Death: Did you mean...?

To the ancient Egyptians, death was not the end of life but only the beginning of the next phase in an individual's eternal journey. There was no word in ancient Egyptian which corresponds to the concept of "death" as usually...

A vision of the afterlife is articulated by every culture, ancient or modern, in an effort to answer the question of what happens after death. Ancient Persia had the same interest in this as any culture of...

In June of 323 BCE, Alexander the Great (r. 336-323 BCE) died in Babylon. His sudden death before his 33rd birthday has long been a point of speculation: was it disease, old wounds, or murder? Regardless of the cause...

The assassination attempt on Gaspard II de Coligny, Admiral of France (l. 1519-1572) on 22 August 1572 was the spark igniting the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre beginning on 24 August and continuing in Paris for the next...

The ancient Celts who occupied large parts of Europe from 700 BCE to 400 CE displayed a clear belief in an afterlife as evidenced in their treatment of the dead. In the absence of extensive...

A columbarium is an underground chamber, which the Romans used for preserving the ashes of the dead. During the 1st and 2nd centuries CE, hundreds of columbaria lined the consular highways leading out...

Belief in an afterlife was common in the ancient world, as it is today, and each culture created its own unique vision of the land that existed beyond the grave. Even with their differences, there are many...

An 1882 oil on canvas painting by Paul Joseph Jamin titled Death of the Prince Imperial. The scene shows the death of Louis-Napoléon, Prince Imperial in a skirmish during the Anglo-Zulu War of 1879. Château de Compiègne...

Death of King Louis XIV of France at the Palace of Versailles, oil on cardboard sketch by Thomas Jones Barker, France, c. 1835-1840. This oil sketch depicts the death of Louis XIV at Versailles. Barker was commissioned...

The so-called death mask of Agamemnon - the king of Mycenae in Homer's Iliad. Gold funeral mask from Grave Circle A, Mycenae (mid-16th century BCE). The mask in fact predates Agamemnon by 400 years but nevertheless remains...