Amulet: Did you mean...?

Childbirth in ancient Rome was considered the main purpose of marriage. Roman girls married in their early teens, and in elite society, some married before they reached puberty. The legal age for marriage was 12 for a...

Among the most interesting and revealing artifacts discovered from ancient Mesopotamia are cylinder seals. These fairly small items may be seen today in museum exhibits around the world...

For the Greeks magic (mageia or goeteia) was a wide-ranging topic which involved spells and evil prayers (epoidai), curse tablets (katadesmoi), enhancing drugs and deadly poisons (pharmaka), amulets (periapta) and powerful...

The Magical Lullaby (popularly known as Charm for the Protection of a Child) is an inscription from the 16th or 17th century BCE. The poem exemplifies the ancient Egyptian's personal religious and spiritual practices...

Phoenician is a Canaanite language closely related to Hebrew. Very little is known about the Canaanite language, except what can be gathered from the El-Amarna letters written by Canaanite kings to Pharaohs Amenhopis...

In ancient Egypt, if a woman were having difficulty conceiving a child, she might spend an evening in a Bes Chamber (also known as an incubation chamber) located within a temple. Bes was the god of childbirth, sexuality...

Scarab shaped amulet containing the image and cartouche of Amenhotep III, promising its owner in this world 'life' (represented by an ankh). These beetle amulets were used in Ancient Egypt for rituals or administrative purposes (14th...

Grigori Rasputin (1869-1916) was a self-styled holy man and faith healer from Siberia who ingratiated himself with the family of Tsar Nicholas II (reign 1894-1917). Rasputin was particularly valued by the empress Alexandra Feodorovna...

Heka is the god of magic and medicine in ancient Egypt and is also the personification of magic itself. He is probably the most important god in Egyptian mythology but is often overlooked because his presence was so pervasive as to make...

The artworks of ancient Egypt have fascinated people for thousands of years. The early Greek and later Roman artists were influenced by Egyptian techniques and their art would inspire those of other cultures up to the present...