Festivals: Did you mean...?

A Praise Poem of Lipit-Estar is a Sumerian praise song honoring Lipit-Estar (also known as Lipit-Ishtar, reign circa 1935 to circa 1924 BCE), the fifth king of the First Dynasty of Isin, best known...

Mars was the Roman god of war and second only to Jupiter in the Roman pantheon. Although most of the myths involving Mars were borrowed from the Greek god of war Ares, Mars did have some uniquely Roman features. Mars is considered more...

The Wheel of the Year is a symbol of the eight Sabbats (religious festivals) of Neo-Paganism and the Wicca movement which includes four solar festivals - Winter Solstice, Spring Equinox, Summer Solstice, Fall Equinox - and four...

The Lamentations of Isis and Nephthys is an ancient Egyptian text in which the two goddess-sisters call the soul of the god Osiris to rejoin the living. The poem takes the form of a call-and-response liturgy and...

The popular view of life in ancient Egypt is often that it was a death-obsessed culture in which powerful pharaohs forced the people to labor at constructing pyramids and temples and, at an unspecified time, enslaved...

Enki's Journey to Nippur (circa 2000 BCE) is a Sumerian origin myth explaining the creation of the temple at Eridu by the god Enki and how musical instruments were ordained for use in festivals in ancient...

Prostitution in the ancient world usually referred to a classification of women and men who offered their sexual services outside the parameters of law codes for ancient society. The word 'prostitute' derives...

Shulgi and Ninlil's Barge is a Sumerian poem dated to the reign of Shulgi of Ur (2094 - circa 2046 BCE) celebrating the caulking of the barge of the goddess Ninlil, consort of the sky god Enlil...

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...

In ancient Athens, women had no life outside the home unless they were prostitutes or were engaged in religious activities such as festivals. Every Greek deity in every city-state had their own cult (sect) but the cult...