Frankincense: Did you mean...?

The Phoenicians, based on a narrow coastal strip of the Levant, put their excellent seafaring skills to good use and created a network of colonies and trade centres across the ancient Mediterranean. Their major trade...

Hatshepsut, whose name means "Foremost of Noble Women" or "First Among Noble Women" (royal name, Ma'at-ka-re, translated as "spirit of harmony and truth") was the fifth ruler of the 18th Dynasty (r...

Herodotus' section of his Histories on burial in ancient Egypt (Book II.85-90) is an accurate description of Egyptian mummification, but he purposefully omits the spiritual significance of embalming in keeping with his...

The Christmas holiday has gathered around it customs and traditions for over two millennia, some of which even pre-date the Christian festival itself. From gift-giving to the sumptuous spread of a Christmas dinner table...

Physicians in ancient Rome manufactured a wide variety of pharmaceuticals used to treat health concerns. Roman medicine was highly sophisticated, and Roman medical literature describes early antiseptics, narcotics...

Mediterranean trade increased exponentially at the turn of the first millennium. During Rome's zenith, goods of all sorts began to move in all directions. As a common traveler aboard merchant ships, Paul...

Herod's Harbor was a giant port built between 22 and 15 BCE by Herod the Great (r. 37-4 BCE), Rome's client king. Situated on the lower eastern Mediterranean coast north of Alexandria and south of Tyre, with Rome's largess and...

The way Queen Victoria (reign 1837-1901) and her family celebrated their Christmases became familiar to the public over the years, thanks to the intense media coverage of...

Caesarea Maritima, the city Herod the Great (r. 37-4 BCE) built for Rome on the southeastern coast of the Mediterranean served as the Roman Empire's powerbase of operations both commercially and militarily...

II:38. The males of the ox kind they consider to belong to Epaphos, and on account of him they test them in the following manner: If the priest sees one single black hair upon the beast he counts it not clean...