Festivals: Did you mean...?

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 dual entreaties of the...

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 the Hebrews for this...

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 from the Latin prostituere ("to...

Enki's Journey to Nippur (c. 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 Mesopotamia. The poem formed part of...

Shulgi and Ninlil's Barge is a Sumerian poem dated to the reign of Shulgi of Ur (2029-1982 BCE) celebrating the caulking of the barge of the goddess Ninlil, consort of the sky god Enlil, and the banquet held in the couple's honor by Shulgi...

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 of Athena offered women...

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 doubt grew out of the early religious...

The term “Athenian Calendar” (also called the “Attic Calendar”) has become somewhat of a misnomer, since Ancient Athenians never really used just one method to reckon the passage of time. Athenians, especially from the 3rd Century BCE forward...

This text is part of an article series on the Delian League. The second phase of the Delian League's operations begins with the Hellenic victory over Mede forces at Eurymedon and ends with the Thirty Years Peace between Athens and Sparta...

The Julio-Claudians were the first dynasty to rule the Roman Empire. After the death of the dictator-for-life Julius Caesar in 44 BCE, his adopted son Octavian - later to become known as Augustus (r. 27 BCE - 14 CE) - fought a civil war against...