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People in the Middle Ages have acquired something of a bad reputation when it comes to cleanliness, especially the peasantry. However, despite the general lack of running water and other modern amenities, there were common expectations of...

Medieval serfs (aka villeins) were unfree labourers who worked the land of a landowner (or tenant) in return for physical and legal protection and the right to work a separate piece of land for their own basic needs. Serfs made up 75% of...

Deir el-Medina is the modern Arabic name for the worker's village (now an archaeological site) which was home to the artisans and craftsmen of Thebes who built and decorated the royal tombs in the nearby Valley of the Kings and Valley of...

Mesopotamia (from the Greek, meaning 'between two rivers') was an ancient region located in the eastern Mediterranean bounded in the northeast by the Zagros Mountains and in the southeast by the Arabian Plateau, corresponding to modern-day...

Egypt is a country in North Africa, on the Mediterranean Sea, and is home to one of the oldest civilizations on earth. The name 'Egypt' comes from the Greek Aegyptos which was the Greek pronunciation of the ancient Egyptian name 'Hwt-Ka-Ptah'...

Norse mythology refers to the Scandinavian mythological framework that was upheld during and around the time of the Viking Age (c. 790- c. 1100 CE). Complete with a creation myth that has the first gods slaying a giant and turning his body...

The Sioux are a native North American nation who inhabited the Great Plains region of, roughly, modern Colorado, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Wyoming. They are one of the many nations referred to as Plains Indians who...

The Scythians were a nomadic people whose culture flourished between the 7th and 3rd century BCE in a territory ranging from Thrace in the west, across the steppe of Central Asia, to the Altai Mountains of Mongolia in the east. This covers...

Thoth is the Egyptian god of writing, magic, wisdom, and the moon. He was one of the most important gods of ancient Egypt alternately said to be self-created or born of the seed of Horus from the forehead of Set. As the son of these two deities...

Mahayana Buddhism is the largest Buddhist sect in the world, and its beliefs and practices are what most non-adherents recognize as "Buddhism" in the modern era. It developed as a school of thought sometime after 383 BCE, possibly from the...