudian Dynasty, he came to power at the age of 16 with the help of his mother, Agrippina the Younger. Initially a popular ruler, his...

Kali is the Hindu goddess of death, time, and doomsday. She is often associated with sexuality and violence but is also considered a strong mother figure and symbol of motherly love. Kali embodies shakti – feminine energy, creativity and...

The Templo Mayor or Great Temple (called Hueteocalli by the Aztecs) dominated the central sacred precinct of the Aztec capital Tenochtitlan. Topped by twin temples dedicated to the war god Huitzilopochtli and the rain god Tlaloc it was a...

The polytheistic religion of the ancient Celts in Iron Age Europe remains obscure for lack of written records, but archaeology and accounts by classical authors help us to piece together a number of the key gods, sacred sites, and cult practices...

The River Ganges, also known as the Ganga, flows 2,700 km from the Himalaya mountains to the Bay of Bengal in northern India and Bangladesh. Regarded as sacred by Hindus, the river is personified as the goddess Ganga in ancient texts and...