Sacrifice: Did you mean...?

After defeating Darius III at the battle of Issus in November 333 BCE, Alexander marched his army (about 35,000-40,000 strong) into Phoenicia, where he received the capitulation of Byblus and Sidon. Tyrian envoys...

To the ancient Romans, everything was imbued with a divine spirit (numen, plural: numina) which gave it life. Even supposedly inanimate objects like rocks and trees possessed a numen, a belief which no...

The dog as "man's best friend" has a long history going back to the ages long before the civilization of ancient Egypt was established but the Egyptians were among the earliest people to recognize the value of the dog and...

Making the Sacred Bundle is an origin story of the medicine bag from the Pawnee nation. A medicine bag is a pouch or bundle containing items of resonant spiritual power for an individual or the tribal community that symbolize...

The Ludlul-Bel-Nemeqi (c. 1700 BCE) is a Sumerian and later Babylonian poem on the theme of unjust suffering, which is thought to have influenced the biblical Book of Job. Also known as The Poem of the Righteous Sufferer, the...

Diogenes of Sinope (c. 404-323 BCE) was a Greek Cynic philosopher best known for holding a lantern to the faces of the citizens of Athens claiming he was searching for an honest man. He was most likely...

Ghosts in ancient Mesopotamia were understood as a reality of life, just as they were in other civilizations of antiquity. Although the cultures of the various Mesopotamian civilizations differed...

Huldrych Zwingli (l. 1484-1531) wrote his 67 Articles in 1523 as a confession of faith to be presented at the First Disputation in Zürich where he defended his beliefs against accusations of heresy by the Catholic Church...

Mondamin (also given as Mon-Daw-Min, The Gift of Corn, and The Origin of Corn) is a tale from the Ojibwe Nation on how the people received corn from the Great Spirit through the vision quest of the young man, Wunzh, and his acts of...

For the ancient Greeks, the quality of arete (personal excellence) and the concept of eusebia (social duty) were most important. Aristotle discusses both of these at length in his Nichomachean Ethics...